Adoption Order
My Adoption Order was the final step in the process of transforming me from a Korean citizen, the baby of a young, single woman into an adoptable “orphan” and then, finally, the adopted child of a white Australian couple. It marked the final severing of my connection to Korea, until I rediscovered it as an adult 20 years later.
In 1984, an amendment was made to the Citizenship Act so that anyone adopted in Australia, by at least one Australian, automatically became an Australian citizen when their adoption was finalised. Australian Citizenship Amendment Act 1984 (Cth) S10A
The amendment came into effect on November 22 1984, so applied to me when my adoption was finalised in May 1986. Of course no proof of citizenship was provided. I only got an actual Australian Citizenship Certificate in 2019 after the Australian Passport Office started requiring proof of citizenship from any Australian who was born overseas for passport applications.
Even though I became an Australian Citizen on that day in May 1986, Eastern was never notified nor made inquiries about this. So I found out quite recently that, in their records, I was still a Korean citizen and they had never declared my foreign citizenship to the Ministry of Justice. My Korean citizenship should have been cancelled at the point of me gaining Australian citizenship. But no one on either side followed up on this.