Alternate lives: Korean orphans’ quests for answersPosted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Biography, Family/Parenting, Media Archive on 2019-08-25 19:50Z by Steven |
France 24
2019-08-23
Seoul (AFP)
On a summer’s day in 1985 a seven-year-old boy sat alone at a crowded bus station in Seoul, sobbing as he waited desperately for his mother to return.
Jo Youn-hwan was wearing a baseball uniform that his mother had bought him a few days before — the only gift she had ever given him.
She told him to wait for her before leaving him at the terminal. So he did, increasingly terrified as day turned to dusk.
“I’ll be a really good kid if only she chooses to return,” he promised himself, over and over again. “I’ll be a really, really good kid.”
She never did…
…International adoption from South Korea began after the Korean War as a way to remove mixed-race children, born to local mothers and American GI fathers, from a country that emphasized ethnic homogeneity.
More recently the main driver has been babies born to unmarried women, who still face ostracism in a patriarchal society, and according to historians, are often forced to give up their children.
Most children remain institutionalised till adulthood as many South Koreans are reluctant to adopt. The country has sent some 180,000 children overseas over the years, mostly to the US…
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