Next to legally restoring my birth family name, I have spent quite some energy in completing my application for restoring my Korean Citizenship.
The Korean Government allows dual citizenship since 2011, mainly for adoptees. It was mandatory to submit the application on site in Korea at the Immigration Office in Seoul. It is thought that this was quite an obstacle for many adoptees, since travelling to Korea is not cheap nor very easy to organise.
Since 2021, the procedure has changed and now it is allowed to submit the application at the Korean Embassy in the country where you are a citizen. A fellow Korean adoptee did this for the first time last year and several others have followed his example.
It is not an easy road to go down, but at least the Korean Government grants us this opportunity. It will hopefully be a first step in securing and supporting the rights of adoptees: the right to balance out both our birthrights as well as the rights we acquired as an adopted person in the countries that nurtured us.
I am very grateful for the support of my good friends and fellow-adoptees and also for the patience and help of my translator. I feel lucky and grateful for my awesome Korean family who have accepted me as one of them, even with my strange European behaviour and unfamiliar habits. They have been supportive of me in my journey of letting my Korean blood flow stronger.
And mostly, I am so happy with my #ncym ‘blije ei’ (I’m sorry, I can’t think of a proper English translation) Willem, who never judges me nor doubts my feelings, longings and wishes. Who jumps with me in airplanes to meet my family and enjoys the food of my motherland.
It will definitely be a rocky road ahead, since there will undoubtedly be many more bureaucratic obstacles along the way.
I hope I can be put back on my mom’s family register, 4th in line after my 3 sisters and above our Benjamin-brother. Hopefully it will heal some sense of guilt and regret in my mom’s heart to see my name being included in her register.
It feels kind of strange that I will probably receive my Korean citizenship before the Dutch Government allows me to change my family name. There’s always some bureaucratic system topping another one, right?
#NotAThing founders: Allison Park, Kara Bos, Brenna Kyeong McHugh, Cameron Lee, Kevin Omans, Patrick Armstrong, and Richard Peterson. Media artists Valerie Reilly (Graphic Designer) and Sarah Monroe (Videographer), and petition Korean translator Jullie Kwon.
I am not a Korean intercountry or domestic adoptee but I am an intercountry adoptee and this is not just a Korean adoption issue – it is a global issue for all who are impacted by adoption. I stand with the Korean adoptees who are demanding President Moon apologise and meet with them to discuss how to better protect vulnerable children.
I am against the murder and abuse of any child who gets placed into an adoptive family.
I am also against any rhetoric that minimises what has happened and attempts to push the responsibility onto the child – as if they were the cause, not good enough, and needed to be “swapped out” to better suit the needs of the adoptive family.
It is time the governments of the world, who participate in, promote and look to the current plenary adoption system be upfront and realistic about the downsides this system creates.
My first argument is that the current plenary system of adoption does not respect the child’s rights and too easily becomes a commodity in a market for adoptive families to pick and chose the child of their choice. President Moon’s poorly chosen words simply reflect this reality. His words tell us what we already know: children are a commodity in today’s economy – matched theoretically to suit the needs of prospective parents, and not the other way around! If there were any semblance of equality in this system, we children would be able to more easily rid ourselves of adoptive families when we deem them equally unsuitable! But the reality is, we are children when adoption happens and like little Jeong-In, have no power or say in what happens to us. We are adopted into the family for life, our rights to our birth origins irrevocably denied, our adoption as Pascal Huynh writes, “is like an arranged child marriage”. The majority of the world somehow understands how unethical an arranged child marriage is, yet we still talk about plenary adoption as if it’s a child’s saviour.
Thanks to the recent publicity of Netra Sommer’s case, the public around the world have recently become aware of how hard it is for us adoptees to revoke our adoptions. It took Netra over 10 years to be able to undo her adoption! As for any equal rights in the current system, the mothers and fathers of loss get even less than us adoptees. They are discouraged from changing their minds if they no longer wish to relinquish their child, yet President Moon is publicly encouraging a process that allows adoptive / prospective parents to change theirs. This is the one sided nature of the adoption system!
Jeong-In’s death highlights some other core issues I have with the plenary adoption system:
The lack of long term followup, research or statistics on adoptees after the adoption and post placement period.
The selection and assessment of prospective parents by the adoption agency and their lack of accountability in their role.
The blind belief within the child welfare system, that an adoptive parent would never harm a child. But with all the indicators shown in this video of the recount by child care workers who tried multiple times to flag that things weren’t right for this child, no action was taken to suspect the adoptive parents of harming this child. This reflects the one sided view of first families who are demonised and seen as the only perpetrators of violence or abuse against their children. In contrast, adoptive parents are seen as saviours/rescuers but yet many adoptees will give evidence of the abuse that happens too often within adoptive families.
One has to wonder how such leniency and almost apparent empathy for the adoptive parents as expressed in President Moon’s words could not be equally applied to first families in Korea. In the large majority of cases, Korean women have to relinquish their children due to single motherhood status and the lack of supports – not because of any dark, violent, drug filled history.
I get angry each and every time a vulnerable child like little Jeong In-Yi gets mistreated and hurt by the very system that is meant to protect and support them. Let’s use this anger to demand change that is long overdue but also, let’s not forget Jeong-In herself for although she only remained on this planet for a short 16 months, she has impacted many of us!
The mothers of KUMFA have stood up and rallied to demand the agency involved, Holt Korea, be held accountable for their role in this death. The Korean adoptees around the world have created this campaign #notathing to demand the President of Korea meet with them to hear their voices. We need government to invite us to the table to discuss options other than plenary adoption.
I and other members of ICAV have shared about alternatives to plenary adoption but I question if Jeong-In would still be alive today if she had not been placed into the adoption system. The irony is no doubt she would have been much safer with her single unwed mother!
The shame is on Korea for not doing more as a first world nation to support mothers and children to remain together! The same is applied to any country, especially first world nations who have the resources yet continue to have their children adopted out via the plenary adoption system. In the USA there has been a very similar child murdered within adoptive family that mirrors Korea.
This is not a system I aspire to for vulnerable children of the future!
In Memory of Jeong-In, died 16 months old, Oct 2020
I want to end by honouring Jeong-In for the massive impact and legacy she has left behind. I hope she has not died in vain. I hope the extreme pain she must have endured was not for nought! I hope that each time an adoptee dies at the hands of their adoptive family, the world community will stand up and demand the we adoptees are #NotAThing and that more needs to be done to make our system safer and more aligned to the needs and rights of us – for whom it is all meant to be about! We are that vulnerable child grown up, who could not speak for themselves and needs our protection and our action!
Please consider signing the petition #NotAThingand find ways in which you can take action, to demand governments and authorities do more to make changes away from the current plenary adoption system to something far more respectful of adoptee and first family rights and needs.
I was stationed in Korea for eight years and have made more than a dozen trips to Korea since I left in 2007. During my last visit to Itaewon, I came across a small bronze statue of a girl sitting on a chair, next to an empty chair, located at the stoplight intersection closest to the US military base. I read the inscription on the plaque and learned that the statue of a young girl wearing a traditional hanbok with clenched fists commemorates the estimated 200,000 girls and women who were forced into prostitution to service the Japanese during WWII.
Currently, there are 40 comfort women statues erected in and outside of South Korea, located in the United States, Canada, Australia and China. The statue is a visible reminder of the abhorrent pain and suffering the Japanese brought upon so many lives. It’s believed that three-quarters of all comfort women have already died and those that survived, told unspeakable accounts of torture.
In recent years, many comfort women have been outspoken and demanded apologies and reparation for what they endured. In 1994, the Japanese government set up a public fund called the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) to provide compensation to the countries where the Japanese had occupied during the war and enslaved the women for sexual exploitation. In recent years, there has been a public outcry by the Korean citizens against the Japanese government for sweeping this gross violation under the rug. The Japanese government has never officially recognised nor apologised for the exploitation of women in this manner.
The original monument to former “comfort women” who served as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II — sits in Itaewon district as well as in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul
The Japanese could learn how to do the right thing from their WWII allies. The German government has apologized for their atrocities during WWII and they’ve erected a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The US government apologized five times to the American Japanese for their involvement in rounding up citizens and sending them to internment camps. Furthermore, the US House and Senate apologized for their wrongdoings to their own citizens, apologizing for slavery and the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the United States.
However, this story doesn’t end with the Japanese. I agree that the comfort women deserve both an apology and reparation for their pain and suffering. I believe this is the proper thing to do. But I want to point out the hypocrisy of the Korean government as they use the same tactics and verbiage of the Japanese government as to how they also deal with the issue of the 200,000 children displaced through intercountry adoption. Korean society ignores that adoptees suffer from adoption trauma as well as a moral injury. Many of my fellow adoptees can remember being forced on planes and sent into the arms of strangers. The psychological damage for many adoptees go beyond that one experience and the US Department of Health and Human Services study estimates the percentage of adopted people seen in mental health settings fall within the range of 5 to 12%, or 2.5 to 6 times the percentage of adopted children in the general population.
Adopted people are nearly four times more likely to attempt suicide, according to a study published in the online journal of Pediatrics. The Institute for Family Studies learned through their studies that adoptees are more likely to have difficulties through school and are four times more likely to repeat a grade and three times more likely to be expelled from school. The rosy outcomes promoted by pro-adoption groups in the US and elsewhere are very misleading. The media largely ignores the adoption stories that are about death, rape, abuse and neglect. Numerous adoptees have endured horrific lives, not unlike those of comfort women.
Like the comfort women, adoptees are being ignored by the same government that caused the initial pain and suffering. Adoptees are asking for honesty when their histories are being shared. They ask for honesty and transparency. It’s statistically impossible for all adoptees to have been abandoned and left on doorsteps of every police station in Seoul.
Adoptees have taken matters into their own hands and have become videographers, sharing their stories and showing the flaws in the records and the stories that were told to them. The truth may be that the records of children were switched at birth or exchanged with other children who had more favorable stories.
Adoptees are speaking out and want to be told the truth even if it means there is nothing in our files. The government programs providing assistance to adoptees are largely run by Korean Nationals and have little to no input from adoptees. How can the largest stakeholder have no voice in designing the programs that are meant to support them? Doesn’t it make sense for the Korean government to hire Korean adoptees to support fellow Korean adoptees?
The red tape and lies don’t stop here. Numerous Korean families have been outspoken because they were given lies and the run-around when they enquire to find their children sent abroad. Furthermore, the organizations supposedly providing support to Korean adoptees are largely tone deaf and not motivated to provide assistance. I met a Korean adoptee who was diagnosed with liver failure and when he turned up for assistance, he was given little to none and died a slow and painful death.
Sadly, that is not an isolated case. Adoptees who are stranded and deported to Korea have reached out to the Korean government for resources and support. They were met with a plethora of demands from the Korean government in order to obtain assistance. Individuals with possible learning difficulties or prior formal educational experience were expected to pass Korean language classes to receive benefits. The benefits given were not enough for these adoptees to meet their basic needs. These adoptees then turned to their adoptee peers to pay for basic necessities such as food and clothing. I know this from first hand experience.
I met an adoptee just prior to his death and I have worked with adoptee-led organizations who raise funds to support the deported adoptees in crisis in Korea. I have also met with adoptees who erected the statue in memory of murdered adoptee Hyunsu O’Callaghan. The reality is that the real work for adoptees still comes from fellow adoptees.
3 NOV 15 Korean Herold article stated: “Kang Tae-in, a representative of a group of Korean birth families, said it was untrue that most birth parents don’t want to be found. He said many members of his group have tried to search for their children, only to be insulted and lied to by adoption agencies”.
The Korean government imposes restrictions that make it hard for adoptees to find their biological families. Adoptees have been forced to resolve issues on their own. A group of Korean adoptees got together to start a non-governmental organization (NGO) called 325KAMRA, largely funded by Thomas Park Clement, a Korean adoptee sent to America. 325KAMRA was formed because there was no consolidated DNA database widely available for Korean adoptees around the world to search for their biological families. There are approximately 150,000+ Korean adoptees in America and 50,000+ Korean adoptees in Europe – many of them wish to find biological family in Korea.
The South Korean Police have a separate database that started in 2004 and it has been used largely for missing people. Adoptees can access this but only if their adoption paperwork states that they were not given up by their parents. According to a news article in 2013, this police database had 24,764 samples from “missing people (mainly people with intellectual disabilities at institutions) while only 1,732 family members of missing persons had registered their DNA in this database. As of 2013, since 2004 there had been only 236 cases of reunion (children under age 14 (110 cases) and disabled (112 cases)).
325Kamra has been extremely successful compared to the closed system established in Korea.
As of November 2018, 325KAMRA has enabled 70 adoptees to be re-connected with biological families through DNA matches, genetic genealogy and DNA detective work. Moreover, there have been at least 100 matches to close family members using autosomal DNA tests. That means 170 Korean adoptees have found biological family through the use of autosomal DNA tests in the last three years. This is 72% of what the Korean police database yielded in over a decade. To date, Thomas Park Clement and 325Kamra have distributed over 4,700 DNA kits to Korean adoptees – primarily in the United States, Europe and Korea.
3 NOV 15 Korean Herold article states: “According to the law, one can access their birth records without their birth parents’ permission only if the birth parent is dead or cannot be found, or the adoptee has a medical condition or other reason for doing so.”
I personally think the Korean government needs to be reminded of their own obligations. We should use the same tactics that have been used by the Korean government against the Japanese. We should erect statues by every comfort woman to remind them that another group of individuals is also being overlooked.
I recommend we erect a statue of a younger girl squatting on the ground in her hanbok crying. The girl is crying is because she is forcibly removed from her homeland and exported to a foreign country via intercountry adoption. It’s a girl because a larger percentage of adoptees sent out of Korea are females.
If we don’t speak out, then the Korean government will continue to reduce the support promised for adoptees. To date, the Korean government has already slashed operating expenses which funded adoptee programs – programs such as the travel exchange program that facilitated the return to homeland for adoptees. What also needs fixing is the loopholes in Korea’s legal system. For example the 2012 Adoption Law gives adoptees the right to petition for their birth records but the same request cannot be granted to biological parents wanting to search.
Korea can be a beacon for other countries involved in intercountry adoption but there is still much work that needs to be accomplished. It will require adoptees to speak up and petition the Korean government in order to make real changes. I pray we can accomplish this before all our parents pass away.
