Korean Adoption and Inheritance

Korean Adoption and Inheritance
Author: Mark A. Peterson
Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1996
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN:

The cases in Korean adoption and inheritance reveal steps in the transition called "Confucianization" that took place mostly in the seventeenth century. The transition from partible inheritance, equally divided between sons and daughters, to primogeniture; the attempt to use soja as heirs; the movement toward agnatic adoption as the way to provide an heir when there were no children, or when there were only daughters born into the household are all covered in numerous cases from the official history, from government records, and from private documents.

International Korean Adoption

International Korean Adoption
Author: Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2013-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136441794

Discover the roots of international transracial adoption International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice explores the long history of international transracial adoption. Scholars present the expert multidisciplinary perspectives and up-to-date research on this most significant and longstanding form of international child welfare practice. Viewpoints and research are discussed from the academic disciplines of psychology, ethnic studies, sociology, social work, and anthropology. The chapters examine sociohistorical background, the forming of new families, reflections on Korean adoption, birth country perspectives, global perspectives, implications for practice, and archival, historical, and current resources on Korean adoption. International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice provides fresh insight into the origins, development, and institutionalization of Korean adoption. Through original research and personal accounts, this revealing text explores how Korean adoptees and their families fit into their family roles—and offers clear perspectives on adoption as child welfare practice. Global implications and politics, as well as the very personal experiences are examined in detail. This source is a one-of-a-kind look into the full spectrum of information pertaining to Korean adoption. Topics in International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice include: adoption from the Korean perspective historical origins of Korean adoption in the United States adjustments of young adult adoptees marketing to choosy adopters ethnic identity perspectives on the importance of race and culture in parenting birth mothers’ perspectives sociological approach to race and identity representations of adoptees in Korean popular culture adoption in Australia and the Netherlands much, much more International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice is illuminating reading for adoptees, adoptive parents, practitioners, educators, students, and any child welfare professional.

The Unknown Culture Club

The Unknown Culture Club
Author:
Publisher: Korean Adoptees Worldwide
Total Pages: 174
Release:
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN:

At last, after sixty years of adoption profiteering, these narratives paint a true portrait of adoption--from the back door--by those most affected. This collection, compiled by Korean adoptees, serves as a tribute to transracially adopted people sent all over the world. It has been hailed to be the first book to give Korean adoptees the opportunity to speak freely since the pioneering of intercountry adoption after the Korean War. If you were adopted, you are not alone. These stories validate the experiences of all those who have been ridiculed or outright abused but have found the will to survive, thrive, and share their tale. Adopted people all over the world are reclaiming the right to truth and access to birth documents. This book is a living testament on why previous "orphans" do not endorse the profitable Evangelical Orphan Movement. Those who work in the human rights field, whistleblowers, or adopted, will see the value of this book. After years of forced "positivity" led by the profiteers, it is time to be real. These are real stories from individuals no longer serving the adoption pioneers' fanciful wishes and advertising campaigns. Read this book before you pay adoption agency fees. These courageous narratives could save you tens of thousands of dollars or prevent you from obtaining a child unethically. Be the first to read these narratives and join the ever-expanding Adoption Truth and Transparency Worldwide Network. It's never too late to walk in awareness!

Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption

Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption
Author: Jessica Walton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-03-28
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1351132296

This book investigates the experiences of South Koreans adopted into Western families and the complexity of what it means to "feel identity" beyond what is written in official adoption files. Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption is based on ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea and interviews with adult Korean adoptees from the United States, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden. It seeks to probe beneath the surface of what is "known" and examines identity as an embodied process of making that which is "unknown" into something that can be meaningfully grasped and felt. Furthermore, drawing on the author’s own experiences as a transnational, transracial Korean adoptee, this book analyses the racial and cultural negotiations of "whiteness" and "Korean-ness" in the lives of adoptees and the blurriness which results in-between. Highlighting the role of memory and the body in the formation of identities, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Ethnicity Studies and Anthropology as well as Asian culture and society more generally.

From Orphan to Adoptee

From Orphan to Adoptee
Author: SooJin Pate
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2014-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452941033

Since the 1950s, more than 100,000 Korean children have been adopted by predominantly white Americans; they were orphans of the Korean War, or so the story went. But begin the story earlier, as SooJin Pate does, and what has long been viewed as humanitarian rescue reveals itself as an exercise in expanding American empire during the Cold War. Transnational adoption was virtually nonexistent in Korea until U.S. military intervention in the 1940s. Currently it generates $35 million in revenue—an economic miracle for South Korea and a social and political boon for the United States. Rather than focusing on the families “made whole” by these adoptions, this book identifies U.S. militarism as the condition by which displaced babies became orphans, some of whom were groomed into desirable adoptees, normalized for American audiences, and detached from their past and culture. Using archival research, film, and literary materials—including the cultural work of adoptees—Pate explores the various ways in which Korean children were employed by the U.S. nation-state to promote the myth of American exceptionalism, to expand U.S. empire during the burgeoning Cold War, and to solidify notions of the American family. In From Orphan to Adoptee we finally see how Korean adoption became the crucible in which technologies of the U.S. empire were invented and honed.

The Dance of Identities

The Dance of Identities
Author: John D. Palmer
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2010-10-04
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 082486087X

Korean adoptees have a difficult time relating to any of the racial identity models because they are people of color who often grew up in white homes and communities. Biracial and nonadopted people of color typically have at least one parent whom they can racially identify with, which may also allow them access to certain racialized groups. When Korean adoptees attempt to immerse into the Korean community, they feel uncomfortable and unwelcome because they are unfamiliar with Korean customs and language. The Dance of Identities looks at how Korean adoptees "dance," or engage, with their various identities (white, Korean, Korean adoptee, and those in between and beyond) and begin the journey toward self-discovery and empowerment. Throughout the author draws closely on his own experiences and those of thirty-eight other Korean adoptees, mainly from the U.S. Chapters are organized according to major themes that emerged from interviews with adoptees. "Wanting to be like White" examines assimilation into a White middle-class identity during childhood. Although their White identity may be challenged at times, for the most part adoptees feel accepted as "honorary" Whites among their families and friends. "Opening Pandora’s Box" discusses the shattering of adoptees’ early views on race and racism and the problems of being raised colorblind in a race-conscious society. "Engaging and Reflecting" is filled with adoptee voices as they discover their racial and transracial identities as young adults. During this stage many engage in activities that they believe make more culturally Korean, such as joining Korean churches and Korean student associations in college. "Questioning What I Have Done" delves into the issues that arise when Korean adoptees explore their multiple identities and the possible effects on relationships with parents and spouses. In "Empowering Identities" the author explores how adoptees are able to take control of their racial and transracial identities by reaching out to parents, prospective parents, and adoption agencies and by educating Korean and Korean Americans about their lives. The final chapter, "Linking the Dance of Identities Theory to Life Experiences," reiterates for adoptees, parents, adoption agencies, and social justice activists and educators the need for identity journeys and the empowered identities that can result. The Dance of Identities is an honest look at the complex nature of race and how we can begin to address race and racism from a fresh perspective. It will be well received by not only members of the Korean adoption community and transracial parents, but also Asian American scholars, educators, and social workers.

Meeting Once More

Meeting Once More
Author: Elise M. Prébin
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2013-05-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814760856

Examines the impact of adoptees on their birth country and birth families A great mobilization began in South Korea in the 1990s: adult transnational adoptees began to return to their birth country and meet for the first time with their birth parents—sometimes in televised encounters which garnered high ratings. What makes the case of South Korea remarkable is the sheer scale of the activity that has taken place around the adult adoptees' return, and by extension the national significance that has been accorded to these family meetings. Informed by the author’s own experience as an adoptee and two years of ethnographic research in Seoul, as well as an analysis of the popular television program "I Want to See This Person Again," which reunites families, Meeting Once More sheds light on an understudied aspect of transnational adoption: the impact of adoptees on their birth country, and especially on their birth families. The volume offers a complex and fascinating contribution to the study of new kinship models, migration, and the anthropology of media, as well as to the study of South Korea.

Disrupting Kinship

Disrupting Kinship
Author: Kimberly D. McKee
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-03-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252051122

Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two-thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families and in the process forged a new kind of transnational and transracial kinship. Kimberly D. McKee examines the growth of the neocolonial, multi-million-dollar global industry that shaped these families—a system she identifies as the transnational adoption industrial complex. As she shows, an alliance of the South Korean welfare state, orphanages, adoption agencies, and American immigration laws powered transnational adoption between the two countries. Adoption became a tool to supplement an inadequate social safety net for South Korea's unwed mothers and low-income families. At the same time, it commodified children, building a market that allowed Americans to create families at the expense of loving, biological ties between Koreans. McKee also looks at how Christian Americanism, South Korean welfare policy, and other facets of adoption interact with and disrupt American perceptions of nation, citizenship, belonging, family, and ethnic identity.