A mother’s 40-year search for a child she never sent away.
Since the 1950s, over 200,000 children have been adopted from Korea, making Korean adoptees the largest population of adult adoptees in the world. While partially attributable to the high numbers of orphans, and extreme poverty resulting from the Korean War, the main causes of adoption in proceeding decades has been the result of discriminatory governmental policies and negative social attitudes towards single mothers.
In 1975, Shin Kyounghee divorced her then, abusive and violent husband. Due to a Korean law at the time that stated children were the legal property of their fathers, her husband was given full custody over their 2-year-old daughter, Sang-ah. Over the next couple years, Kyounghee’s husband and new wife would not allow her to see Sang-ah. Family members consoled her, saying that there was nothing she could do. Meanwhile, she did her best to start a new life; she found a caring husband and had two more daughters. In 1980, Kyounghee discovered that her daughter Sang-ah had been sent overseas for adoption. She pleaded with adoption agencies for information on her daughter’s whereabouts but they told her the files had been sealed.
Over thirty years later, and much has remained unchanged. Single women are not recognized by society, and often encouraged to give their children up for adoption.
Lee Seulbee, 34, is a single mother living in Korea. When she had her son, Doyoon, she was 30-years-old. She knew she was prepared, and capable of raising a child, but pressure from family, friends and coworkers made the decision harder than she had expected. Somehow she found the courage to stand up to their criticisms and make the decision that felt right for her and her son.
Despite the fact that the Korean government and adoption agencies have played a known role in forcefully separating Korean families, there are no policies to address the nearly half a million birth families actively searching for their loved ones. For half a century, the exodus of thousands of children from Korea has not only marked the lives adoptees, but has fractured hundreds of thousands of families, some of whom had little to no choice in the matter. Paving the way for the future means not only supporting single mothers raising their children in Korea now, but giving a voice to those women and families whose children were sent away.
Since the 1950s, over 200,000 children have been adopted from Korea, making Korean adoptees the largest population of adult adoptees in the world. While partially attributable to the high numbers of orphans, and extreme poverty resulting from the Korean War, the main causes of adoption in proceeding decades has been the result of discriminatory governmental policies and negative social attitudes towards single mothers.
In 1975, Shin Kyounghee divorced her then, abusive and violent husband. Due to a Korean law at the time that stated children were the legal property of their fathers, her husband was given full custody over their 2-year-old daughter, Sang-ah. Over the next couple years, Kyounghee’s husband and new wife would not allow her to see Sang-ah. Family members consoled her, saying that there was nothing she could do. Meanwhile, she did her best to start a new life; she found a caring husband and had two more daughters. In 1980, Kyounghee discovered that her daughter Sang-ah had been sent overseas for adoption. She pleaded with adoption agencies for information on her daughter’s whereabouts but they told her the files had been sealed.
Over thirty years later, and much has remained unchanged. Single women are not recognized by society, and often encouraged to give their children up for adoption.
Lee Seulbee, 34, is a single mother living in Korea. When she had her son, Doyoon, she was 30-years-old. She knew she was prepared, and capable of raising a child, but pressure from family, friends and coworkers made the decision harder than she had expected. Somehow she found the courage to stand up to their criticisms and make the decision that felt right for her and her son.
Despite the fact that the Korean government and adoption agencies have played a known role in forcefully separating Korean families, there are no policies to address the nearly half a million birth families actively searching for their loved ones. For half a century, the exodus of thousands of children from Korea has not only marked the lives adoptees, but has fractured hundreds of thousands of families, some of whom had little to no choice in the matter. Paving the way for the future means not only supporting single mothers raising their children in Korea now, but giving a voice to those women and families whose children were sent away.