Korea was very poor when the Korean War ended in 1953. It was the second poorest country in the world at that time. So, the government carried out overseas adoption for orphans and children dying of starvation as a national policy with the intention of keeping those children alive.

The government’s adoption policy is still going on without change. About 1,000 children are being adopted to foreign countries each year. Absolute poverty was the fundamental reason for adoption until the 1970s. Recently relative poverty, unequal earnings, social prejudice, and especially the fact that the unmarried mothers can’t raise their children, are the main reasons such adoption continues.

I have a 10-year-old connection with the adoption agency up to date, helping the agency while eating, sleeping and living together with children adopted in Korea. I have watched so many sad stories and experienced plenty of touching moments.

There are more various cases from which punishment of deportation to Korea resulted because of language barriers, disharmony with their adoptive parents, social maladjustment, and delinquency. The worst cases are severe assaults or killings, either by or of adoptive parents.

The Swedish government once released research saying that committed drug-related violence was 3-4 times more common among teenagers adopted from Korea, and their suicide rate was 2-3 times higher than average.

Arguing the pros and cons of overseas adoption is not the best way of finding a solution. Moreover post-adoption service will never be a panacea.

It is very important to keep track of what the United Nations is recommending to Korea by the Human Rights Report made through the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. They urge Korea to establish an independent government organization to regulate and supervise adoption and post-adoption services.

This should include making new laws regarding underground businesses such as Internet adoption. In order to implement this recommendation, we should focus on what the fundamental solution is and how to prevent the problem from getting worse than it is.

We need to continue to study what the main causes are. The statistics from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs was shocking to me. They show that number of adoptees from unmarried mothers has increased a lot. They show that 94 percent of domestic adoptees were from unmarried mothers. For overseas adoptees, the figure was 65 percent.

Based on this, it seems the main reason women give up their babies is related to poverty of unmarried mothers. Therefore policy makers should keep in mind the status and needs of unmarried mothers.

This poverty causes a vicious circle. I participated in the investigation of the status of the adopted and unmarried mothers, and post-adoption service while I was working at the adoption agency in Korea.

Often, unmarried mothers live in the adoption facilities to allow them to hide their pregnancies. There are 25 such facilities in Korea, of which 17 are run by the adoption agencies. The mothers can stay in there only if they promise to put their babies forward for adoption.

The greed of the adoption agencies plays a significant role in sustaining the problem by urging unmarried mothers who are in poverty to give up the custody of their children. While the adoption agencies receive a commission of $2,000 when they carry out the adoption to a domestic family, they can receive a commission close to $20,000 for an overseas adoption.

We should consider why Korean adoptee Dr. Tobias of Sweden strongly disagrees with overseas adoption, saying that overseas adoption is only a good business for adoption agencies. Sweden is still the second highest recipient country for Korean adoptees.

Research on overseas adoption should be conducted in the wide range category of poverty, the direction of solving the matter of adoption, and human rights. The plight of the adopted can be rectified at last only when the problems of unmarried mothers and poverty are solved.

My mentor Song Sang-Hyun, now president of the International Criminal Court, sent me his keynote address draft a few weeks ago. The main idea of his speech is that the cooperation between international justice and development could play a key role in strengthening poverty eradication programs in order to empower communities to eliminate poverty while keeping up with human rights, democracy, governance and justice.

By Park Hee-jung 

Heejung Park is an LL.M. student in law and entrepreneurship at Duke University School of Law and strategist of the President Office of the World Federation of United Nations Associations. He is the author of “Everyday Miracle,” “Social Freedom in South Korea,” and “Dreaming Social Entrepreneur” in Korean. ― Ed.