Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption

232 Pages·2013·1.23 MB·English

by  Elise M. Prébin

Meeting Once More
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Meeting Once More
The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption
Elise Prébin
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2013 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prébin, Elise.
Meeting once more : the Korean side of transnational adoption / Elise Prébin.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-6026-0 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Intercountry adoption—Korea (South) 2. Interracial adoption—Korea (South)
3. Adoptees—Korea (South)—Identification. I. Title.
HV875.58.K6P74 2012
362.734095195—dc23
2012048181
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part I: Meeting the Birth Country
1. Shift in South Korean Policies toward Korean Adoptees, 21
1954–Today
2. Everyday Encounters 35
3. Holt International Summer School or Three-Week 52
Re-Koreanization, 1999–2004
4. Stratification and Homogeneity at the Korean 68
Broadcasting System, 2003
5. National Reunification and Family Meetings 87
Part II: Meeting the Birth Family
6. Stories behind History 103
7. Meetings’ Aftermaths 118
8. Evolving Relationship with My Birth Family 133
9. Management of Feelings 151
10. Meeting the Lost and the Dead 163
Conclusion 177
Notes 183
Bibliography 207
Index 219
About the Author 223
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Acknowledgments
This book is the happy outcome of twelve years I have spent equally in
France, South Korea, and the United States. For that reason, the list of people
I should thank is very long, and I can name only a few whose encourage-
ment, help, advice, presence, friendship, and love were instrumental in the
process of writing this book.
I thank my French family for being supportive during my studies and
rediscovery of Korea. My dissertation owes much to the expertise and affec-
tion of my professors Laurence Caillet, Raymond Jamous, and Alain Delis-
sen, to the fun years I spent at the University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre-MAE
and the EHESS, and to funding from the French Ministry of Education.
I thank my birth family, and in particular my paternal aunt, for giving me
so much time during my stays in South Korea. My research would not have
been possible without the goodwill of my many informants at Holt, KBS, and
elsewhere, and the advice from Professors Kim Eun-shil, Kim Song-nae, and
Song Doyoung. Fieldwork would have been more of a trying experience with-
out the warm presence of dear old friends who made me like South Korea: Lee
Soo-jeong, Chung Koomi, Yoon Heuiseung, Chung Minsun, and Lee Sijin.
I thank my husband, Mayu, for convincing me to publish my book in
English and for editing patiently the very rough first version. During the year
I spent at the Korea Institute, Harvard University, as a postdoctoral fellow
funded by the Korea Foundation and the year I served as a lecturer at Har-
vard’s Department of Anthropology, I had wonderful students and met with
many distinguished anthropologists and scholars of East Asia. Among them,
I thank Carter Eckert, David McCann, Michael Herzfeld, Ted Bestor, Nancy
Abelmann, Laurel Kendall, Ellen Schattschneider, Nan Kim-Paik, Samuel
Perry, Isabelle Sancho, Seunghun Lee, Jun Uchida, Kyoung-Mi Kwon, Se-Mi
Oh, Katherine Lee, Sarah Kashani, Paula Lee, Chan Park, David Chung, and
Ed Chang for reading parts of my manuscript, sharing teaching tips, inviting
me for guest lectures, and providing pleasant company in Cambridge or in
Seoul. Special thanks go to Susan Laurence and Myong Chandra who made
the Korea Institute feel like a second home.
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viii << Acknowledgments
I thank Tobias Hübinette, Eleana Kim, Elizabeth Raleigh, Hosu Kim, Kim
Park Nelson, Marianne Novy, Joyce Maguire Pavao, and Chris Winston for
their interest in my research and for including me in different events and
conferences relating to adoption.
I extend my gratitude to Alex Eichler and Nita Sembrowich for editing an
early version of this manuscript, to Jennifer Hammer and Alexia Traganas at
the NYU Press for their patient support and help, and to several anonymous
reviewers for their insightful comments.
I dedicate this book to my daughter, Anouk.
Introduction
In 1999, I returned to South Korea, my birth country, for the first time since
my adoption by a French family at age four. I was then twenty-one and a par-
ticipant in the Holt International Summer School, a three-week program for
international adoptees held every summer since 1991 by the adoption agency
Holt Children’s Services.1 That summer, I discovered a television show called
Ach’im madang: kŭ sarami pogosip’ta (Morning talk show: I want to see this
person again). At the beginning of my visit, Korean social workers played a
recorded tape of Ach’im madang in the living room of the Holt guesthouse,
where the group stayed. One scene in particular struck me: rebroadcast in
slow motion, a Korean mother was shown bursting into tears and rushing
toward her twenty-year-old son, who had been adopted in the United States.
The palpable tension of the moment was heightened by a tragic melody
played in the background, a song redolent of South Korean televised melo-
drama. That day, in the guesthouse, several adoptees in the audience started
weeping at this scene, having succumbed to unknown or unspeakable emo-
tions. After a few days, the social workers, having carried out searches based
on each adoptee’s adoption file, announced that some of us would be able to
meet our birth families: mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts, grand-
parents. Thanks to the videotape, participants knew how the first encoun-
ter would unfold. Social workers had clearly used the television program as
a pedagogical tool to prepare us for our potential meetings with our birth
families.
In the history of transnational adoption, the case of South Korea is
remarkable for many reasons. The Korean War (1950–1953) marked a
change in the care of children from temporary fostering of young war
orphans and refugees to definite adoptions into new, foreign fami-
lies (Marre and Briggs 2009, 8). Since then South Korea has sent abroad
approximately 200,000 children who now live mainly in the United States
and Europe. It was the number one sending country from 1980 to 1989,
number two in 1995, and still number four from 1998 to 2004 (Gutton
1993; Dorow 2006; Selman 2009). But rather than the number of children
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