Last whirlwind days

The last two days of the trip were a whirlwind and now we are home. We talked with journalists (see the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network on Facebook for links to potential resulting articles), legislators, researchers and service providers. We visited the Hambumo Center for single and unwed parents located in one of the Seoul Healthy Family Centers and learned about their work and shared ideas about working with moms and their children.

One of the remarkable aspects of our conversations in the last few days and really all week, was the discussion of unwed fathers. When we started this work, the entire focus was on the moms. If we mentioned fathers, everyone said sure they exist, but no one will focus on their responsibility. Here we are just a couple of years later and many times this week, in many different settings, people wanted to talk about the responsibilities of unwed fathers, the fathers of unwed mother’s children. There are a number of efforts under way to submit legislation that would require fathers to pay child support. It is clear that the invisibility of unwed fathers is not going to last much longer.

Looking back on the trip, we have a sense of accomplishment. In the last year the government has increased funding for younger unwed mothers. The number of newspaper articles and television reports on the moms has increased dramatically. The national government and some provincial governments are funding programs and research on unwed moms and their children. One of three panels at the IKAA adoption research symposium was devoted to mothers who relinquish and those who don’t. We participated in two strong forums addressing the needs of unwed moms outside of Seoul, in Jeju and Gyeonggi-do. And we hosted the first meeting between unwed mothers and single mothers associations. We met with Professor Smolin and heard his talk at the IKAA symposium. And there was so much more. Wow!

We are celebrating how quickly things change in Korea and how strong the unwed moms are becoming. Their voice is getting every stronger and they speaking out in more forums then every before. At the same time, we are sobered by their suffering and the continued prejudice and discrimination they experience. While the government has increased some kinds of funding for younger moms, most moms continue to struggle with housing and financial needs. There is much more to be done.

Research Symposium of the International Korean Adoptees Associations - IKAA

Today we spent the whole day at IKAA'a research symposium. This was the first day of IKAA's gathering in Seoul. Of particular interest was the first panel that addressed the situation and concerns of unwed moms. Research was presented about the history of discrimination against women in Korea and the changes over the years to recognize women’s equality in Korean law. However it was pointed out that while laws can change, it is much harder to change social practices and there remains a big gap in the salaries between men and women, and in their roles in society.

Han Boon Young and Yang Min-Ok presented their research on the counseling received by pregnant unwed moms in facilities. For the moms who stayed in facilities run by adoption agencies, the research found that these moms received counseling that urged them to relinquish their children, for their own sakes and for the baby to have a better life. They also reported stories of agencies adopting out babies without proper consent or within a shorter time frame then was promised. These moms had to fight to get their children back. Overall it was a sobering look at current practices and certainly highlights the conflict of interest between the adoption side of an agency and the side that serves pregnant women.

Given our interest in unwed moms, the highlight for us of the afternoon sessions was a presentation by Professor Smolin, whom we had met earlier in the week. He gave a good overview of the current situation in international adoptions world -wide. His focus is on unethical adoptions, for the purpose of improving the systems so that all international adoptions, and really ALL adoptions are conducted within the parameters of international conventions and laws. He discussed the ways that children are ‘laundered” after being acquired by force, financially or via fraud. In some cases children are kidnapped, in some cases families are offered what seems to them like large sums of money at a time when they are very poor and struggling to feed themselves, and sometimes families are told their children will be in school or it will be just a temporary separation to help them out. These children are then given papers with some other story which presents them as orphans, and adopted to other countries. He discussed what he is beginning to understand about the Korean system, in terms of the tremendous pressure put on women to either have an abortion or relinquish their children, and the closed system of domestic adoption. He ended with a call for Korean adoptees to work to expose the unethical and possibly illegal practices of Korean adoption agencies, both in Korea and in their home countries, in particular with the adoption agencies in their home countries.

Overall, we learned a great deal about not only the areas of concern to us, but also about issues related to language, the struggle of adoptees who now live in Korea after growing up elsewhere, and aspects of artistic expressions that reflect the challenged identities and emerging reflections of adoptees who grew up in other countries, in primarily white families and cultures.