genealogies of korean adoption

296 Pages·2010·5.83 MB·English

GENEALOGIES OF KOREAN ADOPTION:
AMERICAN EMPIRE, MILITARIZATION, AND YELLOW DESIRE

A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY

SOOJIN PATE

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Roderick A. Ferguson, Advisor
Jigna Desai, Co-Advisor

MAY 2010
Copyright © 2010 by SooJin Pate
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The morning of my graduation, my two-year old daughter asked me, “You
graduate to become a doctor?” “Yep,” I replied. She paused to think. Then she said, “I
become a doctor, too, someday.” I have no doubt that she will. And she’ll probably do it
in half the time it took me. If she does decide to get her Ph.D., I hope that she has the
same circle of support I had to help her reach her goal. I want to acknowledge and thank
those who inspired, supported, and nourished me along the way so that I could reach this
pivotal milestone.
First, I want to thank the members of my two dissertation writing groups: Harrod
Suarez and Sonjia Hyon, who dedicated their time and energy to make our writing group
productive and active despite our long distance from each other; and Alex Mendoza and
Kandace Creel Falcon from the Kitchen Table Collective, a writing group for women of
color. They read draft after draft of my chapters and were there every time I needed to
think through an idea or test out an argument. The extremely insightful and critical
feedback I received from these four colleagues undoubtedly made my dissertation
stronger.
During my tenure at the University of Minnesota, I couldn’t have asked for more
dedicated and nurturing faculty members. I especially want to thank Jigna Desai, Erika
Lee, and Josephine Lee for being excellent role models in showing me how to negotiate
the demands of family life with the rigors of academic pursuit. These three
scholar/teacher/mothers have demonstrated to me that motherhood can actually make one
a better teacher and scholar. I am so grateful to have had such wonderful examples in my
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midst. In addition, I want to thank Elaine Tyler May, John Wright, Cathy Choy, Njeri
Githirie, Malinda Lindquist, and Riv-Ellen Prell for their support and assistance
throughout the years. I especially want to thank Kevin Murphy who, as the Director of
Graduate Studies, has been a constant advocate and supporter of my work. His
dedication to helping and encouraging graduate students to finish and complete their
degree is truly admirable.
I feel blessed to have such a wonderful dissertation committee. I especially want
to thank Roderick Ferguson and Jigna Desai for being an exceptional team of advisors.
They both pushed me and challenged me at just the right times and in just the right ways.
I owe to their thoughtful engagement and brilliant guidance the freshness of my project,
the rigorousness of my critiques, and the significance of my intellectual contributions. I
also want to thank Erika Lee, Josephine Lee, and Keith Mayes for their thoughtful
questions and sharp insights, as well as their excitement regarding my work. Their
suggested revisions helped me to clarify my arguments and major interventions.
Several fellowships funded the research and writing of this dissertation. The
Leonard Memorial Film Study Fellowship and the Thesis Research Grant that I received
from the Graduate School, as well as the Scholarly Research Grant from the Department
of American Studies enabled research travel. The year-long Leonard Memorial Film
Study Fellowship was particularly valuable as it provided me with not only the resources
to conduct research at various archives but also the time to examine and analyze the
materials I collected. Towards the later stages of my project, a Summer Dissertation
Writing grant from the Department of American Studies and the Doctoral Dissertation
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Fellowship from the Graduate School facilitated the completion my dissertation, as they
provided me with invaluable time to write and revise. I am grateful to the various
selection committees who chose to fund my project.
I want to thank David Klassen and Linnea Anderson for their assistance and
guidance in helping me navigate the Social Welfare History Archives at Anderson
Library at the University of Minnesota. In addition, I want to thank International Social
Service: United States of America Branch, Inc. (ISS-USA) for allowing me to use their
records for my research. I also want to thank the staff at the National Archives in College
Park, particularly those working in the Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records
division and the Textual Archives Services Division, for their assistance in helping me
locate materials. And I am grateful to all the various organizations and artists who
generously granted me permission to reproduce their work. I especially want to thank
Yong Soon Min, Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine, Jenifer Stepp at Stars and Stripes, Bill
Brewington at Paramount News, and Brian Campbell at Holt International Children’s
Services. I also want to thank Jane Jeong Trenka, Katie Hae Ryun Leo, and Katie Vang
for their support.
I want to acknowledge some of my friends and family who have not only
sustained me throughout these years but have also brought great meaning to my life and
work. I want to thank Krystal Banfield, Nalo Johnson, and Caren Umbarger for asking
me about my work and cheer-leading me on to finish. I especially want to thank my
sister Abby, May Fu, and Sun Mee Chomet. To Abby: Thank you for your generosity,
persistence, and thoughtfulness. I so appreciate all the support you’ve given me
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throughout the years. To May: Thank you for your steadfast love, your laughter, and
your uncompromising spirit. You inspire me to be a better teacher, scholar, and friend. I
am so honored and grateful to have you in my life. To Sun Mee: I thank you for your
fierce dedication to our friendship, for being unwavering in moments of crisis, and for the
numerous lunch dates that not only fed my stomach but also fed my soul.
Finally, I want to thank my partner Alexs and my daughter Sxela. To Alexs: your
unceasing and unconditional support has been my sustenance throughout this journey.
Your love has given me the courage and confidence to complete this project. Thank you
for all those late night discussions, for the numerous brainstorming sessions we had
during walks around Lake Calhoun, and for cooking me dinner so I could keep on
working through the night. I could not have asked for a more patient and kind
intellectual partner. You’re creative brilliance and artistic courage continue to awe and
inspire me. Thank you for choosing to be with me and for helping me carve out time and
space during the final stages so that I could finish my work. To Sxela: your very
presence in my life has inspired me in ways unimaginable. I thank you for making me a
better teacher, scholar, writer, and mother. You motivated me to finish what I started.

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Dedicated to my daughter Sxela
and to Korean adoptees around the world
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ABSTRACT

This dissertation traces genealogies of Korean adoption that disrupt the dominant
narrative of Korean adoption as a) a humanitarian rescue project and b) a reproduction of
white heteronormative kinship in order to track the subject formation of the Korean
orphan and adoptee. It does so by situating the emergence of Korean adoption neither in
the Korean War (1950-1953) nor in the postwar recovery efforts of the U.S. but within
the context of U.S. military occupation of the southern portion of Korea that began in
1945—five years prior to the Korean War and ten years before the “official” beginning of
Korean adoption. In so doing, I argue that the figures of the Korean orphan and adoptee
have defined neocolonial relations between the U.S. and Korea, as well as fostered white
heteronormative constructions of the American family and nation.
In Chapter One, I link the development of U.S. neocolonialism in South Korea to
the neocolonial practice of Korean adoption by demonstrating how U.S. militarism and
its policies of militarized humanitarianism became the precursors to this form of child
welfare. I suggest that the Korean orphan ushered the arrival of what I call “American
humanitarianism empire,” which enabled the U.S. to promote the myth of American
exceptionalism while, at the same time, participate in imperial activities in the newly
decolonized Korea. In Chapter Two, I argue that the discursive practice of, what I call,
“yellow desire” facilitated the inclusion of Korean orphans into the U.S. domestic and
national family. Informed by the 1950s Cold War Orientalist policies of racial
integration, yellow desire runs on the logic that differences can be absorbed through
assimilation. I contend that yellow desire is what compelled average white Americans to
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adopt Korean children during the era of Asian exclusion. In Chapter Three, I examine
the process in which orphans became adoptees. As an institution of discipline and
normalization, the orphanage as a “processing station” prepared the child to be
incorporated into the white American home. It became the site where Korea’s social
outcasts were shaped into useful subjects for the state: economically profitable for Korea
and politically beneficial for the U.S. In this way, Korean adoption can be regarded as a
civilizing project of modernity that ensures its success as a racially integrative project.
Finally, in Chapter Four, I argue that the figure of the Korean adoptee—upon entrance
into her new American family—documents the excesses, limits, and contradictions of
Korean adoption as a project of empire and as a project of white normativity. Even
though the adoptee is disciplined in the orphanage to seamlessly assimilate into her new
adoptive family, the very presence of the adoptee’s body within the adoptive family
disrupts the semblance of the all-American (read white) nuclear family. As a result, the
adoptee’s presence exposes the nonnormative, queer dimensions of Korean adoption.
Understanding the figures of the orphan and adoptee as geopolitical and
socioeconomic constructions is significant because it not only denaturalizes Korean
adoption but also illuminates the pivotal roles they played in building and preserving
neocolonial relations between the U.S. and Korea. The dominant narrative of Korean
adoption that depicts it as a “humanitarian project” or “rescue mission,” however, makes
illegible the material conditions that produced it. By reorienting Korean adoption as a
project of empire, I make legible the material conditions of U.S. military intervention and
occupation, war, neocolonialism, and militarized humanitarianism—the very conditions
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that enabled the emergence and persistence of Korean adoption, as well as the subject
formations of the orphan and adoptee.
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