Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption PDF
Preview Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption
Meeting Once More This page intentionally left blank 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 >> v This page intentionally left blank 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. >> vii 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 >> 1
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