[Book review] Why did Americans adopt S. Korean children in such astonishing numbers?

Posted on : 2019-06-12 14:59 KST Modified on : 2019-06-12 14:59 KST
Professor Arissa Oh’s new book explores the political and economic factors behind mass adoption
"To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption" by Arissa H. Oh

From shortly after the Korean War until the present day, 200,000 Korean children have been adopted in other countries, with more than 110,000 of those children going to the United States. Until 1995, Americans adopted more children from South Korea than from any other country. (Since then, the most children have been adopted from China.) Korean children account for a majority of children adopted in the US. In the book "To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption"(“Why Did Those Children Have to Leave Korea? in Korean version)” Arissa H. Oh, an associate professor of history at Boston College, conducts a historical investigation of the forces and pressures in South Korean and American society and the international political context that made South Korea “the world’s number-one exporter of children.” Her book also examines the impact that adoption has had on South Korea and American society.

Korean children landing on US soil in 1950. (provided by the National Archives)
Korean children landing on US soil in 1950. (provided by the National Archives)

Oh’s motivation for studying the South Korean origins of adoption is tied to what she calls the “overseas adoption complex,” which consists of adoption agencies, adoption procedures, adoption standards, related laws, and methods of transportation. The overseas adoption complex, Oh believes, took root in South Korea after the Korean War and then spread to Vietnam and Central and South America in the 1970s, to India in the 1980s, and to Romania, Russia, and China in the 1990s. The propagation of the state-to-state adoption practices and systems that were created by South Korea and the US gave birth to a global industry that today is worth billions of dollars, Oh argues.

The plight of children in South Korea after the Korean War stimulated Americans’ imagination. Those pitiful children had to be “rescued.” “Photographs and articles of children in ‘Life’ and other popular magazines stimulated the compassion of Americans and prompted a flood of donations,” Oh writes. The American military also provided a lot of support, with its military units often adopting a Korean boy to serve as their “mascot.” These mascots were the first examples of adoption.

Korean orphans were divided between “pure” Korean children and biracial children, the children of American soldiers and Korean women, also known as “GI babies.” Korean society stigmatized GI babies as the “children of prostitutes” and regarded them as “threatening the purity of the Korean race.” There was no place for these biracial children, either legally or socially. “Overseas adoption began as a way to dispose of the biracial children who had been fathered by American soldiers,” Oh writes. The South Korean government and other organizations explored ways to create a state-to-state adoption system. The campaign to adopt Korean children, the author explains, was driven by the US’ “Christian democracy,” which combines faith and patriotism. “The story of the adoption of Korean orphans illustrates how the geopolitics of the Cold War became both a domestic issue and a household issue in such a profound way.”

Korean adoptees engage in handicrafts with South Korean students in a middle school in Seoul in 2009. (Hankyoreh archives)
Korean adoptees engage in handicrafts with South Korean students in a middle school in Seoul in 2009. (Hankyoreh archives)

Harry Holt: the “father of the overseas adoption industry”

A monumental figure in this movement was Harry Holt (1905–1964). “Holt saw adopting Korean GI babies as a sort of missionary endeavor, as well as a way to aid his country in the Cold War by demonstrating the US’ racial tolerance and to gain the loyalty of newly independent countries around the world.” Holt took an innovative approach to adoption. First, he invented the idea of adoption by proxy, by which the adoptive parents didn’t even have to visit South Korea. Second, he transported the children in big groups on chartered planes. This accelerated the adoption process and reduced its cost. “In a certain sense, Holt can be regarded as the father of the overseas adoption industry.”

 an assistant professor of history at Boston College. (provided by Koroot)
an assistant professor of history at Boston College. (provided by Koroot)

In South Korea, overseas adoption became a method of resolving the issue of inadequate welfare for those in poverty, abandoned children, and single mothers by sending Korean children overseas. Many children were shipped off to the US “in the guise of orphans,” even when they were known to have parents. This was also a business that earned the government foreign currency. The Korean adoptees represented an issue that American society had to wrestle with. “Answering the question of what Korean children symbolized had a major impact on how Americans defined race, nationality, citizenship, and family.”

The most interesting parts of this book are its description of the motivation for why Americans adopted Korean children and what impact Korean children had on American society. In South Korea, sending biracial children and the children of single mothers overseas served to strengthen patriarchal ethno-nationalism, but in the US, Korean children moved the narrative about race and the family in a more tolerant direction.

Arissa H. Oh (Oh Hyeon-jeong)
Arissa H. Oh (Oh Hyeon-jeong)

“Overseas adoption, which still continues in the present day, makes Koreans think about what it means to be Korean, who can be regarded as Korean, and why it’s important to answer these questions. I hope that this book will be a catalyst for raising these questions,” Oh said in the preface to the Korean edition of this book, which was originally published in the US under the title, “To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption.”

By Hwang Sang-cheol, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

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