- Headline: "Expansion of Facilities for Underprivileged Children"
- Source: Chosun Ilbo
- Date of Publication: July 15, 1976
- Summary:
On the 14th, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs finalized its "Measures for the Proper Upbringing of Underprivileged Children" and presented it at an economic ministers’ meeting. The core directive focuses on promoting domestic adoptions while significantly reducing overseas adoptions. To support this effort, the government plans to expand the number of social welfare centers in industrial zones from the current nine to eighteen. These centers will provide counseling for unwed mothers, educational lectures, and guidance on constructive leisure activities. Each new welfare center will be built on a 70-pyeong (approximately 2,480 sq. ft.) scale, featuring a 20-pyeong (710 sq. ft.) counseling room and a 50-pyeong (1,770 sq. ft.) auditorium. Additionally, two counselors will be stationed at each center. To strengthen operations, the government will grant official status and salary guarantees to 273 current volunteer instructors, reclassifying them as temporary government employees at civil service levels 3 or 4. In the 1970s, adoption agencies actively propagated the narrative that industrial zones were producing a growing number of unwed mothers. As a result, counseling centers for unwed mothers were increasingly established in areas surrounding these industrial complexes. Given the government's agenda to promote domestic adoption, it is likely that infants born to unwed mothers, identified through these factory-adjacent counseling centers, were systematically absorbed into the domestic adoption system.
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