- Author: Kim, Chae-min
- Title: A Study on the Overseas Adoption Policy in South Korea - analysing the relevant data in the national archives and press release
- Language: Korean
- Type: PhD Thesis
- Publication Year: 2016
- Publisher: Sungkonghoe University, Sociology
■ Abstract This thesis aims to clarify that in South Korea it is the state that has functioned as a key agent to develop the overseas adoption phenomenon. This thesis will examine tendencies in the national policies grounded in the change of forms of the overseas adoption, so that it will suggest the radical reformation of the governmental logic to enhance rights of social minority.
In its history, South Korea has delivered more than 200,000 Korean adoptees overseas since its establishment. In its initial time, the South Korean government was required to make a legal measure for the adoption which were not to be indicated in its Civil Code. Since then South Korea have had various and different versions of the overseas adoption policy. It can be said that its adoption policy should be with the concern to the priority of children’s rights. What is the problem, however, is the fact that the ‘adoption’ has been tactically mobilized to sustain the stabilization of the state control over the people.
The adoption should aim precisely for development of the welfare condition for a child requiring protection. Unlike to this aim, the adoption in South Korea was used to make reduction in social costs and to incorporate some marginalized people to the membership of a ‘normal’ family.
After the Korean War, the overseas adoption began in full scale with the actual purpose to ‘solve’ some difficulty related to the presence of the half-blood children. It was applied to some ‘abnormal’ families(e. g. a single mother or separated parents). In this sense, it seems that the adoption policy in South Korea was not designed for the poor but to exclude some social identities who had been incompatible with social norms and reality the state pursued at that time. In other words, in South Korean the adoption policy functioned as a means of the state’s control over the people rather than fulfilling its task for helping children requiring protection.
This thesis suggests some crucial questions on the direction of the change in the legal system of the overseas adoption and in the socio-economic condition and social attitudes on it in order to analyze ‘the making of the social minorities’ in South Korea.
1. In South Korea, was the overseas adoption in its initial period designed as emergency relief for the war orphans and half-blood children designated? 2. Can we say that the overseas adoption in its industrialization period has been considered as a sort of the child welfare programmes as such in a developing country in general? 3. Can we say that the policy switch to promote the domestic adoption was adopted as the best alternative to guarantee the rights of children requiring protection?
To deal with those questions, this thesis divides three periods in the overseas adoption in South Korea and analyzes the national archives and the press release on the issue. In the first period, the first legal measure to legitimize the overseas adoption was prepared in 1961, which was the Special Application for Adoption of Orphans Act. This act was required to define a legal basis on the war orphans and the half-blood children. In the second period, in 1975, this Act was replaced by the New Special Adoption Act. In the last period, the New Special Adoption Act was entirely revised in 1995 and 2011 in order to consolidate the child welfare and rights by priority. It can be said that there has been a radical change in the main purpose of the adoption from the family succession to the concern on the child rights. Nevertheless the government’s attitude on the adoption has many serious problems. Basically the adoption should be concerned as the last alternative, but still the government tend to mobilize the adoption as an effective programme for the welfare of the children requiring protection. The approach on the domestic adoption to solve problems in the overseas adoption is not an actual solution to enhance the current reality of the children requiring protection that have been depended on the overseas adoption. Thus, the government’s adoption policy should resume at a new position promoting the better conditions of the child rights including establishing preparing some necessary social backgrounds to sustain such conditions.
In general, adoption has a positive purpose of the protection of the child. In South Korea, the adoption tendency tends gradually to highlight the child welfare. Its structure, however, still includes some negative – incurring human rights violation – components which prevents children from living with their biological family. In addition, by creating ‘a moving story’ on adoption in society, it has produced a humanitarian relief discourse articulated with adoption. As a result, this discourse implies discriminative elements categorizing people by the state, and consolidates the specific social structure engendering social minorities. As far as some people categorized and selected by the government became the reality of the overseas adoptees, this mechanism functioned as a means to reproduce social minorities.
The structure of the overseas adoption and its change show that the state/government has played a key role of the agent actively producing social minorities. This study tries to reveal that overseas adoption is entirely not a proper solution for the children requiring protections and their biological parents in difficulty. Since its initial period, the state has unloaded its responsibility of the protection of its citizen to private sectors so that there have been many social minorities suffering by social discrimination and prejudice produced. In the post-wartime period between the 1950s and the 1960s, the state put priority and privilege to the economic growth and national security in the sense of the statist and totalitarian values rather than actual protection of the citizen’s rights. Nowadays, it has no ability or will to accommodate any ‘leftover’ of a human standard while it is faced with the low birthrate and aging society. Examining the change in the oversea adoption phenomena, we can find some possibility to enhance the human right awareness and, as a result, to organize changes in the social structure and to make a change for reforming the government’s policy on the overseas adoption.
In order to achieve to a society advocating the rights of social minorities, it is necessary to make a effective change in the national policy in general. Some basic principles are entirely required both to protect the current value of the national integration and to guarantee the basic human rights under the gravity of the radically changing world order. Different to the old perspective under the strong leadership of the state, it is vital to expand the perspective of human rights to the level of the global citizenship. We need to reflect on our thoughts of human rights, specifically of the desirable alternative for the children and their biological parents. Social minorities are susceptible to the state policy, and the realization of equalization of all human beings including social minorities relies on the ideologies and the philosophy a society believes. As we see from the structure of the overseas adoption, the radical improvement of the condition for the rights of social minorities will start by establishing new criteria of the democratic management of the state beyond a humanitarian perspective.
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