Author: JaeRan

Assistant professor at UW Tacoma, writer, and researcher.

3 thoughts

  1. I’m a little alarmed by this video – doesn’t it seem to imply that some of the signatories may not have understood what they were signing?
    Also, I don’t understand how exactly banning international adoption will directly help mothers in any way.
    Surely the first step is to campaign for specific new measures aimed at supporting mothers? If this is successfull then no ban on international adoption would be required, as the shortage of infants available for adoption would likely result in US agencies diverting their attentions elsewhere.

  2. 1. What is their goal? To prevent kids given up for adoption being adopted overseas? How does that relate to Human Rights? Are these human kids suffering SPECIFICALLY because they are being adopted overseas? I’d say it has more to do with Korean pride, and trying to keep the culture “pure” so to speak. Ask any Korean parent whether they want their children to marry a Korean or foreigner. It is most likely that they want to “keep it in the family”. But that’s to be expected w/ any proud culture, not just Koreans. The ironic thing is that most Korean parents (not Korean-Americans) I know WANT to send their kids to America.
    2. Don’t want kids to be adopted overseas? Then stop giving them up for adoption. Of course, this won’t happen due to the westernization of today’s Korean culture. It’s likely that more kids will be put up for adoption as cheating and divorce become more widely spread, and children from previous marriages become symbols of disgrace to the new marriages.
    3. “…in hope that no Korean woman ever has to go through what they went through.” I wish they were more clear on what exactly they went through. By no means is giving your kid up for adoption an easy thing on mothers, but when you come to that point…wish the best for them, but it’s out of your hands from then on. What “right” do you have anymore with the child?
    4. One thing I can agree w/ them is their push for the betterment of orphans and orphanages. The more attention and funding the better. I’m still looking for concrete proof on this, but I’ve been told that Korean media aren’t allowed to cover orphanage events because it’ll reflect poorly on the nation as a whole. If only they would get more publicity so that people can be more aware of the situation. Scholarships and other programs to help these children succeed in life would be awesome. There’s a lot of smart and talented kids to be found in orphanages.
    5. Sorry to sound so critical, but I just find it hard to agree to the message of this video. It is much to easy to agree to a cause, sign your name on a petition and go about your business, than to actually DO something concrete to address the deeper issue of why these kids are being put up for adoption in the first place.
    6. Looks like the English site is fairly new, and doesn’t have much info. So I’ll have to check it out when they update it w/ more detail.
    7. “Getting signatures has been fairly easy since most Koreans on the street also want to end intercountry adoption…which makes it possible for even adopted Koreans who don’t speak Korean well to help out.”
    …lol, huh?

Leave a Reply to Andy Cancel reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s