about

i was in the second airplane coming from south korea to be adopted to belgium, back in the late 60s.

i didn’t know that about 5 000 other will do the same journey for about 2 decades in my adoptive country. i didn’t know also that 220-230 000 so-called orphans would be adopted from korea to western countries in 99% caucasian families. i didn’t know that many other people of colours would do the same experience as I did, being displaced from my birth country to a new land with very little information…

i came back to south korea, 20 years later to search and found my birth mother. I didn’t know that children didn’t belong to their mother but to their father in that confucianist society. i didn’t know with my take-for-granted feminism from the west, that my birth-country women couldn’t even have their own family register and therefore were not only financially but also administratively under the control of any men in their family (husband, father, grand-father, brother, son)

i didn’t know that being born in south korea, didn’t give me the right to stay there back in the mid 90s when the first wave of south korean adoptees were returning to their birth land. Now after activism and adult adoptee situation awareness in the Korean society we got the double citizenship.

i didn’t know that so many south americans, africans, and other Asians were also adopted to the countries that have colonized them or have some economic exchange and power with the birth-countries.

i didn’t know so many things about adoption because it was not much of resources. that’s why i want to inform not only about south korea but other countries what has been done in terms of adoption and what kinda of culture is born from our experience.

now that everything is on Internet, it’s less difficult to find information. but it’s not as easy to find articles, before the internat era. so i am as much as possible sharing this scanned files. NOT for money, just to inform.

thank you for your attention

p.s. special thanks to Dr. Tobias Hubinette, Kim Boudreau, Lucy Sheen

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