bbs

That’s “be back soon” for all of the non instant messenger people out there!

Going to the Danoje festival for the next two days.

Gonna get me some folk culture.

Hope my batteries are up to the task…

Having My Say – For Real?

SBS (a producer, a translator, and a cameraman) came knocking right on time this evening,  bringing a little potted orchid with them.

Fortunately, I was coherent.  Amazingly, they shot footage the entire time – all 3 1/2 hours of it.  I don’t envy whoever their editor is!  The documentary they’re filming will air on June 13th, at 11 pm.  It’s channel 5 or 6, depending on which company you purchase your t.v. from.

They were extremely thorough, and listened to all of my opinions.  It sounds like they are going to investigate my case a little more for me as well.  Of course they can’t include 3+ hours of me opining about international adoption, but they have plenty of sound bites to glean from, as well as a glimpse into what it is like to be an alien in your own country.  Twice. I really feel honored to be given this opportunity.

Thanks, Jane!  With your activist notoriety and my big mouth, maybe we can make real change here.

Shooting my own foot

Post lunchtime in the rose garden at school, Seven Star, Y and I are talking about the Hankyoreh article.

Turns out he once escorted five adoptees to Germany for Holt, as a cheap way to get a flight.  And, my article made him think about another adoptee who had contacted him in the past, because someone in his family had relinquished a child.  But he wasn’t at liberty to tell the adoptee anything, because the mom wanted it to remain a secret.

Y, who is always feisty about people’s rights being violated, told him that the children have rights too.  And I chimed in that I don’t need to mess up anyone’s life.  For me, even a small letter with no forwarding address from them would be SOMETHING.  If I could just know my own name…Seven Star sort of agreed, but said he felt helpless because it was someone in his family and had to respect their wishes.  He said that my family all knows I’m looking for them and is doing the same thing.  “Korea is a very small country…”

Today a senior passed me in the hallway and said, “I saw you on YTN!”  Yup, that was me…And half the adjummas in Korea watch that show, “I miss that Person” on KBS.  And Hankyoreh21 has a distribution of 200,000.   So I guess he’s probably right.  Whoever my family is, if any of them are still alive, they’re too ashamed to come forward.  I asked a few people prior to going on KBS whether I should reveal my abuse or not, and the consensus was that it would have no impact and probably make them want to contact me more.  But now I’m not so sure.

I’m tired.  Y had to yell at a student today and the former president of Korea committed suicide this weekend.  I guess he was a righteous  guy and the new guy is the equivalent of Bush, so the mood at school is not a happy one. I stayed up too late last night writing the last two posts, and preparing this week’s lesson plan.  I hope when SBS comes tonight I do not have big bags under my eyes and no ability to speak anything intelligible.  I hope I am not just an abuse case to sensationalize, and that they actually want to know my opinion.  I do these things to save the children, as I don’t see any personal benefit from it.  But I must try and milk this moment for all its worth, since tomorrow I will just be another bug amongst the dust under the rug.  Then, what will my purpose here be?  To learn Korean?

Girl #4708; The truth of the adoption industry that no one is responsible for

An interpretation of the Hankyoreh21 article (I’m really distraught because I purchased a digital voice recorder but didn’t hit save prior to turning off the recorder so it all got lost – the instructions were all in Korean, so I didn’t know – and she read 90% of the article translating every line – argh!) as relayed to me roughly by my translator.  (I will add links with references and supporting data this week after I write my lesson plan)

They begin the article with my sad story and briefly touch on some of the difficulties encountered in my search for the truth.  Basically, they use me as an example of what could go wrong yet also use my struggles for identity as a mirror into the future of all the babies currently being sent abroad for adoption.  They say the mess is left up to the children to deal with, but it’s the country’s fault from beginning to end.

They go over the history of adoption in Korea and compare figures that tell a tale of adoption rates increasing after war reconstruction, when the opposite should be the expected result.  They break down the number of Korean children going to each country, from each of the four main international adoption agencies. (Holt, Social Welfare Services, Eastern, and Korea Social Services)  From Holt’s website, they list the adoption fees for available children from different countries and note some of the language Holt uses now and in the past regarding Korean children and the fees they command.  It looks like pricetags.  It looks like shopping.  And Korean children are valued more.  Because they are smart, taken as infants, and well cared for in foster homes.  There is also less paperwork and it is easier to get a Korean child than a child from some other countries.  They break down how much money international adoption generates for Holt International and how much Holt Korea gets of that.  Holt Korea will not disclose how they spend their percentage of these adoption fees, though they give a statement as to the nature of the work they do and their relative costs.  They also illustrate (the translation was fuzzy on this) how the distribution is supposed to be spread evenly amongst the purchasing countries, but somehow the United States has always taken the lions share of children.  The higher fees might have something to do with this imbalance.  It is pointed out that adoption here is a small industry and how many people Holt employs. (something around 270 if my memory serves me correctly)

Korea did not sign the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption.  Neither did they sign the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Korea has responded in the past to criticism about exporting children by either making meaningless gestures or by reducing transparency.  After public attack by North Korea about their adoption policy, Korea privatized what little governmental oversight was left of their ministry of health and welfare adoption section (not the exact name) so as to diffuse the criticism.  Also as a result of this privatization, adoption agencies were free to demand non-disclosure agreements from all of its employees, further exacerbating the dissemination of information to adoptees in search.  After renewed global criticism of Korea’s continued international adoption in the wake of its show-case development during the 1988 Olympic Games held in Seoul, Korea unveiled a quota system to gradually reduce adoptions and ultimately eliminate them by 2015.  (The late-breaking news from TRACK is that the end date of international adoption has been struck from the draft revisions to Korea’s Special Adoption Law going to vote by the National Assembly this year – this is an incredible setback – the opposite of progress – no exit strategy in sight) And in 1998, the late president Kim Dae Jung issued an apology to those adopted Koreans living in Korea.  YET, despite the apology, no change in policy materialized.  (Currently, they are attempting to create an independent body overseeing adoption matters as required by the Hague Convention, yet the body they have created is not a governmental body so not in keeping with the intent of the convention.  Korea’s dancing around the Hague Convention is much like the United States’ record with the Kyoto Protocol)

There are something like 72 (I’m doing this by memory and need to double-check this somehow) homes for unwed mothers RUN BY or affiliated with ADOPTION AGENCIES in Korea.  (no conflict of interest there)  The largest share being run by or affiliated with Holt.  In Korea, there is no waiting period required before a mother can relinquish her child, and this can be done while the child is in utero.  (This practice is illegal in the United States because it was an opportunity for coercion on a mass scale up until the 60’s and these unwed mother’s homes were referred to as “baby farms.”)  Unwed mothers (up until the end of this month, where it will be doubled) who keep their babies can receive only 50,000 won per month in assistance.  (That’s equivalent to $40.00 U.S. at today’s rates – foster families receive double that – and this is in an economy where incomes and the cost of living is on par with the U.S.)  The article goes on to describe how adoption is offered as the FIRST option to unwed mothers upon giving birth, and keeping the baby as the SECOND option.

Another individual story followed in the article is of a young woman who relinquished her baby because she was an unwed mother.  She was visited repeatedly during her stay at one of these homes for unwed mothers and pressured into signing her baby over for international adoption to America.  She then illustrated some of the arguments they told her.  Finally she relented and signed.  Later, she came to know of a Korean couple that would adopt her baby and when she tried to change to a domestic adoption, she was told it was impossible because she had already signed her baby away.  All this transpired PRIOR TO THE BABY BEING BORN.  When her baby was born, it was immediately taken away from her and taken to foster care, where most relinquished newborns go waiting out the Korean statute and prior to being flown to whatever country the adoption has been arranged to.  The story was quite sad.  She relayed how she didn’t know anything:  the age of the parents, what their income was, how their health was, what their religion was, what kind of people they were.  Nothing.  She knows absolutely nothing but yearns to.  She didn’t even want the baby to go to America.  She is now married to her boyfriend and they have a daughter, but she regrets that she signed every day.

The article then goes on to revisit me briefly as a returning adoptee and then goes on to talk to some of the returning adoptees, intellectuals, artists and other activists, like Rev. Kim of Koroot and Jane Jeong Trenka.  Unfortunately, my tutor was late for another appointment and we couldn’t finish the article.

My tutor shakes her head.  Most of her friends are adoptees:  she tutors them, translates for them, works with them, and loves them.  She says every year there are a couple of documentaries and articles like this one and nothing ever changes.  The Korean people feel pity for the adoptees, but also feel helpless to do anything about it. I tell her some of the inside information I’m probably not free to publish here, and she shakes her head further, telling me she’s seen so many discrepancies in what is in the paperwork from the adoption agencies vs. what the families say.  We talk about the inequality of even searching – the 70,000 who visit, the 7,000 who search.  (I have to check those numbers somehow)  Everyone trying to get a scrap of information.  Few as “lucky” as I am to be able to have an exceptional story to tell, and to be so old as to be able to press for quicker assistance, because my real family could pass away at any time.  How little attention any of our cases actually receive, because there are so many of us – hoping, waiting.  How many other countries have this phenomenon?

I think it’s clear what we have to do.  We have to be an international embarassment.  We have to expose Holt and those that modeled themselves after Holt as the baby selling industry that they are.  I have no problem with Molly Holt running homes for the disabled.  I have no problem if she provides homes for true orphans.  But stay out of Korea’s wombs.  And Korea – international adoption is no substitute for social programs.  Have a little pride.  You’re not a charity case anymore.

ADDED:  Don’t miss the comments by Molly Holt and some fellow Korean adoptees (whom I’ve never met but would like to)

Behind the scenes

Here are my answers to some pre live interview questions emailed to Hankyoreh21 magazine.  Points I particularly wanted to stress are in bold.  I have eliminated portions of some of my answers so as not to be so long, so you can just read the bold if you’d like to breeze through.

1. Let me know your experience as a adoptee.


I came to America in December of 1966…

…So I have spent the last two years of my life researching and confronting adoption head on.  And now that my children are grown and independent, I have come to Korea to live.  I have come to discover this culture that was denied me by my adoptive parents, even though I was forced to represent Korea my whole life – while knowing nothing about it.  I have come to face my fears of a foreign race and recognize myself in their faces.  I have come to find out what happened to me those missing two years before I was at the orphanage.  I have come as an abuse survivor and feminist, with empathy for my first family and hopefully forgiveness.  I don’t believe we can ever be a family now, but I wanted to at least say hello before it’s too late.

2. I heard you had some trouble with Holt Children’s Services INC. What was it?


Isn’t that interesting that they are incorporated?   So if you have trouble with them, you have to take on a multi-national corporation.  Being multi-national makes it very convenient for them, because Holt International can tell the searching adoptee that Holt International is limited in what they can do and must defer to Holt Korea or Holt (insert country here).  And then when the searching adoptee follows up on their requests and there has been no action, Holt International can say, “That is up to our foreign partner,” or “Holt Korea says there is nothing for you.  Sorry.”  So dividing and compartmentalizing their operations is a great tactic to eliminate transparency and frustrate the search effort.

When I first went to Holt, I was searching for a woman who was holding me in a photograph.  My adoptive mother told me it was my Korean foster mother.  I wanted to thank her for her fine early childcare, believing the imaginings of most western white people that orphans from Asia must have had prostitutes for mothers and that I was a child born in the absence of morals and relinquished at birth.  But my files (legally mine due to the law, not Holt’s generosity) revealed that I had lived with my own family for two years.  It is at this point that I began to think about the family I’d left behind and the country I’d been exiled from.

Holt International was very pleasant and their response to me (and most officially abandoned children) is that they have nothing.  “I’m so sorry.”  This, unfortunately, is where most adoptees take Holt’s word on faith, give up, and leave in despair.  Upon my further questioning, however, they revealed that the papers Holt Korea was looking at
said I was abandoned.  Earlier they had told me Holt Korea had nothing.  I realized that Holt Korea had to be looking AT something.  I kept finding inconsistencies between what they’d told me earlier and what they told me later.  So I pressed them for copies of the paperwork from Holt Korea and then they tried to tell me the papers weren’t important.  I felt that since these documents were about my identity, that it should be up to me to judge whether or not they were important.  But Holt International insisted they were nothing.  It wasn’t until I told them I was sharing my story publicly that they relented and sent me copies of my papers.

The “unimportant” paper from Holt Korea revealed a treasure trove of information.  It revealed the date I was taken from Wonju City Hall and taken to the nearest adoption center (March 7th, 1966), it revealed the name of the police officer who took me there, it revealed that my name and probably my birthdate were invented at that time, it revealed four days had passed before I arrived at Holt’s orphanage in Seoul, and it revealed another little girl the same age was taken to the same place at the same time.  And we arrived at Holt’s orphanage in Seoul at the same time, as evidenced by the asignment of two consecutive Holt orphan numbers added later:  4708 (me) and 4709 (the other girl).

Naturally, the thought occurred to me that we might be sisters, twins even, which was devastating to me, since I had never even considered that I might have blood siblings.  Holt said they would contact her for me, and then they changed their mind, which was even more devastating.  It wasn’t until I went public with their decision that they finally agreed to contact her.

Holt promised me a lot of things I had asked for:  to get a certified translation of this “unimportant” document, to assemble a list of orphanages in the Wonju area so I could interview people about those four days prior to coming to Seoul, and to contact girl 4709.

I never got an official translation, and I never got a list of orphanages.  Holt International told me Holt Korea says it is “not possible.”  Holt claims they contacted girl 4709, but I have only their word on that.  Holt also refused to give her a little note from me trying to ease the shock and assure her that I was only interested in ruling out that we were related and that I would not otherwise disrupt her life.  Holt said this would constitute contact on my part, even if there was no contact information from me on the note and even if Holt was the one to deliver it to her.

After all the months and many dozens of emails and phone calls trying to get Holt to follow through on their post adoption services, I found this lack of compassion on their part quite upsetting.  They always were pleasant.  They always said they couldn’t do anything.

What Holt DID do is send me a registered letter recently telling me my emails complaining weren’t helpful.  These are the kind of official tactics people use to intimidate others in preparation for lawsuits.  So if you pursue “unimportant” paperwork and pursue getting Holt Children’s Services INC. to follow up on their promises to you, this could be the result you receive.  The problem is most adoptees give up when Holt tells them there is nothing.

Prior to searching for information about my case, I naively believed all the adoption rhetoric Holt Children’s Services publishes.  Now that I am deeply involved in searching for my family and connected with several adoptee civil rights groups, I have come to believe Holt only helps adoptees as much as is required for their own favorable public relations.  And all of their lame inadequate efforts to expose adopted children to their culture is nothing but damage control.  And every step of progress any adoption activists make, Holt Children’s Service INC is right there stealing the limelight, putting a Holt media spin upon it as if they were the adoption activists.

But when you think about it, if all adoptees found their birth parents, that would put Holt out of business.   So I’d call that a conflict of interest.  Just like it’s a conflict of interest allowing Holt to hold all the records.  But you can take that one step further still.  It’s actually a conflict of interest for any INC to be acquiring children and shipping them overseas.

They want those of us who have had to live with the consequences of their social-engineering-for-profit to quit complaining that there is anything amiss and just shut up, and so they send us registered mail as a threatening gesture.  But there are somewhere between 160,000 to 200,000 of us.  And we are growing up. And we are educated critical thinkers. And eventually (it took me forty years) we will all begin to stop internalizing the pain of what was done to us and speak out to prevent more children from being exploited by adoption agencies. Our voices now are just the tip of the iceberg. How can we be silenced when more children are being harmed?

3. What do you think the bad aspect of adoption?(Think about your experience)


To me, adoption can bring out the worst in people.  The claims that people adopt out of charity are lies:  their purposes are inherently selfish and they’re adopting because they want to make someone love them.  (which isn’t totally so awful, but rationalizing the selfishness as generosity and then glorifying that act is not a good or honest way to begin a relationship.  And then we are supposed to be forever grateful for their kindness) But this love is always skewed because it was forced to begin with.  There is always an imbalance of power because our civil rights were violated in order for us to be present.  So even though we are loved, we are literally a captive audience, and we are forced to love our captors.  We simply have no other choice.  Some adoptive parents are lovable.  But many are not, and we still have no choice but to try and make life with our captors work because we are without recourse.  We can not put ourselves back on an airplane to Korea if things don’t work out.

Well, that’s not quite true because that’s what I’m doing now.  Only it’s forty years later…

We are told that we are loved just as if we were their own, because it is so obvious there is nothing natural about our acquisition.  We are given no chance to form bonds prior to our adoption and we are sent to live with strangers – l repeat, we are sent to LIVE for the rest of our lives WITH PEOPLE WE HAVE NEVER MET – to live in a foreign land surrounded by foreigners.  Can you imagine how alienating that is? And yet it is us, by merit of our eyes and skin, who must forever bear the burden of being the alien.

Far too many of us adoptees are objectified.  We begin our journey being objectified by our parents, who shop for us based upon whatever values decorate their narcissism and, in the case of inter-country adoption, whatever racist prejudices they think about positively and wish to explore and/or culture they wish to co-opt.  We are imported goods, and this objectification only gets worse because in a foreign land amongst foreign people we are always exotic items upon display.  And we become an object of desire that others want to taste and own, which perpetuates more consumerism of Asia’s children.  And this desire is sexual in nature, because we are vulnerable and easy to control, which is heady in a sexual way even if never acted upon, so we are fighting from day one of our new “better” life to protect our virtue. Of course, most adoptees do not have fathers that cross the line like mine did.  But I believe that underlying much of the delight most adoptive parents can barely contain is also something more sinister:  the delight of being an ultimate consumer, of owning another human being.

4. Other comment?


Yes. Oh Yes.

I would like to close by saying that even though the Korean war has never officially ended, the carnage and disruption to life which created war orphans is long over, so there is no longer any need for international humanitarian aid in the form of adoption.  Please end it.

Holt adoption agency began their career here (literally) as a Christian humanitarian effort.  But instead of providing disaster relief and then leaving when the disaster was over, they became an institution that never went away.  They discovered gold when their humanitarian efforts revealed a huge market for Korea’s children, and then children from other countries.  Procuring children became as easy as setting up a system of waste removal to dispose of children that society did not want to deal with.

To me, International adoption is criminal. I will quote myself from an interview taken of me as part of an honors thesis project:

The fundamental crime of adoption agencies is saving through surgery.  Instead of holistically helping countries, communities, and families survive through tough times, they surgically removed the child burdens.  They provide a release valve for the pressure.  But they didn’t provide for or care to look into what was causing that build up of pressure.

The fundamental crime of adoption agencies (and the willing adoptive parents) is helping only when it benefits themselves, and valuing the child as a commodity but not considering the emotional needs of the child or valuing the humanity that brought the child into being.


Valuing the emotional needs of the child. That means eliminating the radical disruption of sight unseen adoptions to foreign lands.    It means not sentencing that child to a life of being an alien outsider.  It means not also depriving a child of its culture and heritage. It means not further scarring a child who has already experienced profound heartache at a tender age.  It means maintaining what few bonds and connections the child does have, so they have some ballast in their emotional lives.


Valuing the humanity that brought the child into being. That humanity is our natural mothers.  That humanity is women.  Adoption is a feminist issue, and we adoptees are the symbol and reminder of the position of women in society.  We are the negative indicator species measuring the health of Korean society.  And as long as there are adoption agencies in the absence of humanitarian crisis, it means Korean women are lacking the choices necessary to be valued and contributing members of society.

I believe it should be Korea’s goal to eliminate the needs for international adoption agencies.  It would be wonderful if the country who became the model for mass international adoption also could say to the world that they have learned it is wiser to take care of their own people well, and that they are enlightened enough that such callous solutions are no longer necessary.

Leanne Leith, Holt orphan 4708

More Questions After the Interview…

Q.  Would I be interested in becoming a Korean citizen?

A.  Maybe after I have learned the language.  Dual citizenship is interesting to me so I don’t lose all of the retirement money I have coming to me from all my years working in the United States, which I would lose if I gave up my American citizenship.

Q.  What do I hope to gain from living in Korea?

A.  (in addition to all that I told you about about learning what I lost, learning the beginning of my story, knowing the basic things EVERY person on the planet should know – their name and birth date, and owning the memories buried within me)

I want to help Korea figure out what is good about the west and what is bad about the west.  The west is just different:  it isn’t superior.  Korea needs to get a little self esteem.  There are many good lessons to learn, but there is nothing there worth sending your children there.

I also want to help Korea recognize the need to take care of its own;  to assist mothers in keeping their children.  Taking responsibility for ones actions deserves respect, and any social stigma for doing so is backwards thinking and unjust.  I worked hard as a single mom.  It is something that can be done, and it is something to be proud of.

Also, (don’t know where this goes) an appeal to (Korean) parents:

I was not adopted to be abused.   I was adopted and later abused. I was abused when my other siblings were not – and the only explanation for this is that they were biological children and I was not.

Not being blood offspring matters to people, no matter how much they claim they can love adopted children just as much.  Nobody can love your child the same way you can.  Nobody.  This little truth can make a huge difference in a child’s life.  And if you send your child away, there are no guarantees.   Please don’t take that chance.

And I don’t know if this is appropriate or not, but:

It’s good and right for Korea to tell the international adoption agencies to GET OUT OF MY WOMB.  Korea doesn’t need them.  KICK THEM OUT.

THIS is where Koreans should be saying, “Korea:  Fighting!”

ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Afterwards

btw, I am NOT against adoption.  I am FOR protecting children.  I am against victimizing women, exploiting women, lack of social services, coercion of people in a weakened state, the creation of orphans out of children who have family, the politics of “charities” that arise when their so-called non-profit livlihoods are threatened, the inherent racism of transracial benevolence, and the broadcasting and scattering of any seed far from its familiar culture and native soil.  And especially.  Especially violating a little person’s civil rights in the name of God.


ADDED:  Something readers might not know is that more boys are adopted out of the country than girls.  People assume that in a patriarchal society where Confuscianism and primogeniture still reign that it is the girls that are rejected more because they have less value.  However, it is the boys who are not of the same blood line who are rejected as unacceptable.  If you are a man here, you don’t want to raise another man’s son and support another family’s blood line, whereas female bloodlines will always be mixed and dispersed.  Therefore, a boy infant is a much greater social liability for a family when trying to get their unwed mother/daughter married off.  And you better believe it is about family pressure here, because marriage is the biggest stepping stone to gaining or preserving social status.  So we need to find and celebrate those brave women who fought this system and prevailed.  As women become career professionals and those old social structures have less relavence, it is possible to show this country that we CAN be single mothers and that the effort to be responsible for our actions is something to be proud of.