Opinion and Film: Korean Adoptees Share Their Stories
Occasionally, we will link to media opinions on aspects of adoption and child welfare that you may never have thought about. This opinion piece discusses a film of Korean adoptees.
“Fifty-nine years ago, Glenn was an orphan in Seoul, South Korea, abandoned as a newborn. He doesn’t know by whom, where or why. But he wound up one baby, out of roughly two million infants and children who were orphaned or somehow separated from their families of origin in the aftermath of the Korean War. This stream of homeless Korean children continued over the next 60-plus years, the consequences of hunger and poverty, social stigma and racial bigotry, broken marriages and untimely death.
Some, like Glenn, were plucked out of the orphanages and adopted by families around the world — more than 180,000 infants and children who were placed in new homes. Those adoptions, in turn, became a model for nearly a million more intercountry adoptions out of Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.
To date, only limited efforts have been made to follow up on their lives in adoptive families. What happened to these children? Are they doing O.K. now? What happens when families in wealthy Western countries adopt the infants and children of countries in crisis? What happens in the course of transcultural and, often, transracial adoption? Given that intercountry adoption has now been widely embraced, we think these are important questions, even if they are often overlooked.
Six years ago, we started filming interviews with former orphans —100 interviews filmed in New York City, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Australia, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Ore., and across South Korea. Together, these stories comprise Side by Side: Out of a South Korean Orphanage and Into the World, from which this short film was adapted. We understand that no single story can portray the history and nature of intercountry adoption; we need a chorus of stories and outcomes.
Glenn understands this well. His own origin story is shrouded by an empty family registry. He doesn’t know if his biological parents are alive or dead. He doesn’t know their names, and he’ll never meet them. He has needed others like him, like those in this project, to help him make sense of his life. They have also helped him make peace with the universe.”
Given Away: Korean Adoptees Share Their Stories
[NY Times 7/23/19 by Glenn Morey and ]
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