Mok Kyong-wha, with her son, said that she broke up with her boyfriend while she was pregnant and refused when he asked her to have an abortion.“SEOUL, South Korea — Four years ago, when she found that she was pregnant by her former boyfriend, Choi Hyong-sook considered abortion. But after she saw the little blip of her baby’s heartbeat on ultrasound images, she could not go through with it.
As her pregnancy advanced, she confided in her elder brother. His reaction would sound familiar to unwed mothers in South Korea. She said he tried to drag her to an abortion clinic. Later, she said, he pressed her to give the child up for adoption.
“My brother said: ‘How can you be so selfish? You can’t do this to our parents,’ ” said Ms. Choi, 37, a hairdresser in Seoul. “But when the adoption agency took my baby away, I felt as if I had thrown him into the trash. It felt as if the earth had stopped turning. I persuaded them to let me reclaim my baby after five days.”
Presently, Korean Law allows Natural/Birth mothers up to give up their child before birth. Some want more time for thinking about it, advocating up to 60 days to change their mind and keep the her child. For more on recent bill being drafted go adoption law revision (TRACK). The KWB supports helping to persuade the Korean people and government to support any woman who wants to raise her child.
This article shows the LACK of support by Family, Society, and Government that a woman faces, is she decides to NOT Abort, or NOT give up for Adoption.
“Now, Ms. Choi and other women in her situation are trying to set up the country’s first unwed mothers association to defend their right to raise their own children. It is a small but unusual first step in a society that ostracizes unmarried mothers to such an extent that Koreans often describe things as outrageous by comparing them to “an unmarried woman seeking an excuse to give birth.”
Slideshow of Single Parenting in Korea
The KWB had heard a rumor of this outrageous saying but even his students were too embarrassed to explain or talk about this. His Korean ‘public servant wife (who carries a pistol)’, explained it a year ago. This was after it was learned that none of the KWB In-laws knew that he was HALF-KOREAN and (Horrors) ADOPTED!!!
After 3 years of marriage one of the wife’s cousins saw a picture on the computer screen of the KWB, and asked, “Who is THAT? Your student?” The KWB was very surprised, no shocked to learn further that the cousin did not know about the KWB being being given up by his Korean mother. Furthermore, it was discovered that the cousin’s wife WAS ADOPTED after her parents were killed, by a domestic adoption!! You see Adoption and being a Bastard are not Topics of discussion in Korean Society.
“Yet each year, social pressure drives thousands of unmarried women to choose between abortion, which is illegal but rampant, and adoption, which is considered socially shameful but is encouraged by the government. The few women who decide to raise a child alone risk a life of poverty and disgrace.”
In their campaign, Ms. Choi and the other women have attracted unusual allies. Korean-born adoptees and their foreign families have been returning here in recent years to speak out for the women…One such supporter, Richard Boas, an ophthalmologist from Connecticut who adopted a Korean girl in 1988, said he was helping other Americans adopt foreign children when he visited a social service agency in South Korea in 2006 and began rethinking his “rescue and savior mentality.”
“I looked around and asked myself why these mothers were all giving up their kids,” Dr. Boas said.
He started the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network, which advocates for better welfare services from the state.
“What we see in South Korea today is discrimination against natural mothers and favoring of adoption at the government level,” said Jane Jeong Trenka, 37, a Korean-born adoptee who grew up in Minnesota and now leads Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea, one of two groups organized by Korean adoptees who have returned to their homeland to advocate for the rights of adoptees and unwed mothers.
The Korean War Baby finds himself in a dilemma, No not a dilemma but rather a Balanced Roadmap. The KWB believes in seeking, imploring, begging, demanding, urging, embarrassing, preaching, etc. There can be a Middle Road way to advocate perhaps this:
- for more help from the Korean Government and Media for unwed mothers;
- Domestic adoptions by Koreans;
- Korean Government’s steps to ratify the Hague Convention on Adoption
- Adoptions by Ethnic Koreans living in other countries; Special Needs adoptions to all Koreans (If they want them) Then to OTHERS.
- Finally, for those who are NOT kept by their mothers; not adopted by “Their People”; THEN to Other Prospective Adoptive Parents of nationalities that are signatories of the Hague Convention.
Balanced approach, is it possible? What are your thoughts?
Coming: Does the KWB hate women who have an abortion?
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