Begin Your Search and Reunion Journey - Search & Reunion E-Magazine. 2009 Adoption Month E-mag

The Korean War Baby found this site very helpful when he took a another step in the search process last July. Reading what others have gone through and comparing all the many different stories helps to sort out the emotional rollercoaster one can go through.
Some friends have enquired from the KWB their feelings about doing a search. The E-Magazine comes from Adoption.com and has gems like this:

Search & Reunion Tip of the Month

One of the most important things to remember when starting your search is to keep your expectations in check. No two searches are the same, so it stands to reason that the reunion that may result from a successful search would also differ from those that others may have experienced. Keeping an open mind towards your search and reunion is the best way to move forward towards a healthy and happy ending for everyone.

Tuesday will be a special Public Hearing event and panel discussion on the Revision bill for Adoption. The KWB has been asked to be a “virtual reminder that some adoptees are OLD” and not just twenty-somethings.

Oh, the honor that is bestowed when you’re an Old Guy adoptee! First, special seats on subway trains, now a spokesperson for the ‘dark side’. What shall he wear? He will  have to use his big photo identifying himself as half-Korean because most will wonder “What is the white guy doing here?”


Begin Your Search and Reunion Journey - Search & Reunion E-Magazine. 2009 Adoption Month E-mag

More State Support for Single Moms Planned

The Korea Times newspaper has many articles on women’s rights issues, adoption both domestic and ICA, civil rights for immigrant workers, etc. Of the English language news services online and in print they are balanced, moderate, and fair. Others, both liberal or conservative, hardly cover issues of the heart and daily problems many continue to experience in “the land of the morning calm”.
ACRC (go to their website here) started in Feb. 2008. This is from their ‘about us’:

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“The Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) launched on February 29, 2008 aims at resolving people's grievances, protecting their rights and fighting corruption. We are committed to achieving these goals by placing the greatest priority on the protection of people's rights and interests.
This homepage is an open channel to communicate with citizens. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to visit our website. We will pay keen attention to all sorts of your opinions and demands whether it is big or small.
The ACRC pledges to make strenuous efforts to create a clean and transparent country where all the people enjoy equal rights and opportunities. In this journey, we will always stand by your side and think and act from your perspective.
Thank you.
Lee, Jae Oh
Chairman
Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission
Republic of Korea”

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Read the whole article More State Support for Single Moms Planned 

By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
The government is moving to offer more support to single mothers as part of efforts to encourage them to keep their own babies, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) said Thursday.

The body also plans to help adoptees find their biological parents by improving systems and documentation, a spokesman said.
"Once the recommendations are accepted, more single mothers can keep their children through subsidies," he said.
 
The commission advised related ministries, including the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs (MOHWFA) and the Ministry of Justice (Min. of Justice, Republic of Korea), to offer subsidies so that single parents can find a place to raise their babies.


The revisions are subject to the approval of the National Assembly.”
Unwed Mothers MUST have support from the Government to enable them to choose to keep their baby. The government must first give financial and legal support THEN perhaps the Families and Society will follow in supporting Single Women to keep their babies.
At present few women are able to face such massive odds against them. They are pressured by their own family to protect the honor of the families name because it is still considered shameful. In a perfect world, there would be no need to help Unwed mothers- couples would Not engage in premarital sex without prevention, there would be No need for Abortion, etc. This is obviously not a perfect world. We must deal with realities of life.
The KWB defends continued Domestic Adoption by ethnic Koreans here and InterCountry Adoptions abroad; then Other nationalities. Love does not depend only on race or ethnicity. Thousands of Korean Adoptees have found loving homes in Transracial families.
Some though have had very troubling lives, dealing with issues of prejudice in societies that they grew up in. We were identified as ‘foreigners’, some had difficulty in attachment to their Adoptive families, etc. The stories of “This Thing of Ours-Adoption” range from wonderful and happy, all the way to tragic and horrible tales of woe. This is life but some things should and can be changed to prevent abuses and outrages.
Balance in these issues is difficult but not impossible. Things are changing in Korea, slowly but each child born should have a chance to stay with its mother…then, the next best thing, Adoption by ethnic Koreans, Korean Adoptees and their spouses, then Others who need and want to give a child a loving home.
The KWB will look at the Spectrum of Life scenarios that face a developing fetus in Korea, from ‘Death from Abortion’ all the way to ‘Life in a TransRacial family’. Each has its points, perspectives, opinions. Weigh in with your comments and opinions. 

Discrimination Still Lingers For Multicultural Families in Korea

Multicultural Families are Growing in Numbers

The KWB noticed that several articles have come out in Korean Media concerning the issues of Multicultural Families and their Multi-Racial children. This update show just how far Korean society has come…and how much further it must go. There are positive signs though, but for the families and their children they will have to meet the challenge daily.


By Jonathan Hicap
Korea Times Correspondent

Discrimination Still Lingers for Multicultural Families
SEOUL ― Despite social integration programs and millions of dollars in funds poured in by the Korean government to help multicultural families live at ease, the sting of discrimination is still a problem for foreign wives and their mixed-race children as Koreans have not accepted them as part of society.
 
This is the prevailing sentiment among foreign wives married to Koreans who say that despite their efforts to blend in, they still feel that they have a long way to go before they can be accepted as Korean.
One of them is Jean, 36, a Filipina who married a Korean in 2007 and moved to Korea the same year. She is happily married to her husband but said Koreans regard foreign spouses and their children as lower in social status.

``It is an unfortunate fact in Korea that multicultural families are second-class citizens since they are not pure Korean in blood,'' she told The Korea Times.
Based on data from Statistics Korea, there were 36,204 international marriages in Korea in 2008, which amounts to 11 percent of the total 327,700 marriages held in the country for that year. In 2000 there were 11,605 international marriages.

Out of the 28,163 marriages, the number of Chinese women marrying Koreans amounted for 13,203 or almost half of the total number, followed by Vietnamese with 8,282, Filipino women with 1,857 and Japanese with 1,162.

In contrast, Korean women who wed foreigners preferred those from industrialized countries. Last year, 2,743 Japanese men were married to Koreans, followed by Chinese (2,101), American (1,347), Canadian (371) and Australian (164).

By the end of 2008, there were about 182,712 multicultural families in Korea.
In 2008, there were 116,535 divorce cases in South Korea, according to Statistics Korea. Of these, 11,255 cases involved divorce between Koreans and foreign spouses.

The KWB notes that YES, some of the marriages end up in DIVORCE. As you see here they are exactly Ten percent of the total divorce cases in 2008. The majority are Korean men married to foreign women who divorce. If we focus ONLY on the divorce cases one could say that international marriages are doomed, bad, too difficult. What about the huge majority that are slowly changing the rural areas of Korea? Where most of the families are changing the demographics as more and more MIXED-BREEDS like the Korean War Baby are growing up. Over 100,000 HoNurAh, nice word for Mixed-Blood children are now flooding into Korean schools.
For some children perhaps they need to get “a rock in a sock” instructional…(Look here)

``Korean society is now becoming increasingly diverse,'' declared Vice Minister Kim Sung-Hwan of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade last year before the U.N. Human Rights Council during the universal public review of Korea's human rights issue.
…Han suggested in the report that Koreans should shake off their stereotypes and start to esteem migrant women's culture, diversity and human rights. ``Married migrated women are Korean citizens. When they are respected not as Koreanized citizens but as citizens who have an identity of dual culture and seek harmony in diversity, the way for a multicultural and multiethnic society will be paved,'' Han said.

Hope and Change, is happening NOW, the so called “homogeneous” society of Korea is one of the PAST. Get with the program folks, accept the multicultural society with open arms. Or there will be many angry children like the KWB, with “Rocks in their Socks”!

 Multicultural Society Korea
Breaking Down the walls of Discrimination
SNUE takes lead in quest for multicultural society

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• South Korea Struggles With Attitudes Toward Race (nytimes.com)
• In South Korea, an Effort to Defend Unwed Mothers (nytimes.com)

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China rescues kidnapped children

China rescues kidnapped children

Some of the rescued children were kidnapped years ago.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China rescues kidnapped children 
 
“Police in China say they have recovered more than 2,000 children in a six-month campaign against human trafficking.
 
The ministry of public security has set up a website with pictures of some of those kidnapped, in the hope of returning them to their families. 

The ministry website has pictures of 60 children, ranging from babies to young adults, who were kidnapped from their families. 

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children go missing in China each year.
Criminal gangs steal the children and sell them to childless couples.
In China's patriarchal society, baby boys are especially prized, sometimes selling for as much as $6,000 (£3,670), says the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Beijing.
Girls are sometimes sold for just $500 (£305), he says.

Children of poor farmers or migrant workers are often targeted. The parents of such children have complained in the past of official indifference to their plight.
Human trafficking is seen as a growing problem in China.

There have been several high-profile cases of abducted children being rescued from mines and brick kilns.

Increased wealth and freedom of movement in China have made human trafficking both more profitable and easier, analysts say.

Beijing has promised to do more. A national DNA database was set up this year to help trace missing children.”
 
The Korean War Baby reads this and other reports with alarm and hatred for those who are involved. It must be stopped by the authorities of each country and that is why all “Sending and Receiving” countries MUST implement the Hague Convention of on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Hague...Child Abduction).

It must also be noted that most of the stealing and trade is WITHIN China. Perhaps some are being processed for InterCountry Adoption BUT in this article and others. In Jan. of 2009 this took place:
 

China busts Baby Sale Gang Jan. 2009

“One official estimate by the US government said between 10,000 and 20,000 people are trafficked within China every year, and that the vast majority are women and children.
The problem is exacerbated by strict birth control policies, which limit many couples to only one child.
Some families want a boy - one of the children seized in Yueyang was abandoned when she was found to be a girl, the Beijing News said.
Families may also buy trafficked women and children to use as extra labour and household servants.”
Diane Wei Lang, an author who has documented some of these stories, spoke on BBC just today. She says that the story has taken years for the government to take action.
The Korean War Baby condemns this practice absolutely. Yet…can one then claim that “all adoptions from China were abducted children?” This does NOT seem to be the case, when you examine the facts. Boys are rarely adopted OUTSIDE China, with some figures claiming 80% or more are female girls for ICA.

Do you have any links on this subject? Send them to the KWB, help stamp out this horror! What are the facts on Korea? The KWB urges the government of Korea to move forward on the process of signing the major Hague Conventions on these issues.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Chinese police rescue 2000 kidnapped children (telegraph.co.uk)
• China struggles to identify rescued kidnap victims (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Two-child China (news.bbc.co.uk)
• 42 Arrested in China Baby Trafficking Case (abcnews.go.com)

Baby-Stealing For Profit? Truth on Adoption Agencies

QUESTION: ARE ADOPTION AGENCIES MAKING A HUGE PROFIT AND STEALING BABIES?

There has been many accusations on the internet that Adoption Agencies have profited in the Huge Adoption Industry. Why it is counted as a 1.5 Billion Dollar Business, with claims by some that Baby-Stealing is rampant. Certainly there are cases, far too many, of unscrupulous ‘middle-men’ making profit on ‘finding’ babies for adoption in several countries. The news accounts online are full of different countries shutting down adoption programs because of the uncovering of these gross irregularities.

Wikipedia/International Adoption

US State Dept.

Hague Convention on International Adoption/ Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption

Prof. David Smolin

Yes, even in Korea there have been some cases of mistakes, wrong birthdates or 2 birthdates on documents, claims of ‘abandonment’ that turned out to be incorrect, etc. The numbers of such cases are few in comparison with the overall total; BUT not for those who find out that the “story of Abandonment” might not be true.

Even ONE case ought not to be. It seems to be more difficult for many European Korean Adoptees to grow up in societies that on the outward appearance seem to be "Color-Blind" but are still in progress on social acceptance of those deemed "Different". Tobias Hubinette recently posted this on Sweden, one of the most progressive of countries, on laws protecting rights of all, but this study shows that in day to day living Asians/Middle Eastern/African/Others all have various degrees of racial prejudice.

To be Non-white in a Colour-Blind Society.pdf (127KB

 Again it seems that Laws alone do not change Hearts. Latent prejudice is only just below the surface, simmering like a caldera of molten lava, waiting to erupt. The Los Angeles Riots in the early '90s is a perfect example of racial bias turning into attacks based purely on ethnic groups, as Blacks turned on Korean business owners in South Central. 

Each story must be investigated and determined if mistakes were made, or if there was deliberate falsifying of documents for meeting quotas and making profits. It is difficult to do in each case because some of mankind is inherently evil and seeks profit where ever they can.

TRACK is an organization looking into these cases, and the KWB supports them and is a member of both TRACK and ASK Adoptee Solidarity for Korea. Post Adoption Services are now being done to help aid the thousands of Adoptees who are returning and looking into their past.

Woman who arrange marriages (Matchmakers) called 중매쟁이 or Joong Mae Jaengi also connect unwed mothers with infertile couples through legal but secret adoptions. The Dutch couple were a terrible example of this practice. Here , here, or here. Can we say then that ALL domestic adoptions are BAD? Of Course not, but “some people’s children” would use the “same brush to paint” an ugly example as the NORM.

Have some adopted children been murdered by their adoptive father? Yes And did another one kill her adoptive daughter, well, yes. here. There are other chilling stories of Adoptive Parents sexually molesting their own adopted child. BUT shall we blame adoption for the cause?

Many checks on families are done, but if there is NO police record of arrest even a Pedophile can slip by. The KWB WAS totally against “Same sex adoption”! He had seen children turned into Lesbians and Gays, raised in Filipino homes where homosexuality was the norm. To allow a child to be adopted into that is WRONG.

(BUT then, there is some cases in Korea, such as a famous clothing designer who adopted a SON and he turned out okay. Over the years the KWB has even become great friends with some gays and lesbians, some currently practicing and some trying to "quit being gay". His views on gays and lesbians adopting children is being tested, and the jury is still out, perhaps it is better to be loved in a Same-sex marriage than to be aborted, raised in institutional care, etc. Yes, the KWB has to consider even this, to be fair and balanced.) 

So, shall we then say that it was Adoption at fault? Life is full of problems and challenges, he does not want to minimize anyone's story. Suffering in life is not just due to being adopted; there is Divorce, death of parents, siblings, loss from disease, and smorgasbord of terrible things that afflict mankind in this life.

Abused sometimes become Abusers


When the KWB was counseling at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship he heard first hand stories of rape, beatings, physical and emotional abuse, people listening  to ‘voices inside’ telling to ‘cut out their babies eyes because a demon was inside’ the baby. There was no end to stories of sufferings endured by men and women, when they were but young children. 

Victims of sexual crimes are deeply affected throughout their lives, whether their abuser was of the same-sex or opposite sex. Some become sexually promiscuous with those of either sex. Sometimes a few of them became the Abusers and predators.  Pedophiles are reviled by the public, yet the facts are that 100 percent of Pedophiles were themselves sexually molested as children. Most do not intend violence towards their victims, in their own minds they are "giving love and affection" to young children. 


Korean society's views on Adoptees-Damaged Goods

BUT it becomes in Korea another reasons for 'many' Koreans to Fear, mistrust, or hate, those who ‘must have something wrong with them’ to be given up for adoption. This is the Korean majority point of view from children to adults toward the issues of Adoption. Adoptees have “something wrong with them” is a typical belief. Korean Media supports these wrong beliefs, and the horror movie "Orphan" did not help at all! 

Over the next few posts The Korean War Baby will look over these controversial issues. First, let us look at just the recent records of the KWB adoption agency, Holt International Children’s Service.

(Please look HERE for complete online magazine)
spring09.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Click on to enlarge

 Holt International Online Magazine/Spring09_pg 4Page 4 Close up on 2007/2008 Financial Highlights

SHOCKING!!

Please note that in 2007

Total Revenue	$19,240,847
Total Operating Expenses	$ 18,883,395
Balance	$357,452

They earned a whopping profit of $357,452

Oh, the Horror! Money made for selling babies to terrible people who want to get a Slave, why they might sell them to pedophiles or lock them in dungeons...

HELLO! DOES THIS SOUND LIKE STUPID LOGIC? OVER THE TOP, INSANE? OUTRAGEOUSLY FALSE ACCUSATIONS?!!

Well it IS. Please look at the figures for 2008, after the effects of the global downturn. Let’s do the math again. (Double-check me)

Total Revenue	$19,759,754
Total Operating Expenses	$21,233,763
Balance	Minus   $1,474,009

HERE IT IS FOLKS, THE EXPOSE OF THE 21 CENTURY, Holt International made a profit, OH, NO…a LOSS in 2008…Hmmm. What up with that? Thought they were making the bucks?

Let’s look at the MONEY TRAIL. Where did they Spend all that money?

Holt Intl. Annual Report 2008

34,295	Children served in all programs
10,561	Families served in all countries (USA not included)
717	Children placed with Domestic families of their Birth Country
818	Children placed with US adoptive Families
218	Waiting children placed with adoptive families
40,931	Total accumulated number of children placed by Holt with US adoptive families 1956-2008

Well there you have it, exposed by the KWB, at least one of the four major Adoption Agencies in Korea has been shown to NOT BE PRO-FITTING IN BABY TRAFFICKING!!

Let’s all get a GRIP and check out the facts before making Blanket statements or accusations.

Let’s work together to stop abuses, correct the mindset of Korean people on Adoptees and Adoption. Help urge the government support women who want to keep their child, whether unwed mothers or divorced women with children. Many positive things can be done if we work together.

Coming: More exposures ‘revealed’.