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Maria Siow

Several years ago, an ethnic Korean man in his early twenties sat next to me in my basic Korean language classes in Seoul.
He would not have stood out in a sea of Korean faces in the bustling Shinchon district where the school is located.
Over the next few weeks, as we grappled with basic Korean grammar, he told me he was adopted as an infant from South Korea and raised by parents of Dutch origin in a small town in America.
The unsmiling and serious young man said he had often been confused about his identity and cultural heritage.
Coming back to the land of his birth was not easy, as strangers were surprised – even infuriated – when they realised he spoke little or no Korean.
“You are Korean and you cannot speak Korean? You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” those strangers scorned.
He had another reason for returning to Korea: to search for his birth parents and find out why he had been given up for adoption, a question that he said had left “a gaping hole” in his heart.

Last Thursday, China announced that it would no longer send children overseas for adoption, overturning an over three-decade policy, which had seen 160,000 Chinese children adopted by families worldwide.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the Chinese government had adjusted its cross-border adoption policy to be “in line” with international trends.
Beijing’s rationale is not hard to understand: the country’s growing wealth, more government funds to support orphans, lower birth rates and greater willingness of Chinese to adopt children, even those with disabilities.
In 2023, new births in China fell by 5.7 per cent to about 9 million, and the birth rate was a record low of 6.39 births per 1,000 people, or a fertility rate of 1.705 births per woman.
With domestic adoptions now making up nearly 90 per cent of all adoptions in China, the country’s nationalistic tabloid the Global Times said terminating foreign adoptions had become “an inevitable step”.
But why has it not been similarly “inevitable” in the case of South Korea, which joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development bloc of developed countries in 1996?
Like China, South Korea, which recorded the 13th largest GDP in the world in 2023 at over US$1.71 trillion, has seen its fertility rate declining, at just 0.72 in 2023.

This prompted South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to announce in May the creation of a new government ministry to tackle the “national emergency”.
When the country started international adoption in 1953 in the aftermath of the Korean war, the country was economically ruined, reeling from widespread poverty and had large numbers of displaced children.
Most Koreans were unwilling to adopt babies that were not their “flesh and blood”, or worse, products of mixed marriages.
But as South Korea transformed into one of Asia’s and even the world’s wealthiest countries, surely it has what it takes to care for its babies?
Not so, according to my Korean friends, pointing out that the concept of “bloodline” is still important to many Koreans, even as they admit that it is “humiliating” that their country is still “exporting babies”.
Such a mindset explained why South Korea still “exported” 79 children overseas last year, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, making its international adoption programme the longest-running in the world.


In May, the ministry proposed ways to revitalise domestic adoption, including reducing international adoptions and boosting childcare subsidies for foster families of adopted children.
But what about abandoning the international adoption programme altogether?
China’s policy lasted 32 years and is now a relic of history but South Korea’s 71-year-old programme is still operating.
I have since lost touch with my former classmate so I never knew if he found his birth parents and whether that “gaping hole” in his heart has been filled.
With affluence that other countries can only dream of, South Korea should end the programme and raise its babies without subjecting them to – like it did to my classmate – the emotionally fraught issues of belonging, identity and acceptance.
Not to mention the feelings of loss, rejection and abandonment not just by their birth parents but also by their birth country.


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South Korea’s global baby adoption programme leaves ‘gaping hole’ in adoptee’s heart

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China has banned overseas adoptions of locally-born children but South Korea’s international adoption programme is still going on


China has banned overseas adoptions of locally-born children but South Korea’s international adoption programme is still going on.


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Adoption

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


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My Take | South Korea’s global baby adoption programme leaves ‘gaping hole’ in adoptee’s heart

China has banned overseas adoptions of locally-born children but South Korea’s international adoption programme is still going on