Conducive Chronicle published by Conducive Magazine did an interesting an important series on Korean adoption earlier this week.

Anyone interested in inter-country adoptions and what happens as the kids grow up should take the time to read through the series.

There are a number of reasons Korea is such an important case study, from it being essentially the birthplace of where in many ways, the modern inter-country adoption movement began, to understanding the sheer scope of how many children were exported.

As those adopted as children grow up we’re seeing a snapshot of what inter-country adoption has meant to them, and to their families of origin. In reconnecting, the separately held ‘puzzle pieces’ are being brought back together and a more accurate account of what happened is finally emerging.

Despite all the marketing of adoptive families as adoptees ‘forever families’ and other such drek, the bottom line remains, once old enough to act autonomously, adoptees return to seek their families, their stories, their authentic histories, and quite often run headlong into the brick wall of agencies that when exporting babies were well staffed and thriving, but now decades later, some no longer exist, others have minimal staff at best, and now massive backlogs of reunion searches to run with no funding and almost no one to do such with.

Far from finding the happy-go-lucky mythologies of adoption, adoptees are instead finding the white envelope systematic fraud, the poverty and dire circumstances that drove many women to lose their children, the social death system, and the outright magnitude of how many children were stripmined out of Korean women and families for the adoption exports.

Rather than attempting to explain such myself, I’ll simply encourage readers to explore the series, along with other documents.

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 1 of 4

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 2 of 4

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 3 of 4

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 4 of 4

Conducive Chronicle has been running a number of other interesting adoption related pieces as of late. Readers will also likely want to take a look at this, as but one of several possible examples, Counseling Services of Adoption Agencies Experienced by Unwed Mothers

Organizationally, they may want to explore both

Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK) (TRACK also has a Facebook page)

and Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network