Morrison, with his wife and children, celebrates the 50th wedding anniversary of his parents, John and Margaret Morrison, in Colorado Springs.
Once the largest supplier of international adoptees, South Korea is at a crossroads, looking to end overseas adoption out of a sense of shame and responsibility. Korean American adoptees are taking a special interest in the issue, both as critics and advocates of the controversial policy.
by KAI MA
It’s not entirely clear where Steve Morrison was born. His memories, like those of any adult recalling early childhood, are a hodgepodge of impressions and images; for him, it’s the smell of steamed crab, and sometimes, the taste. But nothing links Morrison to his birth because before the age of 5, his parents abandoned him and his younger brother, leaving them to roam the streets of South Korea’s Kangwon Province in search of food and coins.
“Fortunately, we found something every day,” says Morrison, who was then named Choi Suk Choon. “And once in a while, a lady who sold steamed crab would feed us.”
Eventually, the crab peddler offered more. “But she only had room for one boy, so she decided to take in my younger brother,” Morrison recalls. “The last time I saw him, I looked at him with real envy. And then I was left on the street by myself.”
In 1962, when Morrison was 6, he landed in an orphanage near Seoul that housed roughly 700 homeless youth. The Il San orphanage was built and run by Harry Holt, an American farmer who launched a post-Korean War adoption movement that placed thousands of Korean children in homes overseas.
[ad#336]
Morrison lived at the orphanage until he was 13, when a Caucasian Baptist couple in Salt Lake City adopted him. That year, South Korean restrictions would have rendered him ineligible for overseas placement once he turned 14. If it weren’t for his timely adoption, it is likely he would have remained an orphan, with few opportunities for an education or social advancement.
Now 52, Morrison has a shock of black hair, crinkly eyes and exudes a quiet confidence as he reflects on the unique, surprising journey that led him to Norwalk, Calif., where he lives with his wife Jody, three daughters and an adopted son from Korea.
“When I left Korea, I wasn’t scared,” he says. “More than the fear and apprehension, there’s the thrill that something new is waiting for you.”
He met his father, John Morrison, at the airport, carrying only a set of playing cards and his journal, which he continued to write in every night before bed. Morrison still has it, though, he adds wryly, “It’s no Diary of Anne Frank.”
In many ways, Morrison’s journal could give testimony to the virtues of international adoption — how fate, hard work and the right people worked to transform a young orphan into a professional engineer with a rewarding life surrounded by family. Which is why he was alarmed when, in 1996, the South Korean government revised its adoption law — which still stands today — to decrease international adoption by 3 to 5 percent annually, with the long-term goal of phasing out the system by 2015.
For nearly half a century, South Korea was the leading supplier of foreign-born adoptees for developed nations, sending an estimated 160,000 children to the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia, according to the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs. In the last 30 years, due to political pressure, grassroots campaigns and media coverage that branded South Korea as a “baby-exporting nation,” efforts have been made to reduce the number of children sent overseas.
[ad#336]
Last year, one group of Korean American adoptees petitioned the Ministry to end overseas adoption and, more recently, some high-profile cases have given observers pause. A Dutch diplomat and his wife unleashed global outrage in 2007 when they essentially gave back their 7-year-old Korean daughter, after seven years as her adoptive parents, citing cultural differences and her emotional detachment. In March of this year, Steven Sueppel murdered his wife and four children — all adoptees from Korea, aged 3, 5, 8 and 10 — in Iowa before taking his own life.
In part to provide a more representative view of overseas adoption, Morrison and a contingent of other Korean American adult adoptees visited South Korea for 11 days in May to support domestic adoption within the nation, but also to urge the government to keep inter-country adoption open so long as there are children who need homes. The group, all part of an advocacy group called Adoptees for Children (A4C), timed the trip so they could recognize Korea’s newly designed National Adoption Day on May 11.
“In South Korea there’s been a very deliberate effort to reduce the number of international adoptions in favor of domestic adoptions, something we’ve all applauded and encouraged,” says Susan Soon-keum Cox, a member of A4C. “The problem is the societal acceptance of adoption has not caught up with the desire to have it happen.”
While meeting with Ministry officials, the group proposed special exemptions that would allow Korean Americans to adopt Korean children. “The goal in Korea, as it should be, is to keep Korean children in Korean families,” says Cox, who also serves as vice president of public policy and external affairs at the Oregon-based Holt International Children’s Services, a leading intercountry adoption agency. “As Korean officials make policy, they should take into account that children who are placed into a Korean family in the United States still meet that goal.”
[ad#336]
Their recommendations are being considered, yet Morrison was startled to learn from adoption agency representatives that South Korea now plans to end its international system well before 2015. The new policy has not been announced, Morrison says, but South Korea’s new administration, led by President Lee Myung-bak, is rumored to be taking a hard-line, accelerated approach to eliminating the system in three to five years
“Rather than finding better alternatives to help children grow up with families, the Korean government is more occupied with quickly bringing about closure to foreign adoption,” Morrison says. “The driving motivation is to save face because international adoption is a source of national shame; it’s embarrassing to them.”
Though the South Korean government has made attempts to shut down international adoptions for several decades now, Morrison fears what lies ahead. “The one thing [the government] can’t quite overcome,” he says, “is the fact that children need homes.”
***
Nobel Prize winning author Pearl S. Buck, who dubbed the term “Amerasian,” inspired Americans to open their homes to foreign children when she founded the Welcome House in 1949, an agency for interracial orphans that has placed more than 7,000 adoptions throughout the world. Yet the international adoption boom out of South Korea is most often attributed to Harry Holt and his wife Bertha.
The Holts, a Christian couple from Oregon, adopted eight biracial Korean orphans in 1955, and a year later, established an adoption program in Korea that became officially known as Holt Children’s Services of Korea in the late 1970s. Today, it works in partnership with the Holt International adoption agency in the U.S.
Though Holt rescued many orphans, the large-scale transracial adoption movement he pioneered has a mixed legacy. Due to the sheer numbers of Korean children placed overseas — often in Christian and Caucasian families — critics began to argue that what started as a wartime humanitarian effort was now spiraling out of control.
In 1973, the Pyongyang Times, a North Korean newspaper, issued a statement against South Korea’s adoption policy: “The traitors of South Korea, old hands at treacheries, are selling thousands, tens of thousands of children going ragged and hungry to foreign marauders under the name of ‘adopted children.’”
[ad#336]
More than three decades after the Korean War, children continued to leave their birth country in droves; in 1985 alone, 8,837 Koreans children were sent overseas. Then in 1988, South Korea’s international adoption industry faced global scrutiny, due in part to the exposure procured by hosting the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Media outlets, including NBC and the New York Times covered the adoption phenomenon, citing babies as South Korea’s primary export commodity. In January 1988, the Progressive published an article titled, “Babies for Sale: South Koreans Make Them, Americans Buy Them.”
The headlines disgraced the South Korean government, and protests ensued. But the main reason for the public outcry, Morrison says, was because the South Korean nation was modernizing rapidly and no longer suffering from the post-war displacement and poverty that required foreigners to adopt their youth in the first place.
“What they didn’t realize is that all of this has less to do with money, but mindset,” he says.
As a bloodline-based society with Confucian roots, South Korea lacks a cultural tradition of domestic adoption. Social stigma and shame are attached to infertile couples, divorcees, unwed mothers and homeless children, causing the cultural bias against domestic adoption to be so severe that in many cases, not even the child is aware of his or her adoption.
In 1999, Morrison founded Mission to Promote Adoption (MPAK), an American and South Korean organization committed to creating a pro-adoption culture among Korean families, as well as removing the stigma associated with homeless children and adoptees. For children without a birth or adoptive family within the country, the organization advocates that international adoption should be given priority over long-term foster care.
MPAK has helped solidify what Morrison calls the “transparent adoption movement” in South Korea. (“Transparent adoption” describes a form of adoption that is not practiced in secret.) In 2000, Morrison urged Yun Hee Han, current MPAK Korea president, to broadcast her experience adopting two boys on national television, after which she was inundated with phone calls from couples that wanted to adopt.
“By sharing her beautiful adoption story, it opened up opportunities for many children to have homes of their own,” says Morrison. “That message had never been conveyed in Korea before.”
That year, MPAK families were featured more than 40 times on major Korean networks. The MPAK exposure campaign led to transparent adoptions by 1,000 Korean families and 70 Korean American families, and spurred the creation of 18 regional MPAK chapters in South Korea and four in the United States.
Then in 2007, international adoption out of South Korea reached a crossroads, when domestic placements exceeded international adoptions for the first time. Out of the 2,652 children adopted last year, 52 percent went to Korean homes, according to figures released last month by the Korea National Statistical Office. But according to news reports, the increase is largely the result of new South Korean policies that prioritize placing children with Korean families before sending them overseas, and less to do with the cultural acceptance of domestic adoption.
***
Last April, Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK), an organization for adult adoptees, submitted a petition that called for the closure of international adoption. The petition, which is under preliminary review by the Ministry, also urged the development of social welfare structures that would enable Korean families to stay intact.
Su-Yoon Ko, a member of ASK, wrote the petition with other Korean American adoptees living in Seoul who promote alternatives to sending children overseas. Ko believes other programs, including domestic placements and foster care, must first advance before international adoption is shut down, but she is critical of why the 50-year practice is often considered “South Korea’s only alternative.”
“The intercountry adoption program is so systematic — a very well oiled machine that is often seen as ‘the Cadillac of adoption programs,’” says Ko. “What started out as a temporary solution for mixed-raced orphans born during the war has become South Korea’s social welfare system, and they depend on it now. It gets rid of unwanted babies, it solves the problem of single mothers, and it saves the government money it would otherwise have to use to develop its own system. If it’s not broken, why fix it, right?”
Ko moved to Seoul in 2002 after growing up with her adoptive Caucasian family in Minnesota. She is part of the rising number of adult adoptees who have returned to South Korea to seek answers about their country of origin.
By virtue of being a Korean adoptee, Ko inherited the distinct experience of being ethnically Korean without a Korean family, yet not being viewed as “American” in the sense of being Caucasian, despite growing up in a Euro-American household. “Questions about our birth country are always in the back of our heads,” says Ko. “Growing up in mostly white environments and looking completely different, we were told we were Korean, but had no context to put that in. What does it mean to be Korean? We have no idea.”
International adoption has been described by demographers as “the quiet migration.” Among the 2 million Koreans currently living in the United States, 110,000 are believed to have emigrated between 1953 and 2007 as adoptee children. South Koreans represent the largest group of American foreign-born adoptee children, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, and in 2004, the Census reported that South Korea supplied nearly 24 percent of the foreign-born adoptee population, the highest from any country.
Domestic adoptions are steadily increasing, but many in the adoption field insist that this development will only survive if met with proper social welfare systems, and a broader, collective acceptance of what constitutes a family. Similarly in the United States, it was not until the women’s movement in the 1970s, that single American women felt empowered to raise children without a father, rather than give them up for adoption.
These cultural shifts are now evident in South Korea, and will ultimately shape the future of international adoption; infertility and a birth rate that is among the lowest in the world have decreased the number of children born overall, and with the rise of divorce comes the upsurge of single parents. The recent “Miss Mom” phenomenon, which echoes the “Single Mothers By Choice” movement in the United States, suggests that more South Korean women are challenging the stigmas against non-traditional families by choosing to raise a child without a spouse or through artificial insemination.
“International adoption is definitely entangled with women’s rights,” says Hollee McGinnis, policy director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a national policy think tank and educational organization that examines adoption. “If you improve the situation for families and for mothers in particular, you will see a change in terms of international adoption.”
But South Korea, despite its status as the world’s 13th-largest economy, has only recently provided financial support for single unwed mothers, and before two years ago, “there had been no support to help or encourage a single mother to raise her child,” says McGinnis, who is also founder of Also-Known-As, a non-profit adult intercountry adoptee organization. “Where does the money go in Korea’s economy? Is a big bulk of money going to social welfare services? No. Back in the 1970s, if Korea put money where they put their policy about stopping international adoption, and began building social services for domestic families, I think Korea would be in a very different place right now.”
McGinnis was adopted in 1975 at the age of 3. She grew up in the suburbs of New York City as the only Korean in a family of Caucasian parents, and their two biological children. In college, she began exploring what it meant to “fit in as an American with a Korean face, and an Irish dad and a blonde-haired mom,” she says. At the age of 24, she went to Korea and reunited with her birth parents, and others relatives from the paternal side of her family.
More Korean adoptees are searching for, and finding their biological parents, yet McGinnis’ reunion was particularly exceptional: her birth family made the initial contact. When she was starting high school, her paternal grandfather wrote to her American parents, who chose to show their daughter the letter several years later, when she was 19.
“I was utterly surprised,” she recalls. “One hundred percent of adoptees think about the people that gave birth to them. But how do you mourn someone you don’t remember? For the majority of us, birth parents are like figments of our imaginations.”
McGinnis has now been in touch with her birth family for 12 years. She lives in New York City with her husband, and their infant son. She wants her son to have a relationship with his Korean relatives, but admits to the obstacles of straddling two families, especially given the language barrier and the distance that separates them. “It’s hard to build a relationship on that,” she says. “I’m very glad I have it, but it adds a level of complexity that I sometimes wish I didn’t have.”
Discourse surrounding South Korea’s international adoption policy usually involves a triangular tug-of-war between lobbyists, adoption agencies and advocacy groups, but what lies at the center are children in need of homes. Despite the varying and contradicting perspectives, all agree that the welfare of the child must take precedence. For this reason, says McGinnis, she doesn’t want to see an end to international adoption, but believes it could happen in the near future.
“Korea could absolutely close its doors, and it’s happened in other countries with the swipe of a pen,” she says.
At the same time, there is an evident shift in the prevalence of international adoption — and not just in South Korea. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami displaced thousands, the response of most major Western nations was that the children were not to be sent abroad. “In the past five years, there has been a changing tide about thinking critically about when international adoption is appropriate,” says McGinnis. “Many countries now are pulling back their practices, so what we’re seeing right now in Korea is indicative of broader changes.”
“Yet international adoption is an unfortunate necessity,” she adds. “In an ideal world, every child is loved and wanted, but that’s just not the reality. That’s not to say that kids that are adopted aren’t wanted, but what we don’t like to acknowledge is that adoption happens because something couldn’t happen.”
***
In his early 20s, Morrison returned to South Korea for the first time since his adoption, and visited the gravesite of Harry Holt, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1964.
“It was like meeting an old friend,” he says. “Mr. Holt will always be, in my mind, the man who saved my life.”
When he was buried atop a hill in Il San, 59 steps were constructed leading up to his grave to reflect the age at his death. ““I will never forget that day,” says Morrison, who was 8 when Holt passed. “It rained, and children were hunched over crying and screaming, some clinging to his casket as it lowered.”
When he first met Holt, Morrison admits he was terrified. “He was a scary-looking guy with huge bushy eyebrows.” But Holt’s daunting visage quickly evaporated with a smile, and Morrison instantly regarded the elder as a grandfather figure. “I would see Mr. Holt coming down the hill and he would kneel and open up his arms and I would come to him. He made himself available to all the children, and I truly sensed that he loved us.”
During his Korea trip last month, Morrison returned to the orphanage, which is now a 60-acre center accommodating more than 300 mentally and physically disabled residents. There, he saw a friend he spent his childhood with, playing cards and marbles. The friend, now 52 years old, was born with cerebral palsy and has lived at the orphanage his entire life.
Reunions such as these are bittersweet for Morrison. “Why was I able to leave?” he asks. “Why not him? I felt ashamed that I was chosen to be loved by a great family, yet here he was in his wheelchair, still being cared for by the orphanage.”
“Suk Choon,” the friend said to Morrison, addressing him by his birth name, “I am happy that you have a good life.”
When comparing his life to that of his friend, Morrison believes that international adoption is less a debate and more of an endangered necessity. And while much has changed over the course of South Korea’s history of international adoption, all of which may come to an end as early as 2011, what Morrison saw in his friend still bore resemblance to what Holt saw on the streets of South Korea more than 50 years ago. Which is why he believes he is one of the few Korean American adoptees still working in the spirit of Holt, even as he promotes a culture that will no longer depend on what Holt began.
“The reasons for why children are abandoned have changed, but what has remained the same is that they need and deserve homes,” Morrison says. “So what would be the only logical reason for closure of international adoption? When there are no more children to be sent abroad.”
This article was originally published in the June 2008 issue of KoreAm Journal. Subscribe today!
