BABIES FOR SALE
Rothschild, Matthew
Babies for Sale South Koreans make them, Americans buy them BY MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD Seoul, South Korea. Five pregnant women sleep on blankets on the tile floor of a small room. They keep their...
...He knows that the adoption program is controversial, but he supports it enthusiastically...
...Seoul Boys-town is one of the largest orphanages in Korea, housing 2,500 children between the ages of three and fifteen...
...market...
...It could lead to very big corruption...
...Kim Do-Young, executive director of Eastern Child Welfare Society, the second largest adoption agency in Korea...
...Ackerman says...
...Unwed mothers are stigmatized by family and community, and they may not be able to get a job or find a husband...
...Ackerman combs each adoption application to make sure everything is on the up and up...
...Not every Third World country places its babies on the export ramp...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS...
...We can't push, but we can suggest...
...On his desk, under the glass top, is a long For the agencies, it's a business...
...The general rule is the lighter the skin, the easier time the kid has.' —Marjorie Hendrickson, social worker for the Lane County children's services department United States differ as to how much time American adopting parents should devote to stressing Korean culture...
...They also collect a donation of between $250 and $400 from each "escort" who travels with the baby on the plane...
...Holt International Children's Services in Eugene, Oregon, is a legally separate entity from Holt Korea...
...Of course, it's better if a child is adopted by a Korean family...
...For all his doubts, Ackerman comes out in favor of the adoption agencies...
...For the last several years, the Korean government has urged the adoption agencies to increase domestic adoptions...
...The human-rights organization for children, Defense for Children International, is split on this issue...
...I was assigned to seven hospitals and clinics, and I was supposed to cultivate them," she says...
...According to the questionnaire that we distribute at the orientation interview, 90 per cent want to keep the babies," says Kim Yong Sook, the director of Ae Ran Won...
...The Korean kids do have some problems, but not as much as the black kids," says Hendrickson...
...For instance, the National Committee for Adoption promotes a book called Oriental Children in American Homes, by Frances Koh, which offers eight tips on how to handle this issue...
...He is the director of St...
...The West, they say, took their sugar, their coal, their bauxite, their gold, and their silver, and now it is taking their babies...
...I'd like to see my baby again,' they say...
...She has a pony tail standing straight up on the top of her head...
...Hospitals and the police oblige, Dom Yano Park says, by handing over abandoned children to the agencies...
...Five hundred kids a month is an incredibly high number for just a humanitarian issue...
...They constantly try to get the babies from hospitals and the police," he says...
...Holt International also emphasizes the importance of Christian families...
...Nowhere is it faster than in South Korea...
...adoption market...
...We don't want to be involved in that again...
...Center for Health Statistics reports...
...But it is the foreign adoptions that keep the agencies going...
...She won't care that it comes with its own passport, but she will like having a doll that looks like she does...
...Though her primary concern is with these handicapped children and the institution run by Holt Korea, she strongly supports the international adoptions...
...One out of every twelve married couples in the United States is infertile, the U.S...
...It's been a good life for them...
...It never used to be so bad, she says...
...What's really happened is there is no interest in the sponsorship program," she says...
...Money did change hands...
...As I talk to him, three young boys enter...
...The irony, though, is that it affects American black adoptees more severely than adopted Koreans...
...I wish I could keep her...
...I work with hard-to-place kids and try to place them," he says, as five more boys squeeze in...
...Most of the mothers are poor women from low-paying factory or clerical jobs...
...I've had to ask myself, do we really have baby factories here...
...Every year, he visits the United States and Canada to see how the children are doing...
...Today...
...Our weekly staff meetings were all about numbers: How many babies did we get that week...
...It's time for us to stop it," she says...
...On this point, the genial priest becomes emphatic...
...Kim Chong Chan takes me to his office...
...Those who are opposed to these adoptions are people from the upper strata of society," she says...
...In some cases, the doctor would tell me to give the money directly to the mother...
...They support pregnant-women's homes...
...Most mothers are relieved, "but some have a guilty sense their whole life," says Chun Byung-Hoon, president of Social Welfare Society, one of the four adoption agencies...
...We pay for our girls," says the Reverend Yoon Jae-Sung, secretary general of Holt, referring to the women Holt sends to the hospital from its counseling service or from its affiliated pregnant-women's home...
...Some kids are waiting now, in jail or some other place...
...There's too much competition for babies...
...That's why some Korean social workers want to put a stop to foreign adoptions...
...This is my third time...
...Oftentimes, parents adopt kids because they want a baby...
...Indeed, they are quasi-governmental institutions...
...It is very, very disturbing" that Korea allows its children to be sent off to foreign countries, she says...
...They keep their personal belongings in three wooden closets on one wall above their feet...
...Racism is an issue, Hendrickson acknowledges...
...The Korean organization split from the parent organization more than ten years ago, but it still maintains close ties...
...Vincent's Orphanage in Inchon, one hour west of Seoul...
...A one-way coach fare from Seoul to Chicago costs $700, and the agencies receive a discount from the airlines...
...Foreign adoptions serve many purposes for the government...
...It's the highest it's ever been," says Rosenberg...
...Buy her a Rice Paddy Baby, a sort of Asian Cabbage Patch doll...
...the agency picks up the airfare for the escort...
...Of course, it's better if a child stays with its own family...
...All pay foster mothers about $80 a month to care for the infants, and 'It's really like dealing with a product...
...Certainly, the cultural identity of the adopted children tends to be sopped up by the sponge of American society...
...I kept hearing from adopting parents when they were applying for a child: 'Any race but black,' 'Any race but black.' The general rule is, the lighter the skin, the easier the time the kid has...
...Ae Ran Won can hold fifty pregnant women in its ten rooms, but when I was there in November, it had only thirty-five...
...Cooking with these spices will also carry the smells through the house...
...The adoption agencies in Korea collect about $2,000 a child right off the top...
...About 3,000 children were adopted in Korea in 1986...
...It's the fastest area of adoption growth in this country...
...Under photographs showing Nancy Reagan visiting Seoul Boystown, Dom Yano Park explains how the agencies work...
...But Amerasians now account for fewer than 1 per cent of the adoptees...
...They view it as a form of cultural genocide...
...Once they get to the United States, some Korean adoptees face problems...
...And in 1986, Holt Korea placed 924 children in American families through Holt International—accounting for 90 per cent of Holt International's placements from foreign countries...
...She, too, has seen many Korean adoptees...
...The government approves their budgets, scrutinizes each adoption application, sets informal quotas on the number of children to be adopted through each agency, and helps select the heads of the three largest agencies...
...They are so desperate to get babies to meet the demand, to fill the demand from the American side...
...Many of the babies come from unwed mothers' homes, about 250 a year from Ae Ran Won alone...
...They miss the baby and have a lot of pain...
...We want to let these children we serve come to know Jesus...
...Yet the numbers have increased dramatically...
...One of the agencies has its own maternity hospital and does its own deliveries...
...The amount varied widely...
...They are hired by the adoption agencies and the pregnant-women's homes to persuade mothers to give up their children...
...In one month, Son Mi Gu will go to her American family...
...It's crossed my mind," he says, but the agencies don't insist on strict applications of their religious standards...
...One social worker couldn't take it any longer...
...After all, you're rearing her as an American, and her big holiday, like yours, will be the Fourth of July...
...Wear a perfume that includes the flowers of her country and keep a potpourri of native spices in a basket on her bureau...
...Then, when mothers come to Boystown looking for their children, they are nowhere to be found...
...We are very concerned about the numbers," he says...
...She has dealt with the private nonprofit adoption agencies first hand, and she claims they care more about money than about the babies or the mothers...
...It serves as a sort of safety valve for the social problems of unwed mothers and abandoned children...
...Critics and proponents alike agree that Korea's patrilineal culture is hostile to domestic adoption and discriminates against unwed mothers and their offspring...
...The babies are crying...
...On balance, it's probably more humane to allow them to stay in business," he says...
...As a trained social worker," she says, "I could no longer continue to work in an agency where the basic concern was economic, with very little thought about the mother and the child and what was happening to them...
...This society is more accepting of Korean children than blacks...
...The domestic supply of babies up for adoption simply cannot keep up with the demand...
...They bring out brown envelopes with pictures of Americans...
...Ae Ran Won provides free room and board for up to a year, free vocational training, and as much as $100 to help the mother adjust when she leaves Ae Ran Won...
...Kim gave Holt a donation of about $250, and the agency paid for his one-way ticket...
...I find it hard to criticize anybody who's placing a kid overseas," he says...
...One out of four persons in Korea is Christian, and the Korean adoption law requires adoptive parents to "recognize the freedom of religion of the adoptive child...
...I don't like an agency giving out money to hospitals and clinics," he says...
...He is a direct and forceful man, and he's been known to terrify social workers from the adoption agencies with his gruff manner...
...In South Korea, however, the adoption business is so efficient that it perpetuates itself...
...Kim Chong Chan goes over the photos with them, explaining about their new parents...
...Black social workers in the United States strongly oppose the adoption of black children by white families...
...The dormitory is called Ae Ran Won, and it is one of a dozen homes for unmarried pregnant women in South Korea...
...they would solicit charitable donations from Koreans and foreigners to care for the child in Korea...
...But babies want to grow up, and when they get to be pubescent and adolescent, some people throw them away...
...United Flight 876 from Kimpo International Airport to San Francisco and Chicago is taking off with five Korean infants aboard, ranging from three to eight months old...
...But Korea is not like El Salvador, Mexico, or Sri Lanka, where a black market in babies seems to flourish...
...And the government could make a more aggressive effort at promoting in-country adoptions...
...Father Benedict Zweber sees things differently...
...We've seen some of them fail," Simmons says...
...Don't fall too much in love," the stewardess responds...
...If charity work is carried out so perfectly and mechanically in the business style," he says, "it loses the essence of charity...
...He just met the five infants that afternoon at Holt's headquarters in Seoul...
...And if hospitals send other babies over to Holt, "we'll give them a little help...
...They already belong to someone...
...The numbers were the most important thing...
...When they're young, they're cute and cuddly...
...Like other adopted children, they have to come to terms with their identity...
...The orphanage, which had 106 infants when I visited, turns over at least that number each year to Holt and other agencies for foreign adoption...
...At first, the women do not want to give up their babies...
...That's a 100-to-1 ratio...
...Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...
...We feel black children should be placed with black families in order to maintain their cultural identity and develop mechanisms to survive in this country...
...Then they charge American families $1,000 for transportation of the child to the United States...
...In Korea, it is more institutionalized, efficient, and above board...
...Koreans do not want to adopt a child unrelated by blood, and if they do, they don't want anyone to know...
...In 1986, South Korea had 18,700 orphaned or abandoned children...
...Often, it is several hundred dollars more...
...In six months, they have some language skills...
...After delivery at a hospital, the baby is taken from the mother and given to one of four adoption agencies licensed by the South Korean government...
...When the time for departures arrives, the babies are flown off to their foreign families, escorted by strangers who wait in line for their discounted airfares...
...It's very, very rewarding work," he says softly, "to take street kids whose chances of surviving the prison gates for more than five years are very, very small and then to see them go to college in the United States...
...It's too bad...
...Korea is by far the largest supplier of foreign babies for the U.S...
...Among Koh's suggestions: "Teach her about her country's history and heroes—but don't overemphasize them...
...These women supply the raw material for a peculiar South Korean business: the export of babies to the United States...
...Korea is exporting its own...
...I get bothered by it," he says...
...It is our personal desire that these children go into Christian homes...
...He lives and works out of a tiny office, just barely six feet high and with room for only a desk, a small filing cabinet, and a single bed...
...It's really like dealing with a product instead of taking care of the mother and child," the social worker told me, speaking on condition that she would not be identified...
...Any time there were children available for adoption, I was notified and I'd go to the hospital...
...For the agencies, it's a business," she says...
...He feels a personal tie to the country, since his brother, who fought in the Korean War, drowned in the Han River shortly afterward...
...There is a broad cross-section of adoptive parents, as far as a variety of religion goes...
...We have many children from unwed mothers, but few families who want to adopt," says Park Yon-Soo, director general of the Bureau of Family Affairs in the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs...
...You're talking dollars," says Robert Acker-man, the INS officer in charge at the U.S...
...The supply is so coveted that the Community Adoption Center in Madison, Wisconsin, has sponsored a "Healthy White Infant Lottery...
...We like to place with a Christian family, but we don't enforce that," says the Reverend Yoon Jae-Sung, secretary general of Holt Children's Services in Korea...
...Nam Kyong Hyun is less timid...
...He rejects too many applications," complains Dr...
...Son Mi Gu was born on December 8, 1986, and was abandoned in a motel that same day...
...families...
...That's why we send our children to foreign families...
...Holt especially stresses its fundamentalist, evangelical faith...
...It's time for us to stop it.' —Nam Kyong Hyun, an instructor of social work at the Methodist Theological Seminary in Seoul poem from a grateful American couple, praising God for sending such a wonderful child: "He picked up our baby Our daughter so fine And delivered her to us Via Northwest Airlines...
...It's better for those kids to get into homes than to raise them in orphanages in Korea," he says...
...But as yet, we don't have enough families, and it's better for a country to allow its children to seek families abroad than to have the children warehoused...
...Sometimes they have bad dreams...
...From 1976 to 1978, it even imposed quotas on the agencies...
...I haven't heard the government appeal to the people to adopt Korean children," says Kim Oknah of the Korean Association for Volunteer Effort...
...I see much potential for hanky-panky...
...This is home, at least until the babies come...
...That amounts to 10 per cent of the total adoptions in the United States by families unrelated to the adoptees...
...When they grow up, they're going to have problems with discrimination," says Simmons, who eighteen years ago adopted an Eskimo when the child was two-and-a-half...
...Before, agencies would work hard on their "sponsorship" programs...
...By and large, they've assimilated well," she says...
...This social worker had the unenviable task of taking the baby from the mother right at the hospital...
...Dom Yano Park opposes foreign adoption and objects to the practices of the adoption agencies...
...U.S...
...And they support orphanages, or operate them themselves...
...They come from Holt Children's Services, and they are headed for Baltimore...
...Many of the women passengers take turns consoling and cuddling the infants...
...embassy in Seoul...
...One has to question where humanitarianism stops and business begins...
...The four agencies, in order of size, are Holt Children's Services, Eastern Social Service, Social Welfare Society, and Korea Social Service...
...Our weekly staff meetings were all about numbers: How many babies did we get that week?' —A Korean social worker who quit her job with an adoption agency the agencies provide the food and clothing and other supplies free of charge...
...To a great extent, the social workers are the heavies...
...But after counseling, "maybe 10 per cent will keep them...
...Some clutch my blue blazer...
...That's inviting people to abandon kids...
...This is the social spur to foreign adoptions...
...families are adopting 6,000 Korean children a year, most of them infants, at a price of about $5,000 a head...
...It's so much better that they go...
...Marjorie Hendrickson has been a social worker for twenty-three years for the Lane County children's services department...
...She's so cute," one woman says...
...We suggest that it's not a good idea to keep the baby without the biological father," explains Kim Yong Sook, "and if the unwed mother and biological father are too young or too weak financially, we suggest that they give the baby up for adoption...
...While it allows Americans to adopt babies born in foreign countries,'it does not allow foreigners to adopt babies born in the United States...
...there's something terrible in this society the way it views blacks...
...On the other side of Seoul, at the end of a narrow open-air fruit and vegetable market in a poor section of town, a two-year-old boy pees in the street and a mangy white dog prowls about...
...Still, the problem of unwanted children persists...
...One sits on his lap and one on mine...
...The adoption business troubles Ackerman...
...One of the miracles of this program is the rapid and good adjustment of these kids into American culture," says Michael Short, an adoption specialist with Lutheran Social Services in Milwaukee, which places Korean children with U.S...
...For some of the Korean mothers, the experience hurts...
...What's more, he says, adoptions from Korea are more regulated and less expensive than adoptions from other foreign countries...
...All are occupied...
...And there are only 20,000 healthy children available for adoption...
...The agencies will cover the costs of the delivery and of the medical care for any woman who gives up her baby for adoption...
...He has heard allegations of mothers being bribed to give up their babies, but in his five years at the embassy he's never been able to confirm them...
...Just after delivery, they are very upset," says Kim Yong Sook, who was a social worker and an unwed mothers' counselor for eleven years for Holt Children's Services, the largest adoption agency in Korea, before joining Ae Ran Won...
...Two houses down is Sung Ro Won Babies' Home, an orphanage for infants under three...
...Some of these kids come in as very rough diamonds...
...Domestic adoptions are not that active," Park says...
...And some First World countries don't let their citizens adopt from abroad: Great Britain and Japan have laws against it...
...Koreans were very good to my mother and the family," he says...
...Beside adoption work, they all provide care for handicapped children...
...A tennis racket dangles from the ceiling, a crucifix stands above his bed, and a We Love Father Ben poster hangs over his desk...
...The agencies also use their influence with hospitals, and with the police, to acquire abandoned children...
...As a nation, we must look after the children who are born in this land," says Kim Oknah, president of the Korean Association for Volunteer Effort...
...The North American, Swedish, and Finnish people say there are kids who are being abandoned and neglected and need a home, whereas the representatives from Third World countries view it as a further example of exploitation of their natural resources...
...Payments are routine to maternity hospitals, midwives, and obstetricians, officials at each of the four agencies acknowledged...
...In fiscal 1986, they adopted 6,254...
...If the government had a special campaign on this issue, the Korean people would follow gradually...
...Korea is a very blood-oriented society," says Park, who oversees the adoption program for the Korean government...
...Almost half were sent abroad for adoption, 70 per cent of these to the United States, the rest to Canada, Australia, and eight European nations...
...Government has a double standard...
...The Korean government closely regulates the adoption agencies...
...branch...
...It's a crazy area," says Mike Jupp, the executive director of the U.S...
...You got big bucks here...
...The U.S...
...It has 300 permanent residents now...
...And finally, they solve a difficult social problem: What to do with orphans and abandoned children...
...North Korea, for instance, prohibits it...
...The agencies have all the connections with the hospitals and the police stations," says Dom Yano Park, who helps run Seoul Boystown with Father Aloysius Schwartz...
...Third, they help with population control, an obsession of the Korean government...
...The adoption-placement agency in the United States then charges about $1,500 for its services...
...One thing does bother him, however...
...We've probably sent 1,200 kids," he says, "and there isn't one who's having a lot of problems...
...In fiscal 1981, American families adopted 2,444 Koreans, according to the U.S...
...Like most of the homes for unwed expectant mothers, Ae Ran Won is supported by the Korean government, the adoption agencies, and charitable donations...
...Ten boys in the next room greet me in unison, then some call me "appa" or dad...
...He also has asked himself whether some of the religiously oriented agencies were viewing adoptions as a quick means of spreading the gospel, a head start on proselytizing...
...Park has some misgivings about the volume of foreign adoptions, especially since it has handed the North Koreans a propaganda bonanza...
...Some girls want to keep their children, but the social worker persuades her that that's impossible, so she gives up the child...
...Matthew Rothschild is the managing editor of The Progressive...
...But the program did not succeed...
...They are probably doing a service to the baby, the mother, and the adoptive parents...
...They have guilt feelings and avoidance feelings...
...The entry fee is $300, but the winner still has to pay $5,000...
...He accepts any children between the ages of three and fifteen...
...They do not receive payment for their babies, though medical expenses—including delivery costs—are picked up by the adoption agency that takes the baby...
...Some Koreans have similar concerns...
...I haven't seen anything on television, radio, or in the newspapers, and I've lived in this country all my life...
...The demand from the United States is fueling the business...
...Youngsters who come from different countries, who speak different languages and belong to different races, have several more hurdles to clear," says Lou Simmons, assistant director of the Lane County juvenile department in Eugene, Oregon, home of Holt International Children's Services...
...In Korea, a kid who is raised in an orphanage is considered a second-class citizen," he says...
...Two million couples would like to adopt in this country," says Jeffrey Rosenberg, the director of public policy for the National Committee for Adoption...
...These are his temporary quarters while a new building is being completed...
...Korean babies are "high-quality commodities," says one observer, who opposes the practice of foreign adoption but wants to remain anonymous so that he won't be persecuted by the Korean government...
...Rather than address the discrimination against unwed mothers and orphans, the society simply strips the one and exports the other...
...She was employed by one of the four adoption agencies for several years, and she was appalled by the increasing callousness and the competition...
...It's a very sad story, you know...
...In a way, he sees himself repaying that debt of kindness...
...First, they bring in needed hard currency—roughly $15 to $20 million a year...
...It would be very disturbing if they were buying babies from the parents," he says...
...It, too, is a supplier for the U.S...
...Not any longer...
...I would talk to the mothers, and ask them to sign the papers...
...Birth control is inexpensive and accessible in Korea, and abortions—though technically illegal—are widespread and accepted...
...Almost all are abandoned and brought here by the Seoul police," says Kim Chong Chan, the superintendent of the babies' home...
...It's very difficult for them to succeed in life here...
...Finally, she quit...
...Father Zweber was assigned to Korea in 1959, and he has been working with children in the Inchon area since 1965...
...But these identity problems are compounded for children adopted from abroad...
...Babies are in high demand...
...Adoptions from South Korea began in 1955 when Harry Holt, a born-again Christian from Eugene, Oregon, went to Korea and adopted eight war orphans...
...Molly Holt is founder Harry Holt's oldest living daughter...
...I'm just the escort," says Kim J.D., who seems frazzled by the responsibility of keeping track of the infants with two other Korean adults...
...An instructor of social work at the Methodist Theological Seminary in Seoul, Nam headed the Tai-Wha Christian Social Center for twelve years...
...62 per cent of all babies adopted from abroad are South Korean...
...Holt and Eastern are avowedly Christian organizations, and they make every effort to place Korean babies in Christian homes...
...All four provide and subsidize child care...
...Father Zweber has taken on the toughest tasks of adoption: placing older children and sibling groups...
...Add another $500 for legal paperwork and miscellaneous processing, and the total comes to $5,000...
...According to Holt International's 1986 annual report, the American agency provided $2 million in financial support to its Korean namesake...
...His only condition is that they come with the documents freeing them up for adoption...
...Because of the tight domestic market, Americans are increasingly looking abroad for children, and foreign adoptions are booming...
...In a couple of years, they are grade appropriate and Americanized...
...in fact, three of the four agencies run their own...
...Adoption-placement agencies in the The Korean kids do have some problems, but not as much as the black kids...
...The Eugene area, because of the presence of Holt, has had an unusually high number of Korean children...
...In a nearby room, eleven girls who are two-and-a-half sing "Kum Ba Ya, My Lord...
...We are opposed to transracial adoptions," says Janice Shindler, associate director of the Association of Black Social Workers Child-Adoption and Referral Service...
...In the 1970s, the North Koreans spoke ill about the numbers, about Korea selling its children abroad...
...If you adopt a child through Holt International, you will be asked for your statement of faith," states a Holt booklet, Adoption—A Family Affair...
...As alternatives, they say, unwed mothers could be supported by the government instead of shunned...
...She still works at Ilsan, the home for handicapped children that her father established in 1964...
...We make it a policy not to break up siblings," he says, adding proudly that he has placed up to five siblings with a single family in the United States...
...They have problems—all kids have problems—but they fit in pretty well...
...Dressed in a pink frilled shirt and white thermal stockings, she sits up in one of the twenty-four white crated cribs that crowd the room...
...Second, they relieve the government of the costs of caring for the children, which could be a drain on the budget...
...Virtually from conception, the adoption agencies have established a system of guaranteeing a steady supply of healthy children...
...The agencies then place the baby with a foster mother until an American or European family can be found to adopt it...
...sometimes it 'Babies want to grow up, and when they get to be pubescent and adolescent, some people throw them away.' —Lou Simmons, assistant director of the Lane County juvenile department in Eugene, Oregon was just enough to pay the mother's bus fare back home...
...I would pay the doctor for her medical fees and ask the doctor to pay the mother," she says...
...It doesn't take any work to place them...
...For the next decade, most of the children adopted from Korea were fathered by American soldiers who fought in the Korean war...
Vol. 52 • January 1988 • No. 1
