Comforting an Orphaned Nation

Comforting an Orphaned Nation 1 2 Comforting an Orphaned Nation Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture Tobias Hübinette Stockholm University Department of Oriental Languages 2005 3 © Tobias Hübinette Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, Sweden; www.orient.su.se Cover: Park Kwangsoo, kwangsoo’s thought (Seoul: Sodamx), p. Printed by Akademitryck AB, Valdemarsvik, ; www.akademitryck.se Graphic design: Inge Skog; www.akademitjanst.se ISBN --- 4 It’s a shame that Americans call Korea the largest exporter of toys and tex- tiles and babies. We should be ashamed of ourselves and put a stop to this immediately…In Europe, in the United States, wherever I’ve been, I’ve seen our children. I am ashamed. Kim Dae Jung in Asia Week, April 6, 1990. Now you must forget your difficult past and renew your relations with your native country in order to work together toward common goals based on the blood ties that cannot be severed even if we wanted to…Your mother country is developing day by day to become a first-rated nation in the 21st century…I hope you maintain your Korean identity and help enhance the pride of the Korean people doing your best wherever you are. The First Lady Lee Hee-ho at the 1st International Gathering of Adult Korean Adoptees, Washington D.C., 1999. Korea is now recognized as one of the global economic powers in light of its economy ranking 12th in the world. However, Korea is not called an ad- vanced country, because it fails to meet international standards on various norms, such as the quality of living and care of the underprivileged. It is a shame that a substantial number of Korean children are still being adopted abroad every year, mostly by the United States and wealthy European countries…there are many who think Korea is poor, because they see Ko- rean children adopted around them even in these prosperous times in Korea…the nation should endeavour to prevent their adoption by foreign countries in consideration of its image in the international community. Editorial in Korea Times, August 8, 2003. 5 6 Acknowledgments , I would like to acknowledge all those who have Thelped me to accomplish this study. I am grateful for the grants I have received from the Chonbu Foundation, the Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation, the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the E & C Bergström’s scholarship at Stockholm University. I am also thankful for the scholarship from the Swedish Foundation for International Coopera- tion in Research and Higher Education, which made my visit to Korea during the autumn of possible, as well as the hospitality shown to me during my stay at Dankook University by its chairman Dr. Chang Choong-sik. In Korea, I also want to mention the children at the SOS Children’s Village in Seoul and their foster mother Chong Kun-hui, as well as Lee Chan-hyok and Kim Ae-ja in Koyang City who all have intro- duced me to the daily life in Korea. In Sweden and at Stockholm Univer- sity, my thanks go to Professor Staffan Rosén at the Department of Ori- ental Languages for hosting me, and to Dr. Ulf Björklund at the Depart- ment of Social Anthropology for guiding me throughout the first year, and who together with Dr. Björn Kjellgren from the same department gave valuable and constructive comments on the final version. I am espe- cially indebted to express my gratefulness to Dr. Lars Lindström at the Department of Political Science without whose help I would never have succeeded in finalising this study. Finally, my deepest gratitude also goes to Professor Pal Ahluwalia at the Department of Politics, Goldsmiths College, University of London, who, in a most generous and kind man- 7 ner, acted as an informal supervisor during the last year. Others, who have contributed to this study by providing me with material and informa- tion, are mentioned, thanked and acknowledged at relevant passages throughout the text. I am also grateful to the publishers for giving me permission to include these texts in this study and to all the anonymous reviewers who have commented on them, as some of the chapters have been published in dif- ferent versions in various edited books and refereed journals over the years. Chapter was included as “Korean adoption history” in Overseas Koreans Foundation’s special publication Community. Guide to Korea for overseas adopted Koreans, edited by Eleana Kim, that came out at the time of the rd International Gathering of Adult Korean Adoptees in Seoul, and a version of Chapter , “The adopted Koreans of Sweden and the Korean adoption issue”, appeared in The Review of Korean Studies, volume , number , June . Chapter , titled “The nation is a woman: The Korean nation embodied as an overseas adopted woman in Chang Kil-su’s Susanne Brink’s Arirang”, was published in issue , August , of Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, while Chapter was published under the title “Korea(n) divided: Third space existence in Kim Ki Duk’s Wild Animals” in volume , number , Novem- ber , of Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies. Finally, Chapter has been published under the title “The orphaned nation: Korea imag- ined as an overseas adopted child in Clon’s Abandoned Child and Park Kwang-su’s Berlin Report” in volume , number , June , of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Chapter has been accepted for publication in Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities in a forthcoming special issue on Korean cinema as “Imagining a global Koreatown in Sky’s music video Eternity and Lee Jang-soo’s feature film Love”. Last but not least, it is important to remember that the Korean adoption issue is not just a Korean affair as it affects more than Western countries. The migration of over , Korean children, starting from the end of the Korean War, directly involves millions of individuals, including biological and adoptive parents and relatives as well as extended family members and significant others such as spouses and children. All these people personally affected by Korean adoption have from the begin- ning been my primary intended readership, and I therefore dedicate this study to them and, above all, to the numerous fellow adopted Koreans 8 whom I have met and befriended in Sweden and Scandinavia, and during trips to North America, Korea and Europe, as it is mainly from them that I have received the continuous and necessary courage, support and inspi- ration to write this book. 9 10 Contents 1. Preliminary and introduction . Related and comparative studies . Ethnic and postcolonial nationalism . Postcolonial perspectives and processes . Reading contemporary cultural texts . . Korean adoption history . Early predecessors . Children of war . The adoption industry . New directions . Demographic overview . . The Korean adoption issue . The orphan exporting country . Adopted Koreans in the media . Kim Dae Jung and the adoption issue . Adoption in Korean popular culture . . The nation is a woman . The maternalisation of roots . The suffering and shaming of Korea . Korean nationalism intervenes . . Beyond Koreanness and Whiteness . The miserable life of an adoptee . The perilous act of passing . A third space existence . . The separated family . Representing family division . Korea’s abjected children . Healing a fractured nation . 11 . Envisioning a global Koreatown . The Korean experience with globalisation . Visiting the overseas brethren and sistren . The transnational Korean community . . Summary and conclusion . International adoption from Korea and the Korean adoption issue . Representations of adopted Koreans in Korean popular culture . Between reconciling with the past and imagining the future . References . Appendix . Table . Number of international adoptions from Korea, – Table . Destination by country of adopted Koreans, – Table . Family background of adopted Koreans, – Table . Category of adopted Koreans, – 12 1 • Preliminar y and introduction Chapter1 Preliminary and introduction Visualising an embarrassing and degrading practice1 this study goes back to the summer of when I Tvisited Korea for the first time as an adult adoptee, cordially invited by the Korean Embassy of Sweden to take part in the semi-governmental World Ethnic Korean Festival (Segye hanminjok ch’ukchôn) together with hundreds of others of Korean ethnicity living outside the peninsula, and including or so adoptees from countries like Norway, Denmark, Swit- 1 Source: Hankyoreh, February , . 13 Comforting an Orphaned Nation zerland and the United States. During the course of the festival, which turned out to be something close to a crash course in how to become a “real Korean” the proper way, the adopted Koreans, including myself, were constantly followed by journalists hunting for dramatic life stories, tearful reunions with Korean parents, and compelling pictures and footages of adoptees dressed in hanbok, eating Korean food with chop- sticks or practicing traditional Buddhist dance. After a while it was not difficult to figure out what the organisers wanted us to feel and the journalists wanted us to say, besides making us all uncomfortable with their intimate questions – that essentially we were nothing else but Koreans, and Westerners only on a superficial level even if we were also expected to be grateful to our host countries and adoptive families. Moreover, that we finally had come home to the Motherland, that we suddenly had started to appreciate Korean culture and love Ko- rean food as if this was what we always had missed, and that we eagerly wanted to search for and reconnect with our Korean relatives and, above all, the ever-present Korean ômma. It suddenly became clear to me that in Korea, contrary to the dominant perception in Sweden and in most other receiving countries in the West, international adoption was seen as something negative and bad, even if it paradoxically still continued, and that strong feelings of loss and sadness, and compassion and pity were articu- lated and present in the mediated spectacle.

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