Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies () 3 August 2010, Seoul, South Korea Edited by the 2010 Selection Committee: Kim Park Nelson (chair), Tobias Hübinette, Eleana Kim, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Kim Langrehr, and Lene Myong. e academic papers collected in this Proceedings are © 2010 by their respective authors. e remainder of this Proceedings is © 2010 by the Editors. All rights reserved. e opinions and ndings expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of or associated organizations. e romanization of Korean words and phrases follows the McCune-Reischauer system, except in cases where other romanizations are in common use. -: 0-9816537-1-5 -: 987-0-9816537-1-6 Cover design: Heewon Lee Layout: Peter Park Nelson Printed in South Korea Table of Contents Acknowledgements...................................................................i SymposiumProgram................................................................iii Introduction.........................................................................v , , () Silence, Citizenship, and Gender: e Status of Women and Intercountry Adoption in Korea.......................................................................1 Kimberly McKee Gis and Money Between Adoptees and Birth Families ................................19 Élise Prébin Unwed Child Rearing Korean Mothers and eir Experiences with Social Welfare Services ........................................................31 Min-Ok Yang and Boonyoung Han A Virtual Mother’s Tactile Love: Korean Birthmothers’ Online Community . 33 Hosu Kim , , To Acknowledge or Reject? A Mixed-method Study Examining Cultural Socialization and Attitudes about Adoption in Transracial and Transnational Korean Adoptive Families.............................................................49 Oh Myo Kim and Richard M. Lee Korean Adoptees’ First Trip Home: Toward an Understanding of Place in Relationship to Ethnic Identity .............................................................53 Deborah Napier Korean Adoptees in Sweden: Have ey Lost eir First Language, Korean, Completely? ..................................................................69 Hyeon-Sook Park Searching for Belonging: Korean Adoptee Returnees’ Use of Korean as A Heritage Language ............................................................83 Christina Higgins and Kim Stoker South Korean Adoption in Global Perspective.........................................97 David Smolin Minor Adoptee Literature: On Maja Lee Langvad’s Find Holger Danske . 117 Kim Su Rasmussen Memory Works: Re-imagining Loss in First Person Plural, Bontoc Eulogy, and History and Memory .....................................................129 Catherine Ceniza Choy and Gregory Paul Choy Korean Adoption Literature and the Anxiety of Returning ............................147 Eli Park Sorensen Right to Dene Family: Equality under Immigration Law for U.S. Inter-country Adoptees ....................................................................157 Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist Constructing a Global Koreanness: Representations of Adopted Koreans and the Korean Diaspora ............................................................175 Tobias Hübinette Adoptees’ Return from Korea: Post-travel Transition and Relational Dynamics . 195 Kimberly Langrehr Ethnic Ambiguity and Transnational Adoptee Identities in Children’s Picture Books . 213 Sarah Park “Loss is More than Sadness”: Reading Dissent in Transracial Adoption Melodrama in e Language of Blood and First Person Plural ..................................231 Kim Park Nelson NotesonContributors..............................................................251 Appendix A: e Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies CallforPapers...............................................................257 Appendix B: History of the International Korean Adoptee Associations () . 263 Acknowledgements e editors wish to thank everyone at IKAA for including our Symposium as part of the Gath- ering, and especially Liselotte Hae-Jin Birkmose, Tim Holm, Lisa Ellingson, Lisa Medici, and Sarah Kim Randolph. Many thanks to Peter Park Nelson for the layout and nal editorial assis- tance with the Proceedings, and to Heewon Lee for designing the Proceedings cover. We also gratefully acknowledge the translating team at Korea University as well as Professor Lee Ki-Su, Professor Choi Heung-Suk, Miss JJ Park, Mr. Kim Jong-Keun and Mr. D’Arcy Drachenberg for their support of the Symposium and this Proceedings. i Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies International Korean Adoptees Associations (IKAA) Gathering 2010 Lotte Hotel Seoul, South Korea. 3 August, 2010 9:00 AM Welcome and Introduction: IKAA Leadership Symposium Sponsors Kim Park Nelson 10:00 AM Session One: Gender, Reproduction and (Unwed) Mothering in Korea Moderated by Eleana Kim Kimberly McKee Silence, Citizenship and Gender: The Status of Women and Intercountry Adoption in Korea Elise Prébin Gifts and Money Between Adoptees and Birth Families Boon Young Han Unwed Child Rearing Korean Mothers and Their and Min-Ok Yang Experiences with Social Welfare Services Hosu Kim A Virtual Mother’s Tactile Love: Korean Birthmothers’ Online Community Session One Panel Questions and Discussion 11:50 AM Lunch Break 1:00 PM Session Two: Identity, Language and Heritage Among Transnational Korean Adoptees Moderated by Kim Langrehr Oh Myo Kim To Acknowledge or Reject? A Mixed-method Study Examining Cultural Socialization and Attitudes about Adoption in Transracial and Transnational Korean Adoptive Families Deborah Napier Korean Adoptees’ First Trip Home: Toward an understanding of Place in Relationship to Ethnic Identity Hyeon-Sook Park Korean adoptees in Sweden: Have they lost their first language Korean completely? Kim Stoker Searching for Belonging: Korean Adoptee Returnees’ Use of Korean as a Heritage Language Session Two Panel Questions and Discussion 2:50 PM Afternoon Break 3:05 PM Session Three The Politics and Poetics of Korean Adoptee Representations Moderated by Tobias Hübinette David Smolin South Korean Adoption in Global Perspective Kim Su Rasmussen Minor Adoptee Literature: On Maja Lee Langvad's Find Holger Danske Cathy Ceniza Choy Memory Works: Re-imagining Loss in First Person Plural, and Greg Choy Bontoc Eulogy, and History and Memory Eli Park Sorensen Korean Adoption Literature and the Anxiety of Returning Session Three Panel Questions and Discussion 4:55 PM Gathering Announcements/Close iii Introduction Minnesota State University, Moorhead, USA Since the First International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies in 2007, interest and pro- duction in Korean adoption studies has grown by leaps and bounds. Once strictly limited to empirical studies aimed at improving the adoption experiences of adoptive families, has now blossomed into a eld of study relevant across many academic disciplines, including cultural and literary studies, ethnographic and social inquiries, legal scholarship, and behavioral sciences. As interest in Korean adoption studies has grown, so have the frames of study both widened and deepened. Contexts of understanding Korean adoption have multiplied, though we are proba- bly still only beginning to comprehend the signicance of the practice of transferring the legal, family, national and cultural membership of Korean children to Europe, North America and Australia. Our eld is ever broadened by new voices, perspectives, and areas of inquiry; at the same time, it has also deepened as researchers have gone beyond gathering basic and preliminary and baseline data. Issues of adoptee identity relative to birth country and adoptive family placement continue to receive much interest: Kim and Lee’s work on the adoptive process, places new emphasis on racial and ethnic awareness among adoptive families. In addition, many new areas of interest have emerged within the eld. For the rst time, members of the Second International Sym- posium on Korean Adoption Studies committee saw research in process focusing on language acquisition among Korean adoptees: Park presents her ndings on Korean language acquisi- tion among adoptees in Sweden; and Higgins and Stoker explore the social barriers to language learning faced by adoptee repatriates in Seoul by connecting adoptee language learning and use to the signicance of Korean language as an element of Korean identity. Other researchers also respond to the expansion of Korean adoptee experience back to Ko- rea. Napier looks at adoptee place attachment aer visits to Korea, and Prébin examines the cul- ture of gi exchange between adoptees and their birth families by analyzing her interactions with her Korean family. As our understanding of Korean adoption experience deepens to include the experiences of birth families, there is also new and renewed interest in the Korean women who lose their children in the adoption process or who struggle as unwed mothers. Kim analyzes on- line expressions by Korean birth mothers. Yang and Han study the experience of single mothers who access services designed to support them in their choice to remain parents. McKee surveys the social and political positions of women within Korean society and connects these suppressed positions to the exploitation of Korean women in the global exchange of transnational adoption. e current explosion of cultural production from within adoption communities, especially from Korean adoptees themselves,