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The title of Adopted Territory reveals a new construction of
identity formed by contemporary communications technology and by
international conferences, an example of globalisation shaping an
evolving hybrid ethnic identity across the Asia-Pacific. Transnational
or intercountry adoption is intimately connected with issues of birth,
motherhood, parenting and women's bodies, and Elena Kim has made a
significant contribution to the study of a regional issue of gender
relations through her book. This topic is a very significant one, not
least because the community of overseas Korean adoptees worldwide
numbers 200,000. In almost all instances, adoption means relinquishment
of a child by a woman, and it most commonly involves the adoption of a
child by a male and female couple. There is an international political
dimension to this, as it almost always results in the movement of
children from the global South to the global North. Elena Kim's book
recounts the stories and lived experiences of an evolving cultural
community, the community of Korean intercountry adoptees resident in the
United States who seek to re-establish an association with the country
of their birth. This is a community undergoing change, and technology
has contributed to opening up the potential for contact as never before.
The development of relationships between adoptees has been facilitated
by regular conferences and by the widespread application of home-based
Internet usage among groups since the 1990s. The subsequent blurring of
national boundaries and the phenomenon that Peter Burke calls cultural
hybridity[1] has enabled South
Korean adoptees to create a new identity, and this identity has become a
vibrant and effective feature in the post-Cold War era of
globalisation.
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Adopted Territory is a book that captures the experience of
Korean-born adult adoptees and repositions them far away from earlier
representations that over-emphasise associations between adoption and
the helpless child. The dominant discourses of intercountry adoption
studies are primarily situated with birth parents, children as orphans,
or adoptive families for adopted children. In a field of research
dominated by social work and psychology some research (perhaps
unintentionally) represents intercountry adoptees as individuals who are
fundamentally 'unhappy' (p. 9). Adoptees are positioned within a
framework of adjustment which reduces the adoptees' world to one
dimension, a dimension based on the majority host society's well-meaning
but sometimes patronising desire to evaluate their positive and
negative experiences. Elena Kim's research positions intercountry
adoptees away from this binary logic of child rescue versus
exploitation, or happy adoption versus unhappy adoption, and allows them
to be seen as themselves.
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Kim initially demarcates the boundaries by placing the South Korean
intercountry adoptive experience within its historical and cultural
framework. From 1950 to 1952 Korea was devastated by war and in the
succeeding decade experienced poverty as the country underwent
rebuilding. War and poverty had meant that there were few resources to
support orphaned, illegitimate or abandoned children. Domestic and
external forces shaped the Korean intercountry adoption phenomenon. The
deeply entrenched Korean patriarchal cultural values rejected the
adoption from members of one Confucian genealogy to another, and a
patriarchal society rejected unmarried parenting. This was combined with
the well-intentioned actions of religious welfare groups and government
organisations and resulted in the institutionalisation of an
intercountry adoption culture.
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The second phase of intercountry adoption is arrival and settlement with
a family in a new country and Kim moves onto the intercountry adoption
experience in the United States. This is an experience of growing up in
what might be a caring and well-meaning society, but one that was
dominated by whiteness (and very often, homogeneity). There have however
been changes. While in the 1950s adoption routinely meant assimilation
of adoptees and cutting all links to their birth culture, for the past
thirty years adoption best practice has been to acknowledge and
celebrate the birth culture of children. A further change is the
horizontal interactions between South Korean intercountry adoptees
themselves who hope to re-discover a lost cultural heritage through
study of language and culture. Such associations serve to initiate the
evolution of a new cultural community of adoptees who are now aware of
their hybrid culture as they reach out to each other.
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In contemporary times one rite of adoption life experience has been for
intercountry adoptees to visit their country of origin upon reaching
adulthood. However, adoptees attempting to form relationships with their
place of origin are faced with a reality check when the much
anticipated return visit takes place. While the rhetoric of adoption
encourages such links to the birth country, there can be disappointment
and trauma when those in the birth country do not always respond as
adoptees expect them to, despite the public image of welcoming them on
'fatherland tours'. In South Korea there is ambivalence towards adoptees
by both the government and by individual South Koreans who are
challenged by the face to face encounter with returned adoptees (p. 97).
While intercountry adoption was once a practice that was either not
discussed or was regarded with quiet approval as a mechanism for solving
an internal Korean childcare problem, criticism of the adoption program
within South Korea grew in strength following North Korean and later
international denunciation during the 1988 South Korean Olympics.
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The process of reconnecting by South Korean intercountry adoptees was
given momentum by official South Korean government initiatives and since
the 1980s the South Korean government promoted visits as well as
legislation that formally gave South Korean adoptees an association with
their country of birth. This offered a variant of a South Korean
identity to intercountry adoptees, and was a deliberate action by South
Korea to reach out to this émigré community of United States-based South
Korean intercountry adoptees. Boundaries of identity have become
flexible in a twenty-first century world where Italian-Australians can
vote in Italian elections—and where Islamic Syrian-Australians may feel
obligated to fight in the Middle East. Thus, in a world of shifting
identity and moving borders, South Korean intercountry adoptees are no
different from others who can find a place in more than one society.
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The evolution and development of an identifiable cultural group is a key component of Kim's account, and the second part of Adopted Territory
explains how South Korean intercountry adoptees have become established
as a cultural minority in their own right. This is a fascinating
ethnographic study by an author who views this from her position as a
cultural informant and also from a worldview shaped by her own
experiences as the facilitator of intercountry adoption conferences and
gatherings in which groups of intercountry adoptees develop horizontal
identities based on their year of birth.
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Although the central focus of this book is on adoptees, this account
incorporates those who Kim calls 'activist birth mothers', and the
complexities of the interrelationships between birth mothers and their
children. A particularly sad note is revealed in the ambivalence
experienced by one adoptee who felt supporting the political activism of
his birth mother suggested 'negating [his] own existence' (p. 256). Kim
has the courage to discuss the balance between fetishized universal
motherhood and the trauma and anguish faced by women who have been
compelled to relinquish their children (p. 252). The South Korean birth
mother has traditionally been the hidden figure in the adoption
triangle, but as South Korea becomes wealthier, these women become ever
more significant as today's generation of South Korean mothers are
increasingly enabled to make socially supported and informed choices
regarding relinquishment. This resonates with the Australian experience.
While there are significant differences between state-based forced
adoptions in Australia in the 1950s and 60s and Australian intercountry
adoption, the national apology to adoptees in March 2013 highlights the
importance and sensitivity of this issue in the Australian context.[2]
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With its conclusion, Adopted Territory emphasises realignment
away from established images, in particular the humanitarian image of an
orphan as a victim who has been rescued. This re-affirms a particular
strength of Kim's account, which is the focus on adult adoptees—far too
often intercountry adoptees are seen as vulnerable children ('pitiable
adopted children') that they once might (or might not) have been, rather
than the adults that they have become (pp. 136, 236). This rebranding
of intercountry adoptees is a substantial contribution to ongoing
discussions of intercountry adoption.
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My personal reception of Kim's research was informed from my position as
having published on the migrant identity aspects of intercountry
adoption and also from involvement with intercountry adoption families.
From this subjective perspective, Adopted Territory gives a
fascinating perspective on the complexity of the intercountry adoption
issue globally, as well as in terms of specific aspects of the case
study of South Korea. intercountry adoption can include euphoria and
suffering, and intercountry adoptees may find themselves treated as
exotic public property by otherwise ethical well-intentioned strangers.
If Kim's words have educated those unconnected to adoption, and thus
helped to dispel ignorance and therefore ease the daily life of just one
intercountry adoptee, she has achieved success on a human level.
Community understanding of the nuances of intercountry adoption and
sensitivities regarding them has progressed tremendously since the 1950s
and for the sake of all adoptees, books such as this are so important
in telling the story of an experience that is far removed from the hype
surrounding the tiny minority of un-representative Hollywood celebrity
adoptions. In a world where established frameworks of race, citizenship,
nationality, family and identity have their own authority, this book
offers examples of how adoptees can present alternative frameworks with
which to understand their world and how they can challenge existing
social hegemony.
Notes
[1] Peter Burke, Cultural Hybridity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009.
[2] See for example Marian Quartly, Shurlee Swain and Denise Cuthbert, The Market in Babies – Stories of Australian Adoption,
Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2013; Denise Cuthbert and
Marian Quartly, '"Forced adoption" in the Australian story of national
regret and apology,' Australian Journal of Politics & History
vol. 58, no.1 (2012): 82–96; Patricia Fronek and Denise Cuthbert,
'Apologies for forced adoption practices: Implications for contemporary
intercountry adoption,' Australian Social Work vol. 66, no. 3 (2013): 402–14.
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