This article is the 21st in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Han Boon-young, a Korean who was adopted to Denmark as a young child, returned to Korea in 2004. Here she shares her perspective as an international adoptee on this nation's official birth documents. ? ED.

By Han Boon-young

Overseas adult adoptees have resettled in Korea since the mid-/late 1990s but not before the early/mid-2000s was there a critical mass return. I doubt that Korea was ready for this influx and we might not have been quite ready for Korea either. My motivation for resettling in Korea was largely driven by a general interest and curiosity about this mythical-like place: a country which grants me special rights and privileges solely due to my overseas adoptee status, but at the same time, also a place that does not recognize or protect my most basic human rights for the very same reasons.

The reality of these arbitrary and discriminatory standards of both inclusion and exclusion had, at the time, already fostered healthy expectations and rich opportunities within the adoptee community to engage with locale stakeholders. We learned from scratch and we learned from each other, with a collective understanding that our position in history is in itself political.

The history of overseas adult adoptees' political engagement with Korea, and advocacy for adoptees' rights, often begins with our inclusion in the Act of the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans, commonly referred to as the F-4 visa, in 1999. In the following years, Global Overseas Adoptees Link (G.O.A.'L) was able to hire its first paid staff, several major universities began to offer Korean language scholarships and various groups with specific political platforms came and went.

This article is the 21st in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Han Boon-young, a Korean who was adopted to Denmark as a young child, returned to Korea in 2004. Here she shares her perspective as an international adoptee on this nation's official birth documents. ? ED.

By Han Boon-young

Overseas adult adoptees have resettled in Korea since the mid-/late 1990s but not before the early/mid-2000s was there a critical mass return. I doubt that Korea was ready for this influx and we might not have been quite ready for Korea either. My motivation for resettling in Korea was largely driven by a general interest and curiosity about this mythical-like place: a country which grants me special rights and privileges solely due to my overseas adoptee status, but at the same time, also a place that does not recognize or protect my most basic human rights for the very same reasons.

The reality of these arbitrary and discriminatory standards of both inclusion and exclusion had, at the time, already fostered healthy expectations and rich opportunities within the adoptee community to engage with locale stakeholders. We learned from scratch and we learned from each other, with a collective understanding that our position in history is in itself political.

The history of overseas adult adoptees' political engagement with Korea, and advocacy for adoptees' rights, often begins with our inclusion in the Act of the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans, commonly referred to as the F-4 visa, in 1999. In the following years, Global Overseas Adoptees Link (G.O.A.'L) was able to hire its first paid staff, several major universities began to offer Korean language scholarships and various groups with specific political platforms came and went.

The children will start a new life in Italy under the loving care of the religious sisters.

On August 25, 2021, a plane from Kabul landed on the tarmac of Rome’s Fiumicino airport. On board: 270 passengers, exhausted after hours of anguish. In just a few days, their lives were turned upside down with the chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the Taliban’s lightning offensive.

Everyone remembers the images of the Kabul airport besieged by thousands of Afghans fleeing the oppressive regime of the Taliban. Amidst the most total confusion, the embassies present on site strove to organize themselves to evacuate the maximum number of people. The Italian authorities were hard at work, among others; between August 13 and 27, they exfiltrated more than 5,000 people from Afghanistan.

“We’re devastated. Everything is over. There is no hope in Kabul.”

Among the 270 passengers arriving this past August 25, 14 children and young adults in wheelchairs were the first to walk through the doors of Fiumicino’s Terminal 5. They were between 6 and 20 years old, and disabled.

For the first time, the organization that manages sperm donor data is willing to voluntarily reveal a donor's identity to their children. This is apparent from correspondence between this Foundation Donor Data Artificial Fertilization (SDKB) and 23-year-old Maria, who filed a lawsuit to find out who her donor father is.

Until recently, it was practically impossible for descendants of a certain category of donors, such as Maria, to determine the identity of their donor father. Now the SDKB has determined that Maria will in principle still be told who her father is. Other children of such 'B donors', whose details have been registered, can also receive help from the foundation. The SDKB speaks of a change of course compared to the old policy.

In June, the court in The Hague ruled that five other donor children had the right to know who fathered them, unless their father could demonstrate that protecting his anonymity is more important. Based on that ruling, the SDKB now believes that Maria is also entitled to such a balancing of interests.

B-donor

Maria's mother had herself intentionally inseminated in 1997 with the semen of a B donor known as 'K34'. As a result, her child would be able to contact the biological father from his 16th birthday. Later, however, K34 opted for anonymity, so that Maria could no longer find out who he is. Since 2004, due to a change in the law, only non-anonymous donations may be made.

The cradles and homes that housed abandoned children have moved from communism to democracy without the transition meaning a change in institutionalization practices. Long after 1989, the protection system continued to function as a camp. The current child protection framework was built on its ruins. We set out, in the Journal of the Decree, to understand this founding heritage. | Photo: Mike Abrahams

"In the village, they call me the one from the hospital ," says ZI, a teenager institutionalized in a home-hospital in Romania, in an interview conducted twenty years ago.

His testimony and the testimonies of other young people with destinies broken by the child protection system inherited from communism are recorded in a 2002 study, "Child Abuse in Social Protection Institutions in Romania", conducted by the Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child (IOMC ). The Jurnalul Decretului team is in possession of this document

ZI's life, reported dryly in several papers included in his medical record, began with his abandonment in the dystrophic ward of a hospital in the summer of 1983. And continued with a series of random transfers to communist state "protection" institutions. .

Romania was going through the Golden Age - but it was going through, especially, the era of Decree 770 which had banned in 1966, almost completely, abortions on demand. Against the background of the decree, an entire system of child protection had been developed. But protection was just a joke. Ceausescuism needed the abandoned to live at birth and that's it - otherwise, their lives didn't matter to anyone.

CAPE TOWN - The reopening of the country’s borders in the early 1990s has exposed South Africa and its population to way too many things.

Some of the phenomena are known and people talk about them daily.

These include the influx of migrants, coronavirus and currency fluctuations.

On the other hand, there are many positives like readmission to international sports and freedom of movement that have come with the opened borders.

Hidden to public knowledge are crimes gruesome acts that, when narrated, one can hardly imagine that humans are capable of performing.

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Gandhinagar (Kottayam): The four little North Indian girls who were rescued and adopted

by Malayali couple Thomas and Neena are all set to go to school. On Kerala Piravi day,

they will officially start learning Malayalam.

It was in the middle of a train journey, Puthupally native Thomas and his wife Neena met

the four girl children at Pune railway station. The abandoned kids were named Eyra Elsa

Thiruvananthapuram: On the missing of her child, Anupama S

Chandran has moved the High Court of Kerala with a habeas corpus plea.

The former SFI member has accused her parents of illegally detaining

her newborn that was separated from her at birth.

Earlier, a local family court favoured a DNA test, if needed, to resolve

"I think that at different stages of life, we need to continually adjust our commitments to find a balance that is aligned with our values and priorities."

Mia Dambach, Co-Founder and Executive Director for Child Identity Protection, on her work as a children’s solicitor in Australia, why ensuring children’s identity protection worldwide is important and the role of her many backgrounds in her daily life.

Dear Mia, you have studied at University of Sydney were you did a Bachelor in Law and a Bachelor in Commerce with a triple major in accounting, marketing and economics before doing your Master of Laws (LL.M.). How did you end up volunteering at a local children’s court during your studies?

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While I was studying law at the University of Sydney, I wanted to gain some work experience to confirm my desire to work with children. I contacted the local children's court closest to the University to see if they needed any administrative help, which would give me the opportunity to watch the closed proceedings. They offered me work, archiving and writing letters to the children following a decision by the children's court magistrate. This allowed me to get a first-hand look at the cases and types of sentences children were given for different offences. Eventually, they allowed me to be a children's court monitor/officer, which is the person who runs the court in terms of saying "silence, please, all stand" when the children's magistrate enters and leaves the court and also records the different proceedings. After a few months, one of the paid staff went on maternity leave and the Children's Court offered me a part time paid position that I could carry out whilst finishing my law degree. This experience confirmed my desire to work as a children's lawyer as well as to learn the different ways that children could be defended well in court.