For filmmaker Sun Hee Engelstoft, who was born in South Korea in 1982 and sent to Denmark for adoption when she was 4 months old, it was shocking to witness the reality facing unmarried mothers in Korea.

“In the West and where I grew up in Denmark, there is this idea that all Korean women just easily give away their children because there are so many adoptees,” Engelstoft said during an interview with The Korea Herald.

Korea has sent more than 200,000 children abroad since the 1950-53 Korean War.

In the process of creating a documentary film, Engelstoft visited the Aesuhwon shelter for single mothers on Jeju Island and came to see that the decision to give a child away is not made solely by the child’s mother.

Her film, “Forget Me Not -- A Letter to My Mother,” shows how Korean single moms are pressured into giving their babies up for adoption even if they don’t want to.

The outbreak of the new corona virus has led to closed national borders and travel bans. This has meant that adoption processes have stopped. The government has therefore decided on a financial contribution of up to SEK 3.5 million to prevent adoption processes that have already begun from being completed.

There are currently three authorized adoption organizations that are responsible for the international adoption agency in Sweden. To cover the costs of the operation, an organization may charge reasonable fees to those who use the organization for international adoption mediation. The organizations are mainly financed with these fees. Due to travel stoppages and the adoption of adoption processes, there is no expected income, which means financial difficulties.

The Government has decided to give the Swedish Agency for Family Law and Parental Support the task of distributing up to SEK 3.5 million to authorized adoption organizations in order to prevent adoption processes that have already begun from being completed. The purpose of the grant is to ensure that children who have already been matched with adoptive parents can be reunited with their new family.

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Charkhi Dadri district administration monitoring case, says four siblingsa among 13 children who will get financial assistance

A four-year-old boy and his three elder sisters, aged 7, 11 and 16, of Jhoju village in Charkhi Dadri district lost their 40-year-old father, a former army personnel, and their 69-year-old grandfather, also a retired soldier, to Covid-19 in May. Their aunt, a housewife, is now looking after the four children at her in-laws’ house at Kadma village of the district.

Also read: 17 girls among 30 children orphaned due to Covid in Haryana

“My brother retired from the army in 2019 after his wife died of an illness. We lost our mother soon after. My brother and father were bringing up the four children but with both of them succumbing to coronavirus within eight days, there was no one else to look after them. They have no financial support to continue their studies. My eldest niece is a student of Class 12, and the youngest nephew is in kindergarten. I don’t have the heart to give them up for adoption,” said the aunt, breaking down. “My husband and I had also tested positive,” she added.

Charkhi Dadri deputy commissioner Rajesh Jogpal, who was transferred as part of an administrative reshuffle on Friday, said the administration is aware of the four children and they are among the 13 kids who have been orphaned in the district. “They are entitled to the financial assistance announced by the state government and the needful is being done,” he added.

The High Court has granted approval for the making of an adoption order for a girl without consulting her birth father.

The order was sought by the Adoption Authority of Ireland so the girl, now aged 18, could be adopted by her birth mother’s husband who has cared for her for some 14 years.

In a judgment published this week, Mr Justice John Jordan was satisfied to make an order under Section 30.3 of the Adoption Act approving the proposed adoption without consulting the birth father.

The evidence satisfied him, as a matter of probability, that the birth father has effectively made himself non-contactable, the judge said.

The background circumstances also proved that it was the father, who last saw his daughter in 2009 and appeared to have last spoken to her by phone on her birthday in 2014, who had ceased contact with his daughter and her mother, he said.

KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — The High Court in Sibu, Sarawak has recently decided that the government should remove “bin Abdullah” from the official records of the name of a child adopted in Sarawak, in consideration of the child’s best interests and in line with the adoptive Muslim parents’ wishes and request.

In the April 6 written judgment sighted by Malay Mail, High Court judicial commissioner Christopher Chin Soo Yin ordered that this child “should be named as intended by his parents”.

The judge ordered the Sibu district officer and the National Registration Department to amend the name of the child in the special register (or the official records of adoptions in Sarawak), certificate of adoption, birth certificate, by removing “bin Abdullah” from his name “in accordance to the wishes of his parents”.

In the interests of the child and for privacy reasons, Malay Mail is withholding the names of the adoptive parents as well as the adopted child. For ease of reference, the adoptive father and adoptive mother are referred to as A and B, while the child is referred to as C.

The judge’s order was for the child’s name in official government records to be changed from C A bin Abdullah to just C A without “bin Abdullah”.

Born in Ethiopia, they were adopted like thousands of other Ethiopian children. Torn from their family by a malicious association, they landed in French families who wanted to adopt. Now adults, they have been able to reconnect with their Ethiopian family.

These are stories marked by lies and concealment, where symbolic and physical violence mingle and entangle, split, troubled and broken identities. They were born in Ethiopia but were taken from their families, adopted through a Catholic association, the Children of Queen of Mercy.

Samuel is one of them . He arrived in France in 1996 with his two sisters. He remembers little of his biological parents, who died as a child. Before his adoption via the Children of the Queen of Mercy, he was placed in an orphanage.

I was not prepared for a departure for France. We were cleaned like cars to make us presentable.

When he meets his adoptive parents, very practicing Catholics, Samuel remains in the dark. With his two sisters, he arrived in Limousin in a family of six children, two of whom were adopted.

The government should as soon as possible investigate how Swedish authorities and adoption organizations have handled international adoptions to Sweden from the middle of the 20th century until today. This is the opinion of the Social Affairs Committee, which proposes that the Riksdag send an announcement, an invitation, to the Government about this. The Social Democrats and the Green Party have reservations about the proposal.

It has been three years since suspected irregularities in connection with adoptions from Chile were first noticed by the news media in Sweden. In Chile, a criminal investigation is underway into the abduction of children and irregularities in adoption.

Clarification of whether the adoption agency is needed

The Social Affairs Committee believes that the government should ensure that the adoption agency has functioned in Sweden. According to the committee, there is a need for an investigation of international adoptions to Sweden from, among other places, Chile since the middle of the 20th century until today. Such an investigation should also have an impact on how the work with international adoptions is conducted in the future.

The government should appoint an inquiry as soon as possible

Melbourne-born man Russell Moore has died in a US prison following a three-decade fight to be returned to Australia.

Moore, also known by his adoptive name James Hudson Savage, died at Apalachee Correctional Institution in Florida on June 2.

Russell Moore died in Florida on June 2.

Russell Moore died in Florida on June 2.CREDIT:DANIELLE SMITH

His US lawyer Richard Bourke, who spent decades working to help return Moore to his birth country, said the 58-year-old had a medical emergency.

Shyanne Klupp was 20 years old and homeless when she met her boyfriend in 2009. Within weeks, the two had married, and within months, she was pregnant. “I was so excited,” says Klupp. Soon, however, she learned that her new husband was facing serious jail time, and she reluctantly agreed to start looking into how to place their expected child for adoption. The couple called one of the first results that Google spat out: Adoption Network Law Center (ANLC).

Klupp says her initial conversations with ANLC went well; the adoption counselor seemed kind and caring and made her and her husband feel comfortable choosing adoption. ANLC quickly sent them packets of paperwork to fill out, which included questions ranging from personal-health and substance-abuse history to how much money the couple would need for expenses during the pregnancy.

Klupp and her husband entered in the essentials: gas money, food, blankets and the like. She remembers thinking, “I’m not trying to sell my baby.” But ANLC, she says, pointed out that the prospective adoptive parents were rich. “That’s not enough,” Klupp recalls her counselor telling her. “You can ask for more.” So the couple added maternity clothes, a new set of tires, and money for her husband’s prison commissary account, Klupp says. Then, in January 2010, she signed the initial legal paperwork for adoption, with the option to revoke. (In the U.S., an expectant mother has the right to change her mind anytime before birth, and after for a period that varies state by state. While a 2019 bill proposing an explicit federal ban of the sale of children failed in Congress, many states have such statutes and the practice is generally considered unlawful throughout the country.)

Klupp says she had recurring doubts about her decision. But when she called her ANLC counselor to ask whether keeping the child was an option, she says, “they made me feel like, if I backed out, then the adoptive parents were going to come after me for all the money that they had spent.” That would have been thousands of dollars. In shock, Klupp says, she hung up and never broached the subject again. The counselor, who no longer works with the company, denies telling Klupp she would have to pay back any such expense money. But Klupp’s then roommates—she had found housing at this point—both recall her being distraught over the prospect of legal action if she didn’t follow through with the adoption. She says she wasn’t aware that an attorney, whose services were paid for by the adoptive parents, represented her.

“I will never forget the way my heart sank,” says Klupp. “You have to buy your own baby back almost.” Seeing no viable alternative, she ended up placing her son, and hasn’t seen him since he left the hospital 11 years ago.

Demand outpaces supply in the private adoption world. As a result, middlemen can make huge profits, often with little oversight.

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