This article is the first in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children it had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. ? ED.

By Lee Kyung-eun

If you are from South Korea and have had the opportunity to live and work in either the U.S. or in a Western European country, you may have come across a situation where someone says to you, "Oh, I have a friend whose brother/sister was adopted from Korea", or alternatively, "Do you know that our boss/friend has adopted a child from Korea?" Or you may have approached a person whom you thought was a native Korean, but after starting a conversation, discovered that this person has a very western family name and has said to you, "Oh, I am adopted.

In English-language literature, there are many books written on the subject of adoption, encompassing such diverse topics as: individual memoirs by adoptees or adoptive parents, investigative reports on unlawful and unethical adoption practices, birth family search stories, and so on. Many of the authors of such books are of Korean ethnicity.

In Western countries, there are many stories that connect Korea to the narrative of transnational adoption. Why? Because Korea is the country that has sent the largest number of children out of the country for adoption. The length of the period in which Korea has been involved in transnational adoption is more than 68 years and the total number of adoptees is estimated to be over 200,000. It is a singular record in the world history of adoption.

Luca Trapanese is a single gay man living in conservative southern Italy. Not the most ideal circumstances to adopt a child. Yet he has been the father of Alba, a girl who has Down syndrome, for almost four years. A video of the two together recently went viral.

“When I first saw Alba, I knew she was my daughter and I was her father.” After more than three years, Luca (44) can still be moved by it. “I knew we belonged together.”

ALBA

Alba was just thirty days old when Luca first held her in her arms. She was left in the hospital by her mother. Alba's birth mother didn't think she could handle caring for a child with a disability. She chose to give up the girl. “A brave choice that is regulated by law,” says Luca on the phone. “I have nothing to say about that. She has the right to choose. Most importantly, she left Alba in a protected environment.”

Luca is a lot less positive about the sixteen families that did not want to adopt Alba. “There is still too much fear of children with disabilities. It's a taboo.” The fact that the Italian government often leaves parents of disabled children to their own devices does not help either.

Colombia has opened its doors to adoption by Maltese same-sex couples, giving them a second option to adopt internationally.

The civil unions law gives local same-sex couples the same rights as in marriage, including the right to adopt, with the first such adoption taking place in 2016.

Until now, same-sex couples could only adopt children from Portugal.

Meanwhile, Ghana has joined the list of countries open to Malta for adoptions by newly-weds, since it will not require prospective parents to be married for any length of time before adopting.

Prior to the addition of these two countries to the list, the Maltese were able to adopt from six countries: Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, India, Vietnam and the Philippines.

In commemoration of the 2021 World Children’s Day (WCD), the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has urged governments at all levels, to adopt and enforce the rights of the child in all the 36 states of the federation.

Executive Secretary of the Commission, Tony Ojukwu who made the call in Abuja while marking this year’s WCD, noted that children deserve special attention and protection in order for them to fruitfully pass through the various stages of survival and development.

He said, “ it has become imperative for states who are yet to adopt the Child’s Rights Law to do so to avoid further violations of the rights of these vulnerable children”.

The Chief Human Rights Officer in Nigeria observed that “ the issue of out-of-school children, child labour, poor antenatal and postnatal care, child wandering, child abandonment, child denial of necessaries, Almajiri children syndrome, kidnapping, malnutrition, etc. still rear their ugly heads and therefore pose a serious challenge to the proper development of the child especially in states where the Child’s rights law is not in place”.

According to him, “ the impact of COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore the level of vulnerability of children in most parts of the world including Nigeria where a lot of children could not continue with their education as a result of poverty and deprivation because their parents or guardians could not afford an online system of education”.

Unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children have been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in the interior of southern British Columbia.

The grim discovery at the former school near the town of Kamloops was announced late on Thursday by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people after the site was examined by a team using ground-penetrating radar.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, in a statement.

Canada confronts its dark history of abuse in residential schools

Read more

KUALA LUMPUR, May 28 — Friends of university undergraduate Rain Lee have been pointing out that he does not look like his parents since he was young.

While his father is tanned, his mother is much fairer than him.

Lee, 20, said in secondary school, a teacher actually asked his mother point-blank whether he was her real child.

“Things boiled over when my father signed my university admission form.

The person in charge at the counter said my father should put himself as my guardian instead of father. All because his skin colour is different from mine.”

FOCUS - While India, bruised by the second wave, has exceeded 300,000 deaths from Covid-19, an increase in the number of orphans, exposed to all types of trafficking and exploitation, worries NGOs.

The baby was barely crying. The news shook India bruised by its second wave of covid-19: in Pune, in the south of the country, a child of a few months was found near the body of his mother, who died of the disease several days earlier, tells The Times of India . The neighbors had not dared to approach for fear of being contaminated.

In the chaos of the epidemic, what becomes of the children of the 300,000 deceased from covid-19? The authorities counted on Wednesday, May 27, 577 new children who lost both parents to the coronavirus and were placed in orphanages during the month of April. But that's without counting all those who vanish in nature. Illegal adoptions, prostitution, forced labor: in India, 50,000 children go missing each year. It was before the pandemic.

The situation is chaotic, people are afraid. They dare not approach a potentially sick child

Akancha Shrivastava

A woman is being investigated over allegations of medical child abuse for falsely ascribing illnesses to her 6-year-old adopted daughter, Q13 Fox Seattle reports.

Sophie Hartman adopted her daughter from Africa as an infant and over the last four years, the child has had over 500 “unnecessary” medical appointments and procedures, including a surgically implanted feeding tube and well as a cecostomy tube, to help flush the intestines, according to court documents.

"This situation is a case of medical child abuse,” a report from the child’s care team reads. "It is not necessary to know the possible motivation of a caregiver, only the outcome of the behavior. It is my concern that this pattern has resulted in unnecessary medical testing, medication, procedures, surgeries and debility of this child."

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Baby Farming, A Victorian Horror Story

Even the most sheltered among us have heard horror stories of foster care and adoption, but back before there were arms of government to protect wards of the state, there were orphanages. And before orphanages, there was baby farming.

“Baby farming” was a term coined during the Victorian Era to describe the practice of taking custody of unwanted children or those whose parents were unable to care for them, for a small fee. Essentially, a baby farm was a for-profit orphanage. The practice of baby farming was most widespread in urban areas of late-Victorian Era England, but it was also prevalent in North America and Oceania.

In an era when the most prevalent form of contraception was abortion, for working-class Victorian women who found themselves unable to care for a child, a less dangerous alternative was to surrender their newborn or, “put them out to nurse” at baby farms for a small weekly fee. Most women who chose this route assumed that their child would be properly cared for and receive a wet nurse, attention, room and board at the very least. After all, as referenced heavily in the writings of Jane Austen, wealthier women were also known to put their infants in the care of wet nurses – women who were not the childrens’ biological mothers, but who would breastfeed the children. The fictional character Grenouille of Perfume, as well as the titular character of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist were both residents of baby farms.

In 1834, The Poor Law Amendment Act allowed poor, unwed mothers to be given food, money, or clothing from the parish only if they went to live in the workhouse. According to the Ultimate History Project, because of the extremely dire conditions of work houses, “many of the women eligible for workhouse placement chose to place their children elsewhere so that they could continue to work and earn money – outside of the workhouse.”

Even the most sheltered among us have heard horror stories of foster care and adoption, but back before there were arms of government to protect wards of the state, there were orphanages. And before orphanages, there was baby farming.

“Baby farming” was a term coined during the Victorian Era to describe the practice of taking custody of unwanted children or those whose parents were unable to care for them, for a small fee. Essentially, a baby farm was a for-profit orphanage. The practice of baby farming was most widespread in urban areas of late-Victorian Era England, but it was also prevalent in North America and Oceania.

In an era when the most prevalent form of contraception was abortion, for working-class Victorian women who found themselves unable to care for a child, a less dangerous alternative was to surrender their newborn or, “put them out to nurse” at baby farms for a small weekly fee. Most women who chose this route assumed that their child would be properly cared for and receive a wet nurse, attention, room and board at the very least. After all, as referenced heavily in the writings of Jane Austen, wealthier women were also known to put their infants in the care of wet nurses – women who were not the childrens’ biological mothers, but who would breastfeed the children. The fictional character Grenouille of Perfume, as well as the titular character of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist were both residents of baby farms.