Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hondaicivic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/world/asia/08mothers.html


SEOUL, South Korea � Four years ago, when she found that she was pregnant by her former boyfriend, Choi Hyong-sook considered abortion. But after she saw the little blip of her baby�s heartbeat on ultrasound images, she could not go through with it.

As her pregnancy advanced, she confided in her elder brother. His reaction would sound familiar to unwed mothers in South Korea. She said he tried to drag her to an abortion clinic. Later, she said, he pressed her to give the child up for adoption.

�My brother said: �How can you be so selfish? You can�t do this to our parents,� � said Ms. Choi, 37, a hairdresser in Seoul. �But when the adoption agency took my baby away, I felt as if I had thrown him into the trash. It felt as if the earth had stopped turning. I persuaded them to let me reclaim my baby after five days.�

Now, Ms. Choi and other women in her situation are trying to set up the country�s first unwed mothers association to defend their right to raise their own children. It is a small but unusual first step in a society that ostracizes unmarried mothers to such an extent that Koreans often describe things as outrageous by comparing them to �an unmarried woman seeking an excuse to give birth.�

The fledgling group of women � only 40 are involved so far � is striking at one of the great ironies of South Korea. The government and commentators fret over the country�s birthrate, one of the world�s lowest, and deplore South Korea�s international reputation as a baby exporter for foreign adoptions.

Yet each year, social pressure drives thousands of unmarried women to choose between abortion, which is illegal but rampant, and adoption, which is considered socially shameful but is encouraged by the government. The few women who decide to raise a child alone risk a life of poverty and disgrace.

Nearly 90 percent of the 1,250 South Korean children adopted abroad last year, most of them by American couples, were born to unmarried women, according to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.

In their campaign, Ms. Choi and the other women have attracted unusual allies. Korean-born adoptees and their foreign families have been returning here in recent years to speak out for the women, who face the same difficulties in today�s South Korea as the adoptees� birth mothers did decades ago.

One such supporter, Richard Boas, an ophthalmologist from Connecticut who adopted a Korean girl in 1988, said he was helping other Americans adopt foreign children when he visited a social service agency in South Korea in 2006 and began rethinking his �rescue and savior mentality.� There, he encountered a roomful of pregnant women, all unmarried and around 20 years old.

�I looked around and asked myself why these mothers were all giving up their kids,� Dr. Boas said.

He started the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network, which advocates for better welfare services from the state.

�What we see in South Korea today is discrimination against natural mothers and favoring of adoption at the government level,� said Jane Jeong Trenka, 37, a Korean-born adoptee who grew up in Minnesota and now leads Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea, one of two groups organized by Korean adoptees who have returned to their homeland to advocate for the rights of adoptees and unwed mothers. �Culture is not an excuse to abuse human rights.�

In 2007, 7,774 babies were born out of wedlock in South Korea, 1.6 percent of all births. (In the United States, nearly 40 percent of babies born in 2007 had unmarried mothers, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.) Nearly 96 percent of unwed pregnant women in South Korea choose abortion, according to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.

Of unmarried women who give birth, about 70 percent are believed to give up their babies for adoption, according to a government-financed survey. In the United States, the figure is 1 percent, the Health and Human Services Department reports.

For years, the South Korean government has worked to reduce overseas adoptions, which peaked at 8,837 in 1985. To increase adoptions at home, it provides subsidies and extra health care benefits for families that adopt, and it designated May 11 as Adoption Day.

It also spends billions of dollars a year to try to reverse the declining birthrate, subsidizing fertility treatments for married couples, for example.

�But we don�t see a campaign for unmarried mothers to raise our own children,� said Lee Mee-kyong, a 33-year-old unwed mother. �Once you become an unwed mom, you�re branded as immoral and a failure. People treat you as if you had committed a crime. You fall to the bottom rung of society.�

The government pays a monthly allowance of $85 per child to those who adopt children. It offers half that for single mothers of dependent children.

The government is trying to increase payments to help unwed mothers and to add more facilities to provide care for unmarried pregnant women, said Baek Su-hyun, an official at the Health Ministry. But the social stigma discourages women from coming forward.

Chang Ji-young, 27, who gave birth to a boy last month, said: �My former boyfriend�s sister screamed at me over the phone demanding that I get an abortion. His mother and sister said it was up to them to decide what to do with my baby because it was their family�s seed.�

Families whose unmarried daughters become pregnant sometimes move to conceal the pregnancy. Unwed mothers often lie about their marital status for fear they will be evicted by landlords and their children ostracized at school. Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, according to a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women�s Development Institute.

�I was turned down eight times in job applications,� Ms. Lee said. �Each time a company learned that I was an unwed mom, it accused me of dishonesty.�

Ms. Choi, the hairdresser, said her family changed its phone number to avoid contact with her. When her father was hospitalized and she went to see him with her baby, she said, her sister blocked them from entering his room. When she wrote to him, she said, her father burned the letters. Last year, about three years after the birth, he finally accepted Ms. Choi back into his home.

�That day, I saw him in the bathroom, crying over one of my letters,� she said. �I realized how hard it must have been for him as well.�






..........it's 2010 for godsake! NOT 17th CENTURY CHOSUN DYNASTY!

[PigeonFart]

Actually it's not the 21st century in Korea yet. You'll have to wait for a few generations to die off first, then things should improve.

[Captain Corea]

[hondaicivic]

Being asian-american, I can't help but feel embarrassed by reading this.

[Kimchifart]

[Steelrails]

Well at least they are putting forth a serious effort to correct the problem.

These things do take time and encouraging a culture of single motherhood is not an ideal solution either.

There are no easy solutions to this problem.

Perhaps encouraging a culture of "each Korean child is precious" but this can easily get co-opted by the religious/nationalist fringe.

Single parenting brings a wealth of problems into childhood development and tacit approval of it will only lead to those problems expanding.

Birth Control and Abortion? Declining population, plus the normal human inconsistencies that happen when kids and sex are involved.

You could be manipulative and institute some sort of Chinese style population control program that would somehow produce a market for children but that is utterly reprehensible.

Another option is to encourage linking between infertile couples and those who have children. One of my friends here was adopted by her Uncle because they could not bear children. In this case adoption was seen as a "family service", however she came from a stable family.

Perhaps the best would be to encourage adoption as a socially positive option.

Unwanted pregnancies are going to happen, and in sizable amounts. That is a fact of life.

Yes this policy of adoption brings national 'shame', but it is what's best for the mothers and children involved. Who cares if other countries see Koreans 'exporting' babies as shameful. In the end they made the best choice possible in bad circumstances. They offered the child to a fine, stable family and gave them a wealth of opportunities they might not have had. The mother who is not ready to raise the child is relieved of her obligation and the child is given the opportunity of life, and a life in a good home.

If that is 'shameful' or is to be mocked at by other countries I could care less. If some other country wants to look down for that, well pffft.

Making the decision to bear a child to term and give it the opportunity to live, in a stable loving family, all the while dealing with the social, emotional, and physical pressures that come with that, is not something to be ashamed of, it is something to be proud of.

That's what's needed, a shifting of perceptions. If Koreans chose as a society to accept that, in those terms, then they could hold their heads high, not down in shame.

EDIT- Adoptees, as bi-cultural people, should take pride in the mothers that bore them to term and risked the humiliations that came with such a decision. They should take pride in their adoptive parents who looked out and saw a child that they wanted to give a better life to. They should take pride in a culture in Korea that brought enough pressure not to have them terminated, and so given a chance at life, and they should take pride in a culture in their adoptive lands that was color blind and saw all children as valuable.

[T-J]

[redaxe]

Yeah when it comes to sex and procreation it's like all the beliefs that back home they taught you are just sexist, hurtful, ignorant, and wrong, are still out in full force in Korea.

This sort of thing is why after my first year in Korea I stopped involving anything or anyone Korean in my sex life.

They just have such deep shame issues.

[brier]

[jonpurdy]

[Stalin84]

[Vagabundo]

steelrails is right in that you won't want to "encourage" a culture of single motherhood.

That begets a whole batch of other problems. Witness the problems fatherless young black males have in the US.

That said, if a woman really wants to have the baby, that's her right.
Forcing the father to pay child support for 18 years. (well... I'm not so sure about the "justice" in that, if he's completely opposed to having it and it's completely her choice)

Considering the steep drop in Korean birthrates, you would think these xenophobic pure blooded Koreans would want more "Korean" babies, even if fatherless, because their future demographics look bleak.

In 30 years this will be a country completely full of adjummas.

[redaxe]

[Vagabundo]

considering that in Korean 'culture' the father is not referred to as my father but our father.


and considering that the oldest male, aka oldest uncle is called "big father", what's the real relevance of having an actual father anyways?

[Smee]

Yeah, because when it comes to single motherhood and intact families, the US really got it right. *cough*