On a summer's dayin 1985 a seven-year-old boy sat alone at a crowded bus station in Seoul,sobbing as he waited desperately for his mother to return. Jo Youn-hwan waswearing a baseball uniform that his mother had bought him a few days before-theonly gift she had ever given him. She told him to wait for her before leavinghim at the terminal. So he did, increasingly terrified as day turned to dusk."I'll be a really good kid if only she chooses to return," hepromised himself, over and over again. "I'll be a really, really goodkid."
She never did. Jowas taken into South Korea's orphanage system, but even though the country wasfor decades one of the world's biggest exporters of children, he was alreadytoo old for most adoptive parents' preferences. Never chosen by a new family,he spent the rest of his childhood in what he describes as a vicious andrigidly hierarchical institution, before "aging out" at 20. Childrendied of curable illnesses and older ones abused younger ones on a daily basis,he said. "When a new kid arrivedand cried because he was scared, the ritual was to cover his body with ablanket and beat him with a bat until he stopped," he told AFP. Rooms andclothes were filthy, the food often rotten and inedible.
For years, hewondered what would have happened if he had been adopted. "My life wouldn't have been so full of'han'," he said-a Korean word describing unresolved sadness andresentment. But many of those who were picked ask themselves similar questions.
Better life?
Internationaladoption from South Korea began after the Korean War as a way to removemixed-race children, born to local mothers and American GI fathers, from acountry that emphasized ethnic homogeneity. More recently the main driver has been babies born to unmarried women,who still face ostracism in a patriarchal society, and according to historians,are often forced to give up their children. Most children remaininstitutionalized till adulthood as many South Koreans are reluctant to adopt.The country has sent some 180,000 children overseas over the years, mostly tothe US.
"This logicof rescue remained strong in the minds of Americans and Koreans alike: richAmericans could give a Korean child a better life than they could ever have inKorea with poor parents or a single mother," said Arissa Oh, whoresearches race, family and migration at Boston College in the US. Amongchildren placed in orphanages, the youngest, "most attractive and healthiest"were selected for overseas adoption, Oh told AFP.
The idea ofrescue "erased the consumerism" of international adoption, providingjustification for taking children from their country of birth, she added. Formany adoptees, that narrative has often led to a sense of alienation in theirnew lives. "My whole life I have been told-by adopters, colleagues and atschool-I should be grateful, and had I not been adopted I would've had to livein the streets as a prostitute," Hanna Johansson, a Korean adoptee inSweden, explained.
'That could'vebeen me'
Born in Seoul in1960, Korean-American filmmaker Glenn Morey was abandoned as a newborn, andadopted at six months by a white American couple. Growing up in Denver,Colorado, he was the only non-white student at any of his schools and struggledto fit in. "Being Asian made me different, and it made me the subject ofname-calling, bullying, and social exclusion," he said. "When you areexperiencing difficulties growing up on an everyday basis, ... you begin towonder what things would've been like in Korea where you would've looked atleast like everyone else."
A part of hislatest project, Side by Side, is an attempt to answer that question,interviewing 12 Koreans who "aged out". Two of them were in the sameorphanage where he stayed before being sent to the US. Both disabled, they toldhim of life on the streets, without a steady job, their next meal always inquestion and regularly encountering violence. One told him: "I just want to have a normal life." "Everytime we played it just ripped my heart," said Morey, who hasn't been ableto track down his birth parents. "By the same token that could've been me,and those struggles could've been mine."
'Why did shelie?'
Abandonedchildren can face lifelong stigma in the South where known family lineage isimportant. They face discrimination when applying for jobs and inrelationships, Jo said, some keeping their years in orphanages a secret fromin-laws, spouses and employers. Jo's case is, by his own admission, unusual. Hedid well academically and his orphanage director offered to pay for hisuniversity tuition.
He is now a taxidriver, married with children of his own, and has set up the South's first-everrights group for aged-out Koreans. A survey found that 93 percent of memberswere either convicted criminals, had been homeless or worked in illicitindustries. "This is our reality," he said. Last year he finally found his mother, but itdidn't bring him resolution.
He was told thathis father was an abusive gambling addict, and his mother sought to escape bymarrying another man, deciding that to do so she needed to hide her past. Josaid: "Why didn't she at least let me live with my father or grandmother?Why did she lie and tell my father I was dead?" "I'm still strugglingto digest this. It's been very, very hard."-AFP