Tracking children is impossible; they may go in and out of institutions, or also move throughout the country. And weirdly, my paper did not make it into the booklet in English. If you would like to read it in English, just go to the previous post on our website here. Since adoptees amended the Special Adoption Law in implemented August , we have been monitoring birthfamily search services offered by KAS and the agencies. We have not been pleased. Therefore, we have amassed three years of observations and our suggestions for improvements.
We appreciate all the help we have gotten from adoptees i n Korea and abroad, who have generously shared their experiences for the purposes of monitoring and reporting. Please come to a forum about this topic. The exact schedule with the names of the speakers will be added here once they are all confirmed.
To get there: Take Line 9 to the National Assembly subway station. Get out at exit 6. Turn around once you get up the escalator and go into the National Assembly complex. Go into the square building to the left of the main gate — NOT the green rotunda building. Once you get inside, you have to fill out a form and show your ID, and also pass through security. So leave some extra time.
Once you pass security, go up the escalator to Small Meeting Room 2. When overseas Korean adoptees participated in the process to revise the Special Adoption Law amended in and enforced in , we had two main objectives. They were:. Three years later, the first objective seems to have been somewhat accomplished.
However, regarding birthfamily search, the law has been a failure. This is especially disappointing since it is the only part of the law that deals with the adult adoptees who helped to change it. This system of open records for people adopted from seems to be administratively successful and will likely remain so unless:. The second part of the content related to birthfamily search was created keeping in mind the experiences of the adoptees who had returned to South Korea to search for their families of origin. On an individual basis, some adoptees had experienced very good service with their adoption agencies, and other adoptees had experienced very bad service.
Of course, this was unfair and disadvantaged adoptees whose social workers personally did not like them, or adoptees who had no connections to powerful people. We therefore aimed to standardize, regulate, and set forth guidelines with the goal of making birthfamily search fair and accessible to all adoptees.
The adoptees pinned their hopes on Korea Adoption Services KAS , which was established by the amendment as a semi-governmental organization.
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Unfortunately, KAS has failed to meet our expectations over the past three years. While some problems in birthfamily search may arise from a lack of budget, lack of manpower, lack of authority, or conflict with other laws as stated in the past by KAS, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the agencies , we find that some others seem to arise from a deliberate misinterpretation of the law by KAS and the agencies. For this reason, we feel it is necessary to revise the SAL again in order to eliminate any room for misinterpretation that leads to practices that victimize adoptees.
While the meaning of some of the clauses in the revision are disputed, the spirit of the law can be clearly seen if it is kept in mind that we adoptees participated in the revision of the law on our own behalf. In other words, any disputed clauses in the law should be interpreted from the viewpoint of the people most affected — the adoptees. We do not view birthfamily search as a charity or a courtesy.
Nor do we view it as a way to keep adoption agency workers employed and agencies in business. Rather, we view it as an integral part of our human right to identity. In order to show the necessity of revising the SAL again, we adoptees have gathered some cases from within our community.
Just as the first time we revised the SAL, we found a pattern of behavior by the adoption agencies and KAS that disadvantages adoptees. This behavior is not random; it has been monitored and reported throughout our community since until the present. Some problems we have pointed out over the past three years have been addressed to some degree. However, the SAL and its accompanying regulations still need to be addressed in order to strengthen birthfamily search.
South Korea: Birth Registration (in English) (Birth, South Korea)
In addition, the Ministry of Health has made efforts to improve current adoptions, which have been well covered by the mass media. However, it seems that the only people who care about the welfare of the adoptees who already exist are the adoptees themselves. The points I mention are listed in an effort to improve the mechanisms of birthfamily search services for people adopted before August The points are as follows:.
We believe that this law applies to all adoptees adopted under the Special Adoption Law, i. We believe that this is unreasonable, and this was certainly not our intention when we amended the law on behalf of ourselves. We believe that the adoptee should be able to receive their personal information if only one of the three criteria is met.
In addition, we believe that birthparents have the right to search for adoptees through mediation, especially in light of the fact that many adoptions were facilitated without the knowledge or consent of the birthmother and sometimes birthfather. We believe that this is an extremely moderate and standard approach. We believe that a non-response should mean that a parent implies consent. In other words, if the adoption agencies and KAS do not want to reunite an adoptee with his or her birthparents, it should be the responsibility of KAS and the agency to find the birthparents and obtain their official, explicit negative response.
Ideally, a central DNA bank should be constructed that matches people in the same way that 23andMe can match people. We believe that if the information is really false, it should be no problem for the adoptee to have it. We believe that birthfamily search should be expanded so that the adoptee may have a chance to connect with biological family even if the parents have passed away.
We believe that the adoptee should not be regarded by privacy laws as a complete stranger with no relationship to their biological parents. We believe that there is a conflict of interest in the adoption agencies managing post-adoption services for adult adoptees because as new adoptions of babies decrease, the funds for post-adoptions services departments also decrease. We therefore believe that post-adoption services should be handled by KAS rather than the adoption agencies.
Furthermore, we believe that adoptees have the right to coordinated services from competent workers. We believe that the social workers at agencies have too much personal discretion and can create emotional trauma and confusion for adoptees by misinforming them about the law.
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This is another reason why we are distrustful of adoption agencies managing post-adoption services. We believe that KAS should correctly inform adoptees of their rights under the SAL, and of course we as civil society organizations working within our own community are willing to help with this. We believe that all physical and electronic records of adoption processed by adoption agencies should be collected and managed by KAS, no matter what the state of their business is.
- The Straits Times.
- social security death index searches;
- Seoul Sisters and Brothers - 23andMe Blog.
- free cell phoen numbers look up;
We also believe that the adoptee has the right to know who is in possession of their personal information. However, according to information from the National Audit, KAS reported that from , there were 1, cases where a letter or telegram was sent to a birthparent, but there was no reply. In other words, there are far more non-responses than either positive or negative responses.
The adoptees think that is problematic, with details as follows:. We believe that a standardized letter and form should be used for birthparents to indicate consent or disconsent to the disclosure of information. We believe that in cases where the birthparent cannot be contacted, KAS or the adoption agency should show receipts or records to the adoptee in order to prove that they have actually tried by doing this work. We believe that potential matches should be offered support for DNA testing even if they do not believe that they are the parent of the searching adoptee.
That would at least give the adoptee peace of mind knowing that the right person has been found. We believe that parents of adoptees should be contacted directly and personally to protect their privacy and safety, regardless of their past or current marital status.
We believe that every adoptee should have the right to send a letter to the person being contacted in order to say what they want to the birthparent, including the reason why they want to meet. Birthparents should also be supported by social workers to help reincorporate the adoptee into the family.
- Adoptees Search the World for Their Roots.
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- ADMISSIONS.
We believe that after a reasonable amount of time after an application, a non-response should be interpreted as permission for the adoptee to access their full information. If KAS and the adoption agencies would like to absolutely verify whether or not the parent would like to give the information, then we believe it is the responsibility of KAS and the adoption agencies to actively work to find the parents, not just passively send telegrams.
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We also fully understand this regrettable situation. It takes this kind of effort. When you view it like this, the reality is that it takes an average of 86 days, which is a problem. However, when KAS was asked to submit records about this search activity that involves leaving the office, it was found that this kind of activity was conducted by a KAS post-adoption services employee only once in the past three years.
Only once — for one adoptee. The search was successful and resulted in registered mail being sent to the mother only 33 days after the adoptee applied to KAS for birthfamily search.