Images in this post are from my visit to Social Welfare Society in 2004.
When I was in Korea in 2004, I heard a “rumor” that the South Korean government, worried about the falling birth rate, was offering tax incentives for families who choose to have more than two children. This from the same country where in the previous year (2003), 1,790 children would be sent out for adoption.
So I was curious when I came across this article from the Chosun Ilbo: Korea’s Birthrate Plunges to New Record Low .
It seems the rumors are true.
According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, South Korean women have an average of 1.17 children – the lowest in the world, even lower than Japan at 1.29 and China at 1.8, despite the government-imposed one-child law.
In one article, the director of social policy research at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs was quoted as saying,
“We need to construct the appropriate social and institutional environment to raise the fertility rate in the country . . . For example, cash payments on the birth of a child and regular cash payments for every second and subsequent birth up to the age of 5, and an expansion of child care facilities.”
The Korea Times reports that
Twenty-three local governments are providing one-off payments of between 50,000 won to 1 million won ($1,000) for every newborn in families from their second child. Pusan and 56 other cities are providing higher incentives for families giving birth to their third child.
Some of the incentives offered in some cities are:
- A one-time 3 million won payment to families for every child after the first
- Giving 300,000 won to foreign women married to Korean men
- A monthly 200,000 won childcare fee to families for their first child, 300,000 won for their second, and 500,000 won for every child after the third * The ward office of Chung-gu, downtown Seoul, along with 70 other local governments and ward offices nationwide, gives gift certificates worth between 50,000 won to 300,000 won allowing families with newborns to buy clothes, diapers, baby food and other childcare supplies.
Hmm. What I’m curious about is whether the government is offering this kind of support to unmarried, single mothers? Or poor families who struggle to keep the children they already have?
So even though South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world, and, according to Unicef’s Innocenti Report card the lowest teen birth rates in the world, the country is still sending children out for adoption.
Photo: A baby care center at an adoption agency from my trip to Korea
Well, it seems this may be changing, according to the Korean Herald article “Lawmaker pushes ban on overseas adoptions”:
As the country’s birthrate keeps plunging, an opposition lawmaker came up with a desperate measure: an outright ban on international adoption of Korean children. Rep. Ko Kyung-hwa of the Grand National Party said yesterday she plans to introduce legislation that would prohibit adoption of Korean children by foreign parents outside Korea while systematically supporting domestic adoption. “Even as we struggle to counter a dropping birthrate and the aging population, the number of international adoptions is higher than that of domestic adoptions,” explained Rep. Ko. “To make a fundamental change, foreign adoptions should be banned and the government needs to work proactively so that we could raise our children here.” To promote domestic adoption, the lawmaker also proposed a state subsidy for the child’s foster care during the adoption process, an integrated database for adoption agencies and a reasonable adoption fee, among others.
I’m curious about the reporters choice to use the words “desperate measure” to describe the idea of banning international adoption. Isn’t international adoption itself the “desperate measure” South Korea felt forced to used back in the 1950s when the international adoptions first began?
Ok, so Made in Korea asked me to pontificate on the “social welfare” aspects of this. I’ll try my best.
I think intercountry adoptions from South Korea will indeed end in the relatively near future. Domestic adoption rates have been steadily increasing. In the city of Kwangju, for instance, the domestic adoption rate is now at 50% thanks to a lot of education and public awareness efforts of organizations such as BACK.
But, as Sun Kyo from BACK discussed with me, it is not just about babies – it’s about the whole Korean way of dealing with societal issues. When I’ve been to Korea, one of the things I’ve noticed is that in the public sphere, there appears to be no homeless, disabled or indigent people. Where are they?
They are in places such as Ilsan, which used to be the Holt agency’s orphange but now is an institution for mentally and physically disabled Koreans. I visited Holt’s Ilsan Center in 2000 and stayed overnight in the resident’s building – and immediately thought of what it must have been like for mentally and physically diabled individuals in the United States before the last two decades.
The thing is, Korea is not really that far behind where we, as the United States, were just a few decades ago. Young women who found themselves pregnant were routinely sent to “maternity homes” just as young Korean women do today. Although the biggest boom in maternity homes happened in the 1960s (there were approximately 300 homes then), I was able to find 80 maternity homes in the U.S. that are in operation today.
I was talking to a colleague just about a month ago, and he worked in a mental institution back in the day. Even up through the 1980s, he said, they were inhumane and crude places for people with mental health issues. It’s a markedly different story today, where the idea is to integrate children with severe mental and physical disabilities into mainstream society. I worked for two years doing just that – working in a residential treatment home for people with schizophrenia – and helping them be integrated in larger society.
My point is, that I sometimes believe we Americans are quick to judge and portray Korea (and other countries) as being so behind the times, forgetting that our own historical practices are only a generation or two behind us.
And I can’t mention it enough – we are still allowing our African American children to be adopted to Canada and Europe. How can we damn South Korean adoption practices, when our own country is doing the same thing? See:
Foreign Adoption of African-American Babies Grows
Born in America, adopted abroad
Foreigners Adopting More African-American Babies
Harlow's Monkey 