Note:
*While this website is mostly geared toward Adoptees who were adopted through the Korean Adoption Agency Korea Social Service (KSS), there is also information here which is relevant to ALL Korean Adoptees, regardless of their Korean Adoption Agency. Please read carefully to note what info. is purely relevant to KSS Adoptees and what is generally relevant to ALL Korean Adoptees.
Korean Birth Parent Privacy + Closed Adoption.
It helps to think of the practice of Closed Adoption like this when it comes to the barriers which prevent Korean birth parents from reuniting with the children they gave up for adoption, Korean Adoptees:
There are two hidden locks. The first lock is birth parent consent. The second lock is KSS Adoptee consent. For the most part, neither Korean birth parents nor KSS Adoptees realize that in order for a reunion to happen, BOTH Korean birth parents AND KSS Adoptees must give consent to be contacted. BOTH locks must be UNLOCKED. *(This is true not just for KSS Adoptees but for all Korean Adoptees).
There is a 3rd hidden lock: KSS responsibility.
It’s not by accident that few birth parents nor few Korean Adoptees do not know that BOTH (or all 3) locks must be unlocked in order for a reunion to happen. We are not often told that this is the case - by adoptive parents (who likely do not know), by our Korean adoption agency (KSS) or by our US or European adoption agencies (who do know but don’t often tell us).
Therefore there have been many cases where a birth parent came back to KSS or contacted KSS looking to find information on her or his “relinquished” child, only to be given little or no information and then sent away. Or there have been cases where Korean birth parent/s left a note in a Korean Adoptee’s file, but KSS never notified the Korean Adoptee that her or his birth parent/s tried to make contact. In some known cases, the birth parent has passed away before the Korean Adoptee has come back to KSS, only to realize that her or his birth parent/s had left a note in her or his file which KSS never told the Korean Adoptee about. Tragically in many cases, KSS Adoptees have not known that in order to be put in touch with Korean birth parents who seek to contact them, the KSS Adoptee must email KSS to give written permission to be contacted by her or his Korean birth parents.
This draconian practice has its roots in Korean privacy law and in the international practice of closed adoption. Unless BOTH Korean birth parents AND Korean Adoptees give consent to be contacted by the other party, KSS will never make any attempt to reunify birth family members with their “relinquished” children. The practice of closed adoption essentially protects adoptive parent privacy and prevents Korean birth parents from being in contact with their “relinquished” children and vice versa. Closed adoption intimately relates to the practice of Orphanization.
What KSS Adoptees also don’t often realize is that now that they are adults, and KSS no longer has to pretend that the Korean Adoptee was “abandoned” or “found with a paper-slip” or “memo” in her or his “clothings” in order to satisfy the Western definition of an “orphan” to get the child adopted to the West, KSS has been more willing to provide some KSS Adoptees with more truthful information from her or his Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary (which is different from the English Adoptive Child Study Summary), which neither the Korean Adoptee nor her or his adoptive parents were ever told about. The Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary is often the more truthful account of a KSS Adoptee’s biographical history that has been kept in the back of the KSS Adoptee’s file at KSS in Seoul since the time of her or his adoption to the West. While the Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary does not always contain birth parent name/s, it sometimes does. It may also contain the names of places where the KSS Adoptee was originally born or found. Please note that KSS often redacts birth parent names if they provide this form through email.
While not every Korean birth parent nor every KSS Adoptee seeks to be in reunion, it is important for KSS Adoptees to understand that just because she or he thinks someone has never looked for her or him at KSS, this may not necessarily be true. The KSS Adoptee may just have never been told of such attempts by the Korean birth parent to make contact, because the Korean Adoptee her/himself was not made aware that she or he had to give written consent to KSS for birth parent/s to make contact.
To initiate a Birth Family Search through KSS in Seoul and to request the complete Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary, and to give KSS permission for Korean birth parents to contact you, please read the entire page here.