Trigger Warning: Possible Real-Life Relinquishment Scenarios for Korean Adoptees.

Please Note - This page is written with KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees specifically in mind, but the CONCEPTS broadly apply to ALL Korean Adoptees:

This site is called “Paperslip” because the English adoption paperwork of countless KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees says that they were “found abandoned” with a “paper-slip” or “memo” in their “clothings” (sic), or that they were found at or taken to a “police station”, and that they had “unknown parents”. 


The Korean Adoption paperwork of Adoptees adopted through the OTHER major Korean Adoption Agencies may have different terminology other than “paper-slip” or “memo”, but the concept is the same for all of the major Korean Adoption Agencies: HOLT, Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) - formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society (ECWS), and Social Welfare Society (SWS) / now Korea Welfare Society (KWS).

Yet countless KSS Adoptees (and Korean Adoptees in general) who were supposedly “abandoned” were actually NOT - rather, there were many possible real-life Relinquishment scenarios in which some, though certainly not all, Korean birth family members Relinquished a child in person to a Korean orphanage or Adoption Agency. Sometimes, though not always, these Korean birth family members left contact information, which the Korean Adoption Agencies often then hid or falsified. In countless cases for KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees, for example, KSS wrote that the child had been “abandoned” and found with a “paper-slip” or “memo” and had “unknown birth parents”. This is known as ORPHANIZATION, and it is why so many Korean Adoptees grew up often FALSELY believing that they had been “abandoned”.

In many Adoptees’ cases, particularly for those in the 1970s and early 1980s (and possibly in any year), any information left behind by the birth families concerning their identities was routinely and systematically falsified or hidden from the Adoptee and from her or his adoptive parents. However, everyone’s case is different, and unfortunately Korean Adoptees must take their adoption paperwork at face value until such time as it can be proven to be false, as in the instance of finding a birth family member who is able / willing to tell the Adoptee the real circumstances of her or his birth and Relinquishment. And of course, if the Adoptee had gotten accidentally LOST, then that Adoptee would NOT have been actually Relinquished. 

While certainly there were legitimately or deliberately abandoned children, the hard part for Adoptees is that almost all who were ORPHANIZED grew up believing that they had been ABANDONED by their birth parents - whether or NOT that was really TRUE. Since the vast majority of Korean Adoptees - particularly from the 1970s and prior - have long odds in finding their birth parent/s, most Korean Adoptees may live their entire lives falsely believing that they were “abandoned”, when in fact, there may have been a different narrative in real life. 

Let’s explore some possible real life scenarios of child Relinquishment in Korea - with the understanding that these possible scenarios are an amalgamation of various stories we have heard from Korean Adoptees over the years, and that the exact scenario of any given Korean Adoptee will certainly vary:

• Perhaps most commonly, a child was Relinquished for adoption by a birth mother or birth father, grandmother or grandfather, aunt or uncle, friend or other relative (henceforth collectively referred to as “birth family”) because the child was born to a single, unwed mother. It is well known amongst Korean Adoptees that “shame” surrounding a child born out of wedlock in Korea is a major issue even to this day. Under the reign of dictators who ruled S. Korea from the end of the Korean War in 1953 - the late 1980s, the focus was on purging the society of those who were seen as in any way idiosyncratic with a normative Korean family structure. For this reason, countless thousands of Korean Adoptees are likely the children of single, unwed mothers, many of whom were single factory workers who enabled Korea’s economic “Miracle on the Han River”.

• Particularly in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Korean War in 1953, mixed race children who were fathered by US or other foreign soldiers were seen as a painful reminder of the war. As well, in Korean society, children are considered the provenance of the Father, NOT of the Mother, particularly upon DIVORCE. The Korean government considered that mixed race Korean children who were fathered by foreign soldiers naturally belonged to their Fathers. As such, many Hapa / mixed race children were the earliest “first wave” of Adoptees who were adopted from Korea to the West. 

• In the instance of a DIVORCE, rather than the Mother taking custody of the child/ren as we are accustomed to in the West, it was the Father who had provenance over the children. As such, if child/ren went to live with their Father, and he remarried, oftentimes the child/ren would be given up for adoption. (The same often happened if a Mother remarried, if she had charge of the children).

• Anecdotally, we have heard many stories of abusive Fathers who drove away the Mother through abuse. (We have also heard many stories of abusive Mothers or other family members). With the huge gender inequality that still exists today in Korea, mothers often did not have much choice but to “abandon” their child/ren to their fathers in cases of spousal abuse or divorce. 

• So often, children who got accidentally LOST at a market, train station, on a crowded street, or elsewhere in a town or city were almost IMMEDIATELY taken to a police station, which almost IMMEDIATELY sent the children to an orphanage or adoption agency, instead of actively trying to find the child/ren’s parents. This is because the Korean government by policy was attempting to reduce overpopulation in Korea, and used overseas adoption as a method by which to do so. Anecdotally we have heard that the popular Korean TV shows of the 1980s and 1990s where Korean Adoptees would appear on TV in order to find their birth families were actually the Korean government’s response to pressure and complaints by Korean birth parents whose children had gone MISSING and had subsequently been sent overseas for adoption. 

• Another huge reason for the Relinquishment of children for adoption was a combination of poverty and preference for male children. For those of us who grew up financially comfortable in the West (and this was certainly not true for all Korean Adoptees), it is almost impossible to understand the severity of the poverty which faced S. Korea in the wake of the Korean War. Prior to contraception introduced in later decades, Korean women were having up to 6 children each, and Korean families traditionaly prioritized the birth of male children. This often resulted in what we anecdotally call “sixth girl” syndrome - where the last girl to be born was often given up for adoption, as the parents were hoping to have a boy. While this trend has reversed in more recent times - as Korean parents have realized that their male children tend not to take care of them in old age - the Korean Adoption community is mainly a community of females, with males being a minority of the population. 

• Many Korean Adoptees assume that they were abandoned or Relinquished by their birth mother, but often don’t realize that because of the communal living situations of most Korean families, it was often a grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, or other family member who Relinquished child/ren for adoption. What we also know is that oftentimes children were Relinquished for adoption by one family member who did NOT tell the other family member/s that the child/ren were going to be Relinquished for adoption. Anecdotally we know of countless stories of Korean Adoptees finding their birth families as adults, only to learn that one family member Relinquished a child without telling the other/s. A very common example we have heard of is when a maternal or paternal grandmother took a child to an orphanage or adoption agency without informing the child’s parent/s.

• Children who were born at hospitals or midwife / maternity clinics who could not afford the hospital bill were often incentivized to Relinquish their child/ren to the hospital or midwife / maternity clinics in lieu (instead) of payment. This is a common practice we have anecdotally heard of repeatedly. The hospital or midwife / maternity clinic then turned around and sold the child to a Korean adoption agency, who would either send a social worker over to collect the child/ren, or otherwise transport the child/ren to the adoption agency. This most likely varied depending on the organizations involved. 

• There were other darker circumstances which led to the Relinquishment of children for overseas adoption. 

• TRIGGER ALERT: Please do NOT read below if you are easily upset by the darker side of Korean Adoption. 

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• TRIGGER ALERT: Unfortunately there are some very dark aspects to Korean Adoption. Below are some of the darker reasons which led to the overseas adoption of a child. 

• Unscrupulous doctors or midwives would sometimes tell a birth mother that her child had died during childbirth. This could happen for example if the mother was unconscious during or after childbirth. The doctor or midwife would then sell the child to an orphanage or adoption agency. Anecdotally we have heard of this happening to several people that we personally know - these Adoptees have only been able to learn the true story when they have been able to find their biological parent/s, who assumed for decades that their child was dead. 

• In an even more horrific scenario, we know that at least in the 1990s, there is documented PROOF that unscrupulous doctors were performing late term abortions. Such children - IF they survived - were sent for overseas adoption. There is a pretty horrific video / news report on this horrific practice from the 1990s which we will not link here. 

• Anecdotally we have heard of many stories of Korean and Western adoption agency social workers making ‘raids’ of areas which were poor in an attempt to persuade poor factory workers to give up their child/ren, or to outright kidnap them from the streets. We have heard stories of Korean parents warning them about kidnapping in the 1970s and 1980s, and we even know one individual who escaped three kidnapping attempts by men in black cars.

• Kidnapping of children was not uncommon even into the 1980s and many such children were sent immediately to orphanages or adoption agencies. 

• Perhaps the WORST scenario for Korean adoption is below. 

• TRIGGER ALERT: Please do NOT read below if you are easily upset by the DARKEST side of Korean Adoption. 

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• In possibly one of the worst case scenarios of Korean adoption, children from the 1970s through the late 1980s were sourced from Brothers Home, a notorious concentration camp in Busan where the worst kinds of human atrocities occurred. Brothers Home was not the only concentration camp in Korea in the 1970s and 1980s - however, as far as we know, it is the only Korean concentration camp we know of to have had a “Babies Platoon”, which would periodically empty out due to the children being sent overseas for adoption.
  
  See: AP Exclusive: Abusive S Korean facility exported children