Adoption: Secrets and Lies in the histories of overseas babies #NAAM

November 26, 201 Esther Han Reporter

 

Many adoptees struggle with displacement, loss and powerlessness, writes Esther Han

 

Stunned by the truth … intercountry adoptee Kim Myung-Soo as a baby with her older sister in Korea. Photo: Steven Siewert

UNTIL she was in her late 20s, Kim Myung-Soo believed she was put up for adoption because she was born out of wedlock to South Korean factory workers. She was four when an Australian couple picked her up from Seoul and brought her up in rural NSW.
But when the 30-year-old from Canterbury was reunited with her birth mother in Seoul, she was stunned by the truth. Her parents had been married, did not work in a factory, and her real name was altered to Myung-Joo.
She learnt her mother was forced to relinquish her in order to remarry after her father had died. Single mothers are shunned in Korean society.
"Most of the Korean adoptees I know have confronted problems in the search for their family," said the social work student. "Half records, false information, whole files missing. Could be something big, something small, but it's nearly a given something will be incorrect."