• 영어영문학
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• 제55권6호
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• pp.1035-1056
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• 2009

Korean adoptee narratives have proliferated over the last ten years as adopted Koreans have begun to represent their own experiences of violent dislocation, displacement and loss in various forms of literary and artistic works, including poems, autobiographical works, novels, documentaries and films. These narratives by Korean adoptees have intervened in the current diaspora discourse to question further the traditional categories of race, ethnicity, culture and nation by representing the unique experiences of the forced and involuntary migration of adopted Koreans. For a long time, the adoption discourse has been mostly constructed from the perspectives of adoptive parents. Therefore the voice of adoptees as well as that of the birth mothers have not been properly heard or represented in adoption discourse. According to Hosu Kim, the U. S. adoption discourse, feeling pressured to deal with the stigma of the commodification of children, changed from viewing the adoptees as children who had been rescued from poverty and abandonment to considering them as a gift from the birth mothers. With the emergence of the gift rhetoric in transnational adoption, the birth mothers erased from adoption discourse have begun to be acknowledged as one of the central characters in the adoption triad. If Korean adoptees are the "the ghostly children of Korean history," the birth mothers are their "ghostly doubles" who "bear the mark of a repressed national trauma." Somebody's Daughter represents the female experiences of becoming an adopted child and of being a birth mother. In particular, the novel makes a birth mother, the forgotten presence in adoptee narratives, into a central figure in the triangular relationship created by international adoption. The novel historicizes the experiences of a Korean adoptee growing up in America as well as those of a mother who had suffered silently from feelings of unbearable loss, guilt, grief and from unforgettable memories. In addition, narrating the birth mother's story is a way to give humanity back to these forgotten women in Korean adoption history. Revisiting the site of loss both for a mother and a daughter through the novel is an act of collective mourning. The narratives about and by Korean adoptees force Korean intellectuals to reflect seriously upon Korean society and its underlying ideology which prevents a woman from mothering her own baby, and to take an ethical and political stand on this current social and political issue.

• 한국사회복지학
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• 제65권1호
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• pp.83-107
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• 2013

이 연구의 목적은 성인입양인의 생애경험을 이해하고자 하는 것이다. 이러한 목적을 달성하기 위하여, 이 연구에서는 한명의 성인입양인을 대상으로 한 심층면접, 관찰, 기록물 등의 방법을 활용하여 자료를 수집하였으며, 생애사 접근을 통해 분석하였다. 자료분석 과정은 우선 연구참여자의 생애 과정을 연대기 형식으로 요약한 뒤, 인생 이야기를 구체적으로 서술하였고, 연구참여자 사례에서 나타난 의미 있는 주제들을 파악하여 기술하고 해석하였다. 또한 앞서 분석된 내용들을 검토하여 입양현장에서 고려해야 할 개입이슈들을 파악하여 논의하였다. 주제분석에서는 '옹이 신세', '나비가 되려는 애벌레', '괜찮아요. 아니, 안괜찮아요', '내가 잘못한 건 아니니까', '사랑, 삶을 이끄는 결정적 요소' 등의 주제들을 발견하여 제시하였으며, 입양 시점, 사후관리, 비밀입양과 공개입양, 뿌리찾기, 성인입양인 대상 개입 등의 개입이슈들을 검토하였다. 이러한 연구결과를 토대로 성인입양인을 지원하기 위한 정책 방향과 실천 지침들을 제언하였다.

• 미국학
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• 제43권1호
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• pp.25-56
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• 2020

The essay examines two contemporary American plays that portray adult Korean American adoptees' return to South Korea: How to Be a Korean Woman (2012) by Sunmee Chomet and Middle Brother (2014) by Eric Sharp. While the existing scholarship on transnational adoption has discussed homecoming as a predominantly female experience of birth mothers and daughters, Chomet and Sharp suggest the differing ways in which the adoptee subjectivity is re-imagined in particularly gendered ways after homecoming. In these plays, adult adoptees' repeated, mundane bodily performances of Korean cultural norms illustrate how notions of femininity and masculinity are inscribed onto the body of adoptee individuals under the patriarchal system. Such performative construction of Korean-ness departs from the earlier theatrical representations of young, adolescent adoptees' homecoming that served as a symbolic rite of passage, a necessary process through which they would gain cultural hybridity and mature into cosmopolitan American-ness.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• 제52권4호
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• pp.410-416
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• 2009

In Korea, overseas adoption has been practiced for more than 50 years. Initially, overseas adoption began with the objective to provide permanent homes for Korean war orphans, including mixed-blood children. From 1953 to 2007, about 160,000 Korean children were placed worldwide through overseas adoption and approximately 70,000 children were adopted in Korea. During that period, Korea developed into one of leading industrial countries in the world and the family norms changed dramatically. Since 1989, the Korean government has made diverse efforts to increase domestic adoptions and to support adopted families through the revisions to Korea's Child Welfare Law. However, it is not enough to reduce overseas adoptions rapidly because the Korean government's economic support for adopted families is not adequate and Korean sentiments regarding adoption have not changed. Being an international adoptee is a unique experience, involving dissimilarities of race, ethnicity, and culture. Clearly, it is very important for us to focus on placing Korean children in the best possible environment. Therefore, Korea must make diverse efforts to reduce overseas adoptions and to encourage domestic adoption. First, Korean society has to try to reduce the number of children who need out-of-home care. Second, the Korean government and people should make an effort to increase domestic adoptions, including adoptions of disabled and older children. Finally, the Korean government and adoption agencies have to provide professional pre-adoption and post-adoption services for international adoptees and adoptive parents.

• 영어영문학
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• 제64권3호
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• pp.329-345
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• 2018

Sun Yung Shin's poetry collection Skirt Full of Black (2007) brings the author's personal history as a Korean female adoptee to bear upon poetic language in daring formal experiments, instantiating the liminal state of being shuttled across borders to land in an in-between state of marginalization. Other Korean American poets have also drawn on the experience of transnational adoption and racialization explore the literary potential of English to materialize haunting memories or the untranslatable yet persistent echoes of a lost home that gestures across linguistic boundaries, as seen in the case of Lee Herrick or Jennifer Kwon Dobbs. Shin however dismantles the referential foundation of English as a language she was transplanted into through formal transgressions such as frazzled syntax, atypical typography, decontextualized punctuation marks, and phonetic and visual play. The power to signify and thereby differentiate one entity or meaning from another dissipates in the cacophonic feast of signs in Skirt Full of Black; the word fragments of identificatory markers that turn racialized, gendered, and culturally contained subjects into exotic things lose the power to define them as such, and instead become alterities by departing from the conventional meaning-making dynamics of language. Expanding on the avant-garde legacy of Korean American poets Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Myung Mi Kim to delve further into the liminal space between Korean and American, referential and representational, or spoken and written words, Shin carves out a space for discreteness that does not subscribe to the hierarchical ontology of differential value assignment.

• 대한가정학회지
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• 제49권2호
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• pp.85-95
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate an attachment improvement program for families adopting an older child. The objectives and contents of this program reflected on the experiences of adopted parents and the characteristics of older-age adoptee children with attachment disruption. The program consisted of three components: parent-child relationship building, parenting skills enhancement for adopted parents, and negative emotions mediation for the older-age adoptees. The subjects of program were eight parent-child dyads. Differences between pre- and post-test data showed statistically significant improvements in the quality of parent-child relationships, communication levels with parents, and the parents' autonomic levels. There was also a reduction in the children's social problems. The implications of this study were discussed in terms of improving parent-child attachments in families adopting an older child.

• 사회복지연구
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• 제40권3호
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• pp.69-98
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• 2009

본 연구의 목적은 국내 공개입양의 입양아동들의 심리사회적 적응 수준을 알아보고, 그들의 심리사회적 적응에 영향을 미치는 변수들을 파악하는 것으로, 입양모의 양육행동과 입양모-자녀 간 의사소통의 개방성에 초점을 두고 있다. 또한 입양아동 및 입양모의 개인적 특성(6개)은 통제변수로 설정되었다. 연구대상자는 입양된 사실을 알고 있는 만 6세 이상의 입양아동 61명과 그들의 입양모 61명이다. 자료 수집을 위한 설문조사는 2007년 12월~2008년 2월이며, 본 연구는 전국규모의 방문 설문조사이다. 입양아동용 61부와 그들의 입양모가 응답한 61부가 각각 분석에 사용되었다. 연구결과, 공개입양의 입양가정에 있는 입양아동의 심리사회적 적응 수준은 행동적응의 6개 하위차원에서 미성숙의존 행동이 가장 높게 나타났고(평균값) 사회적 역량은 양호한 것으로 나타났다. 이들의 심리사회적 적응은 입양모의 온정양육, 입양모-자녀 간 일반 및 입양관련 의사소통의 개방성, 그리고 통제변수에 따라 집단 간 차이가 나타났으며, 입양모의 양육행동인 온정과 자율성존중, 입양모-자녀 간 일반 의사소통의 개방성, 통제변수(성별, 입양당시나이, 미혼모여부, 입양모의 학력수준, 입양가정의 경제수준)가 공개입양의 입양아동의 적응에 영향을 미치는 중요한 변수로 밝혀졌다. 이에 따라 입양실천현장에서는 입양부모교육에 대한 보다 전문적이고 개별화된 접근이 요구된다.

• 영어영문학
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• 제57권1호
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• pp.147-170
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• 2011

This paper elucidates the characteristics of transnational adoption, estimates the possibility of beyond-borders identity of transnational adoptees, and tries to analyze Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood in its context. Though it has been regarded as one of the most humanitarian ways of helping orphans and poor children of the world, transnational adoption, a one-way flow of children from poor Asian countries to rich white countries, has been operated under the market logic between countries. Transnational adoptees, who had been abandoned and forced to be taken away from their birth mother, and later, to fulfill the desire of white parents for a perfect family, perform an ideological labor, serving to make the heterogeneous nuclear family complete. Korean transnational adoptees, forced to transcend the borders of nation, culture, and ethnicity, experience racial conflict and alienation in white adoptive family and society. Their diaspora experience of violent dislocation creates frustration and confusion in establishing their identity as a whole being. When they return to Korea to find their birth mother and their true identity, Korean adoptees, however, are faced with other obstructing issues, such as language problem, culture conflict, and maternal nationalism. Finally, Korean transnational adoptees reject Korean nationalism discourse based on blood, and try to redefine themselves as beyond-borders subjectivities with new and fluid identities. Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood, an autobiographical novel based on her experiences as a transnational adoptee, represents a Korean adopted girl's personal, cultural, and racial conflict within her white adoptive family, and questions the image of benevolent white mother and the myth of multiculturalism. The novel further represents Jane's return to Korea to find out her true identity, and shows Jane's disappointment and alienation in her birth country due to her ignorance of language and culture. Returning to USA again, and trying to be reconciled with her American mother, Jane shows the promise of accepting her new identity capable of transcending the borders, and thus, the possibility of enlarging the category of belonging.

• 비교문화연구
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• 제21권
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• pp.139-164
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• 2010

Sung Yung Shin was adopted as a Korean infant to an American family. She is now one of the most important writers in Asian American literary field. This paper analyzes the characteristics of her literature, focusing on Skirt full of Black (poetry)and Cooper's Lesson(children's book). Sun Yung Shin uses collage in Skirt full of Black as an effective rhetorical device because it can express her experience as an adopted other in the multicultural American society. She rewrites the fairy tale of Swan Prince in the viewpoint of silence. For a yellow Asian adopted woman, speaking is suppressed. In the end, the attempt to escape from silence is the writer's resisting activity, and the rewriting of the tale is her questioning in place of the princess. I analyses Cooper's Lesson in the viewpoint of transcultural assimilation. Cooper's lesson is accomplished not by his white father but by a Korean settler, Mr. Lee. Cooper's family is a hybrid composed of white American father, Korean mother, and their half son. So this family has many complicated difficulties, though it's small. Mr. Lee who accepted a new language to establish a new identity teaches Cooper the importance of cultural assimilation, which is not a one-sided integration to dominant culture but an intercultural communion while sustaining each culture's singularity. Cooper learns that he should live in an harmonious and balanced life in a multi-cultural society while keeping his own subjective point of view.

• 사회복지연구
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• 제41권4호
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• pp.369-393
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• 2010

본 연구는 국외입양인들의 뿌리찾기에 영향을 미치는 요인을 밝히기 위한 연구이다. 현대적인 의미에서의 입양이 시작된 6·25 전쟁 이후 지난해까지 국외로 입양된 아동은 16만명 이상으로, 같은 기간 국내에서 입양된 아동에 비해 2배 이상 많다. 1980년대 초부터 많은 국외입양인들이 뿌리찾기를 위해 모국을 찾고 있으나, 이들 국외입양인에 대한 우리의 관심과 지원은 매우 낮은 수준이다. 그러나 뿌리찾기가 입양인들이 갖고 있는 보편적 욕구라는 점을 감안할 때, 이들의 뿌리찾기 활동을 지원할 필요가 있으며 그러기 위해서는 우선적으로 뿌리찾기에 참여하는 입양인들의 특성을 파악하는 작업이 이루어져야 할 것이다. 본 연구에서는 국내외 선행연구를 토대로 국외입양인들의 뿌리찾기에 영향을 미치는 요인을 밝히기 위한 연구모형을 구성하고, 이들 영향요인을 실증적으로 규명하고자 시도하였다. 자료는 보건복지가족부에서 2008년에 실시한 <국외입양인 실태조사 및 효율적 입양사후서비스 제공방안> 연구에서 수집한 자료를 이용하여 분석하였으며, 조사대상은 한국에서 출생하여 미국, 유럽, 호주 등의 국가로 입양된 16세 이상 국외입양인들로, 설문지는 영어와 프랑스어로 제작되어 온라인 설문조사 형태로 진행되었다. 총 290사례가 분석에 포함되었으며, 온라인 설문조사의 특성상 응답별 결측치가 다소 높게 나타나 다중삽입한 5개 자료를 이용하여 분석을 진행하였다. 선행연구를 토대로 입양인의 인구학적 특성(성별과 연령집단), 심리적 특성(정체성 위기 경험), 입양 및 입양부모 관련 특성(뿌리찾기 관심 시기, 입양 시 연령, 입양부모의 이혼여부, 뿌리찾기에 대한 입양부모의 태도) 등의 변수가 연구모형에 포함되었으며, 이 중 입양인의 연령, 정체성 위기경험, 뿌리찾기에 처음 관심을 갖기 시작한 시기, 입양 시 연령, 뿌리찾기에 대한 입양부모의 태도가 입양인의 뿌리찾기에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 즉, 입양인의 연령이 30~34세인 경우, 35세 이상인 경우보다 뿌리찾기를 시도할 확률이 높았으며, 살아오면서 정체성 위기를 여러 차례 경험한 입양인일수록, 입양 시 만 나이가 많을수록, 뿌리찾기에 관심을 갖기 시작한 연령이 어릴수록 뿌리찾기를 시도할 가능성이 높은 것으로 나타났다. 또한 뿌리찾기에 대한 입양부모의 태도가 지지적인 경우보다 입양부모의 태도를 모르는 경우 뿌리찾기를 시도할 확률이 높았다. 마지막으로 본 연구결과에 근거한 국외입양인 지원정책 및 입양실천에서의 실천적 함의가 논의되었다.