Orphan Evacuation or Big Business?: The Institutionalization of Korean Adoption

Korean adoption, which Oh argues has been crucial to the development of intercountry adoption, began in the 1950s in the aftermath of the Korean War. Moved by the plight of mixed-race "GI babies" and "full-blooded" Korean children alike, American adoptive parents embraced these children as their own, and American GIs, missionaries and adoption brokers supported the establishment and growth of Korean adoption. A number of important convergences in the early 1960s facilitated the systematization of Korean adoption: amateur adoption brokers and professional social workers came to agreement on the procedures and philosophies governing intercountry adoption; complementary U.S. immigration law and Korean emigration policy oiled the increasingly efficient machinery of the developing Korean adoption industry; and poor Korean families relinquished their children to Americans who faced a shortage of desirable (that is to say, white) children domestically. Korean adoption had first arisen in response to a perceived need to evacuate mixed-race Korean children. But long after it had "solved" the GI-baby problem, the practice persisted such that South Korea was annually sending thousands of children abroad by the 1970s and continues to be a top 5 sending country today.