scholarly journals THE PORTRAYAL OF A KOREAN ADOPTEE’S EXPERIENCE IN NICOLE CHUNG’S ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW: A MEMOIR OF ADOPTION

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Rizqia Nuur Maziyya
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
White American ◽  
Korean Adoptees ◽  
Birth Country ◽  
Save The Children

Transnational adoption has become one of the factors of transnational migration to Western countries, including America. Transnational adoption can be viewed from at least two perspectives, South Korea as the origin country and America as the targeted country. From the birth country, transnational adoption becomes a way to help the children from poverty, have a better future, and contribute to the birth country when they return. From the adoption-targeted country, this adoption is a humanitarian way to save the children from poverty, primitive way of life, and God’s blessing. One of the countries which regularly “send” the children to Western countries is South Korea. The children become Korean adoptees and mostly living in white American neighborhoods. Living with white Americans has shaped the Korean adoptees’ behavior and way of thinking same as Americans. Korean adoptees face various problems, starting from adjusting themselves in new environment, finding their cultural roots and identity, and struggling to find their biological parents. This study employed Phinnes’ ethnic identity development to make sense of the experience of a Korean adoptee called Nicole Chung in her memoir, All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir of Adoption. Through the discussion, it can be understood how transnational adoption programs become national agenda and big business field since it is not expensive to have children from other countries. There is also an assumption that the children will have better and happier life when they are taken to America and other western countries. However, throughout their life as adopted children in America, the children also find difficulties, especially in finding their identity.

Discrimination and Ethnic‐Racial Socialization Among Youth Adopted From South Korea Into White American Families

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha M. Schires ◽  
NiCole T. Buchanan ◽  
Richard M. Lee ◽  
Matt McGue ◽  
William G. Iacono ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Racial Socialization ◽  
White American ◽  
American Families

scholarly journals The role of ethnic identity in children’s selective trust in others

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyla P. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Social Preference ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Group Status ◽  
White Children ◽  
Selective Learning ◽  
Selective Trust ◽  
Chinese Canadian

The present research examined the roles of informant ethnicity and early ethnic identity development in guiding children’s selective trust across scenarios, comparing White and Chinese Canadian children with children adopted from China by White parents. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated children’s selective learning from two contrasting sources that differed in race (White versus Chinese) and spoken accent (native versus foreign accent). Experiment 1 (White experimenter) indicated that the White children preferred to learn from White informants when race was the only cue to ethnic group status; no preference was observed when race was pitted against accent. The Chinese and adopted children showed no learning preference. Children’s social preference for same-race peers was associated with a preference to learn from same-race informants. Experiment 2 (Chinese experimenter) had similar findings, except that there was no relationship between children’s racial preference and selective learning. Experiment 3 explored children’s selective credulity toward misinformation from a single source. The Chinese children were credulous toward both Chinese and White (native- or foreign-accented) informants but the White and adopted children were not credulous or skeptical, regardless of the informant’s race and accent. The present findings contribute to our understanding of how ethnic intergroup attitudes develop in children of different ethnic and social-status backgrounds, including minority-status children that reside with majority-status parents, and provide practical implications for real-world issues related to children’s eyewitness testimony in forensic contexts.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Kori A. Graves
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
World War ◽  
Birth Mothers ◽  
Adoptive Family ◽  
Displaced Children

The introduction provides a brief history of the development of US domestic adoption, and African Americans’ roles in US and transnational adoption in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the professionalization of adoption in the United States largely evolved around the needs of birth mothers, children, and adoptive parents who were white, African Americans’ efforts to care for orphaned and displaced children through formal and informal adoptions has been underappreciated. The introduction describes the ways African Americans adopted children in the United States and, after World War II, foreign-born children of African American soldiers. This approach provides a foundation for understanding how African Americans’ participation in Korean transnational adoption was similar to their domestic adoption efforts and their efforts to adopt World War II GI children. It also suggests reasons why efforts to increase the professionalization and standardization of Korean transnational adoption reduced African Americans’ participation in this method of adoptive family formation.

Asian North American Adoption Narratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Heijun Wills
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Transnational Adoption ◽  
The World ◽  
Asian North American

Transnational adoption from Asia began in the 1950s as an institutionalized practice. Since, hundreds of thousands of young people from countries such as South Korea, China, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines have been adopted and raised primarily in white families in places like the United States, Canada, and Australia but also Scandinavian countries and countries in western Europe. What began as a relief program for multiracial “war orphans” in South Korea has blossomed considerably and affects countries and people around the world; transnational adoption has become a popular industry that targets young people in countries including Guatemala, Brazil, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Haiti, and Russia. Today, transnational adoption continues to be a lucrative industry, though the practice seems to be dwindling in popularity and certain “sending nations” have recently declared its abolition (i.e., Ethiopia in 2017). The United States is by far the most prolific “receiving nation,” and is implicated as one of the greatest instigators, given that nation’s military presence in places such as South Korea and Vietnam in and around the years that transnational adoption expanded from those countries. While not nearly as many Canadians (in comparison to Americans) adopt from countries in Asia, adoptees raised in that country have unique experiences mainly due to vastly distinctive regionalism, that makes, for instance, the identities of Asian/Québécois adoptees uniquely precarious. Mexico is considered a “sending nation,” and since race and class factors rarely see young people both immigrating and migrating from the same nation under the auspices of transnational adoption (though it is not always the case; see, e.g., the United States’ history of sending black children for adoption to various European nations), it is mostly not included in conversations about transnational Asian/North American adoption. For decades, literature about transnational Asian/American adoption centered on adoptive parents, social workers, and pro-adoption activists. In the 1990s, Asian adoptees around the world began to recount their experiences of racial and cultural alienation, among other things, in life writing and poetry. Adoptees in North America were no exception. Asian/North American authors (as well as non-Asian writers) began exploring these subjectivities, too, usually in the context of examining racial, cultural, and national issues related to other Asian/North American subjects who were not subjects experienced. Across most of these representations—by adoptees and non-adoptees alike—the theme of personal and collective history is a notable focus, and adoptees are imagined as another meaningful example of the paradoxical and complex ways Asian/North Americans’ paper histories, immigration rights, and so-called model minorityhood have been levied. Transnational Asian/North American adoption continues to be a topic of fascination for so many writers and audiences and these representations cross genres, aesthetic modes, and narrative styles.

Three-Week Re-Education to Koreanness

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Prébin
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Korean Culture ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Language History ◽  
Birth Country ◽  
International Adoptees ◽  
Educational Programmes ◽  
The Government

AbstractToday, international adoptees are welcomed to South Korea by the government, adoption agencies and different associations. These institutions organise educational programmes called 'cultural programmes'. Relatively cheap, these programmes generally include a tour of South Korea, visits to welfare facilities, and classes related to Korean culture: music, language, history, cuisine, martial arts. International adoptees are seen as Koreans of the diaspora, and as such need re-education to discover their true identity. When they return to their adoptive countries, they will be able to represent their birth country accurately and therefore contribute to Korea's successful globalisation. However, what is at stake in these programmes is less political and economical than social. I argue that most of the activities can be viewed as rites of passage and that the entire programme is constructed according to that logic. As a problematic category, international adoptees must be redefined by ritualised actions inside South Korean society. Recent studies considered these ceremonies as mock rituals; however, this article aims to show that these rituals have a valid purpose although they lead not to integration but to separation: defining the diaspora continues to rely on defining what is outside the national territory.

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