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| A photo of a Korean man, a Filipina woman and their baby is posted on the We Love Kopino website, which was opened to locate Korean men who abandoned Filipina women and their children. / Courtesy of We Love Kopino |
Posted photos raise privacy issue
By Kim Se-jeong
A website for locating Korean men who fathered babies with Filipina women out of wedlock and abandoned them is stirring a dispute over privacy issues.
For such children, often called Kopinos, finding their fathers has been almost impossible. Information was scarce about the deadbeat dads who fled to Korea to avoid taking responsibility. Or, the families were too poor to afford to track them down.
The website, kopinofather.wordpress.com, known as "We Love Kopino," discloses the faces of such Korean fathers, along with their names and the places where they stayed in the Philippines.
Some photos depict the men alone, and others show them together with the Filipina women or even with their children when they lived together in the country.
The names, ages and addresses of the fathers are often false, as many provided false information to the Filipina women while dating.
The photos were given by the mothers to "We Love Kopino," a civic group based in the Philippines which runs the website.
"I had a Filipina friend who was looking for the father of her Kopino son," said Koo Bon-chang, 54, who founded the NGO and started the website in April 2015. "The father left her with a fake address. She had no means to find him, and I wanted to help her."
He told her disclosing photos and names would be the fastest way to track down the fathers. His prediction was right. Calls began coming in, either from the fathers themselves or those who knew the fathers.
When a father contacts the group, it links him with the mother. The group removes the photo only when the mother consents. Since the website's opening, it has posted 42 photos and 30 Kopino offspring have found their fathers.
Many fathers of Kopinos are students or travelers who dated local women during stays in the Philippines. The country is popular among university students as an affordable place to learn English. Also, it is a notorious vacation place for sex tourists.
NGOs in the Philippines and Korea estimate the number of Kopinos at as many as 30,000. Tracking them all is impossible, and the Korean Embassy in the Philippines has been urged to keep count, but has not done so.
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| / kopinofather.wordpress.com |
Privacy infringement
The website, however, caused controversy over its infringements on the fathers' privacy because it makes public their photos.
"In fact, three people threatened to sue me," Koo said. "How could they? What they did to these children is incomparable to what I have done to them."
Koo said he has never been sued and is sure it will never happen.
Some families who located the absentee fathers are in a legal battle for childcare support. Koo's group provides assistance in cooperation with a Seoul-based law firm.
"Those women are so poor that they can't afford childcare costs," Koo said. "If the child is sick, it's impossible to get treatment."
He added that this happened in the case of his Filipina friend.
"Her son was sick," he said. "She had to dance at a club at night to pay for his treatment. While dancing one night, she heard that her son had died. I saw her weeping in the restroom. That was one of the saddest moments in my life."
In June 2014, Seoul Family Court ordered the father of a Kopino child to provide 300,000 won to the mother per month for childcare, the first such ruling ever in favor of a Filipina mother. Similar rulings are expected to follow in the future.
Koo said his organization does not follow up on these cases. "Our job ends when they find the fathers, and what happens after that is usually up to them."
Yet, he said he has seen life improving for many. "Many of the women get money from the fathers for childcare and medical treatment for their children."
