Adoptee critical of adoption policy

Shannon Heit poses beside a glass partition at the Korea National Commission for UNESCO building in Myeong-dong, downtown Seoul, Tuesday. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Kim Jae-won

Shannon Heit, 30, an adoptee who was sent to the U.S. when she was four years old, accused the Korean government of “selling” her and other adoptees to collect foreign currency to use for the economic development of the country.

Heit, who now works for Korea Journal, a Seoul-based English academic journal of Korean Studies, as an English copyeditor, spoke of the country’s adoptee “exports” policy over the last few decades.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, especially, during the Park Chung-hee administration, the main goal was economic development. In the end, children who were like me were sold to other countries,” said Heit during an interview with The Korea Times, Tuesday.

Heit, who also studies anthropology at Hanyang University, said even now the“adoptee industry” is prevalent here, making $15 million dollars a year. She said adoption agencies played a critical role in “exporting” Korean babies to other countries, reaping economic benefits from them.

“Salaries of their top CEOs reach more than 100 million won. They make a lot of money and what’s the product? The products are babies.”

She opposed adoption agencies running shelters for unwed moms because they want to “harvest” babies, by providing accommodation and food for mothers with no economic ability to raise their children.

Instead, she argued the government and social welfare centers should encourage unwed moms to raise their children by creating policies which prevent discrimination in the job market and support them in getting jobs.

Heit said she recently met her biological mother whom she has sought for years and learned it was her grandmother’s choice for her to be adopted.

“My mom said that ‘let’s not cry’ when we first met, but she cried when she was telling me the story.”

Heit also plans to marry her Korean boyfriend in October. She said both her mother and her would-be groom are from Busan which may help them communicate more easily.

She plans to keep advocating for the rights of adoptees here. She supports the Special Adoption Law which took effect in August 2012, intended to protect the rights of adoptees. The law requires biological parents of adoptees to register their children before giving them out for adoption.

It also requires tougher qualifications for people who want to adopt children, seeking to provide better circumstances for adoptees. The law will also ban adoption agencies from running shelters for unwed moms from 2014.

Adoption agencies have opposed the law and sought to change it, saying it causes unwed moms to throw away their babies, as they are afraid to reveal their identification.

Heit said that argument is baseless because most unwed mothers want to raise their children if they are supported to do so socially and economically.

She said that unwed and single moms will host events this weekend, celebrating Single Moms’ Day which falls on Saturday. They will have a conference at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, Friday, followed by a talk show titled Human Library which will be held at a cafe in Hongdae, Saturday.