Government gatekeeping needed in adoption

By Jane Jeong Trenka

In past decades, the process to adopt children internationally took about four months, and the result was often child trafficking; many children were sent away without their mothers’ knowledge or permission. Today, the process takes two or three years. These children experience a broken bond with their foster mothers in addition to their birthmothers.

One cause of these two extremes is the complete privatization of the intake process of children, which is completely controlled by adoption agencies. This kind of system is banned under the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, the main international treaty on international adoption.

The Convention has not been ratified by South Korea, even though it has sent more of its babies abroad for adoption than any other country in the history of modern international adoption. But ratification is one of 140 presidential projects ― including strengthening post-adoption services and stabilizing unwed mother families ― that must be completed by the end of Park Geun-hye’s term.

According to The Hague, a competent authority, such as a government body or a court, should determine whether or not a child may be adopted. This protects the child’s best interests by combating abduction and child trafficking and in Korea, could also speed up adoption for children who truly need it.

Today, the only government gatekeeping comes at the end of the long adoption process, when a judge gives permission to adoptive parents. Hopefully, the adoptive parents are qualified to raise the adopted child, because if they are not, the judge has little choice but to approve the adoption anyway; nothing else has been prepared for the child.

A good bill to properly implement The Hague Convention was proposed during the 19th National Assembly, but discarded at the end of the session. Yet a law still needs to be finalized by early 2017 because ratification is a presidential project. So the Ministry of Health and Welfare has been redrafting the bill in committee meetings that have been closed to the public.

The content of the new draft is of high concern. The committee wants to remove the main point of the old bill, which gave local governments the power to determine adoptability, and replace it with adoption agencies which again would decide the adoptability of the child.

The Convention may not be ratified with this kind of plan, as Article 4 clearly states that competent authorities must establish that the child is adoptable. Even an accredited adoption agency may not be considered to be a competent authority for the purpose of determining adoptability.

If the government does not take responsibility for gatekeeping but allows adoption agencies to continue to determine adoptability ― whether officially or in practice ― there will be no difference from how adoptions have been conducted for the past 60 years.

As of now, no one ultimately takes responsibility for the children of single mothers. The Ministry of Gender Equality ― which is in charge of single parent policy ― and the Ministry of Health and Welfare are not coordinating with each other. Therefore, it will also be extremely difficult for Korea to properly implement The Hague Convention’s principle of subsidiarity, which means that family preservation must be tried before determining if the child is adoptable. Government agencies should work together instead of passing the buck.

The ratification of The Hague must open up a new era of ethical adoption in Korea, not simply dress up old mistakes in new legal facades. Korea should request guidance from The Hague’s Permanent Bureau, as well as people affected by adoption, such as adoptees and single mothers. Transparency is urgently needed to ensure the proper ratification of the Convention.

Jane Jeong Trenka is president of TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea) and holds a master’s degree in public policy from Seoul National University. She is an adoptee and single mom. Write to jjtrenka@gmail.com.