Man fights for abandoned Kopino families

Korean gov’t urged to recognize victim children, Filipina women

By Kim Se-jeong

Koo Bon-chang, 55, moved to the Philippines 10 years ago for his children’s English education. There he has run a small business.

Koo is now an activist for Korean-Filipino children ― known as Kopinos ― abandoned by their Korean fathers.

It began with one of his friends who was trying to find her son’s Korean father. “The father left her a fake address. When she showed me the paper with the address, I knew immediately it was fake,” he recalled.

He founded “We Love Kopino (WLK),” an NGO, in 2015. Early last year, his Facebook postings of photos featuring the fathers triggered a nationwide discussion on the issue.

Earlier this year, together with his friends and associates, he started a new project, the Dream Come True. The members of this association work to provide the mothers in the Philippines with financial help so they can start new businesses. The association is currently raising funds in Korea.

“This will alleviate the financial burdens of the struggling mothers of Kopinos,” Koo said during a recent interview at his office in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province.

Yet, this will not solve the problem for good.

Koo said two points are critical in dealing with the Kopino issue. First, the Korean government should recognize the children and act to take care of them.

“Think about the comfort women. A big problem is that the Japanese government doesn’t want to recognize these women,” he said. “It’s the same thing with Kopinos. The Korean government doesn’t want to recognize them. Staying quiet about it, though, is not the solution.”

The second point is about prevention.

“A system is necessary to make the fathers of the children pay adequate child support. This will be the only way to force them to be responsible.”

What is happening to the Kopinos?

The Kopino issue was first raised in Korea in the early 2000s by NGOs. There is no accurate figure on their numbers. Koo said he estimates there are about 30,000 Kopino children across the Philippines. The WLK has come into contact with almost 3,000 Kopino mothers so far.

A big portion of the fathers were young students who went to the Philippines to learn English. The common narrative is this: A young man and young woman meet and fall in love. When the young woman gets pregnant, he gets scared and runs away.

Also, many fathers of Kopino children were long-term business travelers.

Koo said very few men, less than 10 percent, were tourists who get a prostitute pregnant.

The WLK helps the mothers track down the fathers in Korea and gets them to pay support for their children. Several NGOs in the Philippines and Korea work on behalf of the Kopinos.

The most difficult part is finding the fathers. This prompted Koo to go online with the pictures. Forty-five Kopinos found their fathers through the online postings.

When the mother finds the father, she files for child support through a Korean court. A DNA test is performed to confirm the man is the biological father. Koo’s organization helps the women through the full process of the legal battle.

There were a couple of court rulings recently, but “the fathers usually want to settle outside of court,” Koo said.

Putting the fathers' photos online had consequences for him.

In addition to threatening phone messages, “I was beaten by gangs in Korea and in the Philippines. The beatings were paid for by the fathers,” he said, as he showed his tooth implants.

One father filed for defamation with the prosecution ― eventually, nothing happened to him.

Mothers in poverty

Kopino mothers come from diverse backgrounds, ranging from having stable jobs with university degrees to cleaning tables to get by. As soon as they become single mothers, though, they are trapped in deeper poverty.

Koo explains it this way: “In the Philippines, those who get a job at a Seven Eleven convenience store often have university degrees. Their wages are low compared to wages in Korea. It’s impossible for these women to stand on their own.”

The mothers struggle to support their children. Koo said mothers easily fall into prostitution, and children, also, fall victim to prostitution and drug s. The child support money becomes crucial. The way child support is arranged is that the father pays a lump sum to cover his child’s entire childhood. The amount ranges from 5 million won to 70 million won, Koo said.

The problem is that very few mothers do enough to win the child support. Often, the mothers don’t have accurate information about the men’s whereabouts in Korea. That’s why he is starting this new project.

Abandoned by government

Kopinos are abandoned by the Korean government too.

“Some say the Korean government is not responsible for the mistakes individual citizens make,” Koo said. But, he thinks the government should reach out to these children because they’ve got no one to help them. He considers the Japanese government as an example. “For Japan, the government takes Japinos in and that’s the right thing to do.”

The Philippine government has been silent until last year when the top prosecutor from the Philipines asked the Korean government’s cooperation in dealing with Kopino issue.