International adoptions rise on negative perception

By Lee Suh-yoon

With the number of domestic adoptions hitting a record low, the number of Korean children sent abroad for international adoption is rising again.

Adoptions remain taboo in Korea – a society where blood ties still take precedence over all other relationships.

This is why the country still sends hundreds of children overseas for adoption every year, even though the economy faces a declining birthrate.

Only 465 Korean children were adopted domestically in 2017, according to data by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on May 11 – the “Day of Adoption” in Korea.

Adoptions of Korean children by overseas families, however, increased by 64, or 20 percent, last year.

This is making Asia's fourth-largest economy regain an unfavorable title – a “baby exporter.”

It has one of the highest rates of elderly suicide, poverty, alcohol consumption, traffic accidents and inequality and lowest birthrates among OECD member nations.

About 27,500 babies were born in February, down 9.8 percent, from 32,100 a year earlier, according to data by Statistics Korea last month.

Monthly births have decreased every month since December 2015.

Before 2007, the number of Korean children being sent overseas for international adoptions far exceeded that of domestic adoptions.

The number of international adoptions fell from 1,899 in 2006 to 1,264 in 2007 after the government implemented laws requiring all potential adoptees to be available for domestic adoptions first for at least five months.

That number dropped further in 2012, following the implementation of another law requiring a court approval for adoptions.

Domestic adoptions have fallen to less than a third of what they used to be in 2011 – unable to fill in the gap left by decreasing international adoptions.

The court approval process allows for more rigorous background checks of potential adoptive parents.

But this has its setbacks.

For example, the court requires submitting for approval the adoptees' official birth certificates, detailing the names and addresses of their birth parents.

Civic groups say the court's adoption process excludes hundreds of children found in boxes without birth certificates.

Many single teenage mothers choose not to register their birth child because of negative social perceptions toward them.

Potential adoptive parents also mostly favor female infants below the age of one.

It is usually male infants over the age of one who are sent for international adoptions.

Over 75 percent of infants sent overseas for international adoptions were male in 2017. Also, 75 percent of them were between the ages of one and three.