Disrupting Kinship

Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID23787390
AuthorsKimberly D Mckee (corresponding author)
Year2019
Pages250
Publication date2019-02-15
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueDisrupting Kinship (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5622/illinois/9780252042287.001.0001
OpenAlexW4241356567
Open LibraryOL29411764M
ISBN9780252042287
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Interacting with Cold War ideology, individuals’ Christian Americanism supported the notion that Korean adoptees would enter “good homes” in a democratic society. Many children felt the brunt of this rhetoric as they were told adoption was in their “best interests” and that if not adoption, they would have fallen through the cracks of economic poverty and degradation in the land of their birth. In doing so, rhetorics of gratitude became cemented in international adoption discourse. This book exposes the growth of the transnational adoption industrial complex (TAIC)—the neo-colonial, multi-million dollar global industry that commodifies children’s bodies—in an examination of South Korean adoptions to the United States. The TAIC accounts for how the South Korean social welfare state, orphanages, adoption agencies, and American immigration legislation facilitated the development of transnational adoption between the two countries. Adoption became a rote process whereby government and non-governmental organizations and actors easily facilitated the exchange of children. Yet, the activism of adoptees and their allies expose the inherent messiness of adoption and reveal that adoption cannot be discussed in black and white terms. Using archival research, media texts, and oral histories, this monograph elucidates greater understanding concerning how the TAIC impacts the lived experiences of adoptees and their families. Notions of adoptees as perpetual children are disabused as I examine adoptees’ efforts to reshape adoption discourse to recognize the inherent rights of birth parents and adoptees. In adulthood, adoptees construct a new type of public personhood, one defined by their autonomy and agency. Cold War, Christian Americanism, Korean adoption, adoption, South Korea, gratitude, industrial complex, orphans, immigration, family, kinship

Agency (philosophy) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Child Welfare and Adoption · Gender Studies · Adoptees · Ethnic identity · Ethnology · Intercountry adoption · Interracial adoption · Korean Americans · Koreans · united states

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