Eliminating Toxic Citizenry: Three Eras of Transnational Adoption from South Korea

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License

Creative Commons Licence

Contributors

Contributed date

November 24, 2018 - 2:44pm

Critical Commentary

This photo collection examines how transnational adoption has been used in three major time periods in South Korea: first, during the rebuilding period after the Korean War through to get rid of the problem of mixed-race children born to Korean women and fathered by UN soldiers; second, to remove the social welfare burden of children born into poverty during the economic development frenz of the 1960s and 1970s; and finally, from the 1980s and still today, to eliminate the problem of unwed mothers in order to protect the hegemonic two-parent heterosexual family form in contemporary South Korean society. Thus, my three images will attempt to visually capture the ways that transnational adoption was used in each phase as a tool to remove children who were seen as “social toxins” who threatened a biopolitical nation-making agenda by the South Korean government.

Source

Yonhap News archive image. 1956. Reprinted for "The lonely death of a Korean American Adoptee deported to South Korea." Korea Times. July 3, 2017. 

http://dc.koreatimes.com/article/20170703/1063998

Cite as

Yonhap news staff photographer, "Eliminating Toxic Citizenry: Three Eras of Transnational Adoption from South Korea", contributed by Shannon Bae, Center for Ethnography, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 24 November 2018, accessed 29 March 2024. http://www.centerforethnography.org/content/eliminating-toxic-citizenry-three-eras-transnational-adoption-south-korea