[토론] After ‘Voices from Sweden’

• 2025년 10월 15일 조선대학교 미디어커뮤니케이션학과와 광주전남 출신 스웨덴 입양인모임이 주최하고, 광주영화영상인연대가 주관한 “스웨덴에서 온 이야기: 입양인과 광주의 만남” 에 토론자로 참석. 기획자는 조선대 미디어커뮤니케이션학과 교수 채석진.
• 아래는 제출한 토론문(한글, 영문). 영문의 경우, 한글판본의 구성 및 형식 수정 후 DeepL을 통해 1차 번역, 1차 번역본을 검독하며 교정교열.
• 행사에 대해서는 다음 기사 참조. https://v.daum.net/v/20251015204347812
• 현장에서는 국가통계 내 부랑인 및 아동복지시설, 입양인 수 변동 관련 정보와 당시 광주/전남 지역의 유기아동 수가 많은 이유에 대한 추정과 당시 광주/전남의 인구 규모 수준 등에 대한 정보를 전달했음. 이는 추가로 논문 진행 예정.

1. 한글본

2. English Ver.

After ‘Voices from Sweden’
– Testimonies of Uprooted Lives and Gwangju’s Responsibility

Junchol Kim So

Understanding Uprootedness

As a Researcher, I have long studied what it means to have ‘roots’ in a society – and what it means to lose them. I examined war orphans, vagrants who migrated from rural areas to cities during Korea’s rapid industrialization, and others who were displaced within Korean society. But encountering overseas adoptees has fundamentally changed my understanding. 

The ‘uprootedness’ experienced by adoptees is categorically different. War orphans and internal migrants were uprooted within Korea, but overseas adoptees were uprooted across national borders—torn from their language, culture, and civilization itself. When Carina Dahlin/Seo Jeong-sook described herself as “a tree uprooted and planted in unsuitable soil,” it revealed a profound truth: this wasn’t simply loss, but forced transplantation by the state.

Elisabeth Nylund(Kim Mi-sun)’s experience of feeling like a stranger both in unfamiliar Korea and familiar Sweden shows the duality created by long-lasting rootlessness. Marlin Bergstrom(Han Ok-hee)’s description of a ‘black hole’ captures something essential about the adoptee experience.

For overseas adoptees, ‘roots’ are not simply absent. Rather, you experience what I call an ‘active void’—a space that, like a black hole, continuously pulls at your consciousness and occupies your thoughts. This void is the constant awareness of mismatch between your body and the culture around you, between who you are and where you come from. The absence itself becomes a presence that shapes every day of your life. You are witnesses and survivors of a harsh history, having endured this active void throughout your lives.

The Historical Background: How This Happened

We need to understand how this uprootedness was created. From the 1950s through the 1980s, Korean society was dominated by violence—through colonialism, the Korean War, and authoritarian dictatorship. Children who lost or were separated from their families were directly exposed to this violence. Rather than protecting them, the state hid its own failures by devising two strategies: institutional orphanages and overseas adoption.

The Economic Context

During the 1960s to 1980s, Korean society underwent rapid development through compressed growth, but social instability was equally high. Social welfare researchers Lee Du-ho and others present the changes in the living difficulties of poor households in Theory of Poverty (1991) as follows. In a 1967 survey: (1) unemployed without skills (37.4%), (2) other/no response (14.5%), (3) unemployment (14.1%), (4) many dependents (10.5%), (5) death of household head (8.0%), (6) business failure (6.1%), (7) old age (4.8%). In a 1979 survey: (1) other/no response (22.6%), (2) illness/accident (20.4%), (3) death of household head (13.4%), (4) unemployed without skills (12.6%), (5) no inheritance (5.1%), (6) business failure (4.8%), (7) disability (3.3%). In a 1989 survey: (1) no fixed income (51.7%), (2) illness/accident (12.2%), (3) not receiving fair compensation (10.8%), (4) school fee burden (8.2%), (5) other/no response (5.5%), (6) many dependents (4.3%), etc. Of course, these reasons for poverty cannot be seen solely as reasons for abandoning children. The weak capacity of the government at the time, which failed to protect poor families and individuals, is also a problem.

Institutional Care: The First Strategy

Until the 1990s, the main form of child protection was institutional care in orphanages, mostly run by foreign aid organizations. In the 1950s, these facilities operated without government standards—some existed solely to receive foreign donations. Not until 1981 did Korea pass a proper Child Welfare Act to regulate these institutions.

The statistics from this period appear to tell a story of improvement. In 1955, there were 484 child-rearing facilities caring for 50,417 children across the country. By 1970, while the number of facilities remained similar at 504, the number of children had decreased slightly to 47,791. The decline became more pronounced through the 1980s and 1990s. By 1980, only 287 facilities housed 23,385 children, and by 1995, just 257 facilities cared for 17,133 children. On the surface, these declining numbers might seem to indicate progress in child welfare—fewer orphaned children, fewer institutions needed.

But this apparent improvement masks a darker reality. The decrease in institutionalized children did not primarily result from better family support, poverty reduction, or successful reunification programs. Instead, many of these children simply disappeared from Korea’s child welfare system because they were sent overseas through international adoption. The numbers dropping in institutional care were largely replaced by numbers rising in overseas adoption statistics.

Overseas Adoption: The Second Strategy

This is where your story begins, and the beginning is brutal.

After the Korean War, President Syngman Rhee viewed mixed-race children (born to Korean women and American soldiers) as threats to “national unity.” His solution was to remove them from Korean society through overseas adoption—a policy of erasure disguised as care. Under President Park Chung-hee, overseas adoption became institutionalized and expanded dramatically. The targets grew from mixed-race children to include disabled children, children of unwed mothers, abandoned children, and children from broken families.

The numbers tell a devastating story: Children of unwed mothers made up 17.9% of adoptions in the 1960s, rising to 36.5% in the 1970s, then exploding to 72.2% in the 1980s and 92.5% in the 1990s. Between 1961 and 1979, adoptions of children from unwed mother families increased nearly fourfold.

In 1976, Korea created an Adoption Special Act and claimed to promote domestic adoption, but ultimately withdrew these efforts. Under President Chun Doo-hwan, overseas adoptions increased even more. With over 10,000 children abandoned annually, the government chose “liberalized” overseas adoption as its answer.

The full scope of Korea’s overseas adoption program is staggering. Between 1953 and 2014, a total of 261,122 children were adopted. Of these, only 93,786 children—roughly 36 percent—were adopted domestically within Korea. The remaining 167,336 children, nearly two-thirds of all adoptees, were sent to foreign countries. This means that for every child who stayed in Korea through domestic adoption, nearly two children were sent abroad.

The patterns shift dramatically across different periods, revealing the changing nature of government policy. In the earliest years from 1953 to 1961, immediately following the Korean War, 4,365 children were adopted. Of these, only 168 remained in Korea while 4,197 were sent overseas—a staggering 96 percent. These were primarily the mixed-race children that President Syngman Rhee’s government sought to remove from Korean society.

During the 1960s (1962-1970), the total number of adoptions increased to 16,771. Interestingly, this decade saw more children adopted domestically (9,971) than internationally (6,800). However, this brief period of domestic preference would not last.

The 1970s (1971-1980) marked a sharp escalation. Total adoptions jumped to 73,452 children—more than four times the previous decade. Under President Park Chung-hee’s institutionalization of overseas adoption, 48,247 children were sent abroad compared to 25,205 adopted domestically. This meant 66 percent of adopted children left Korea during this decade.

The 1980s (1981-1990) represent the peak of Korea’s overseas adoption program. During this single decade, 91,864 children were adopted—the highest number of any ten-year period. Of these, 65,329 children were sent overseas while only 26,533 were adopted domestically. This 71 percent overseas adoption rate occurred during Korea’s so-called “economic miracle,” when the country was rapidly industrializing and GDP was growing dramatically. Yet the government was sending away an average of more than 6,500 children per year to other countries. President Chun Doo-hwan’s “liberalization” policy had turned overseas adoption into a massive export operation.

The 1990s saw some reduction, with 35,349 total adoptions (22,323 overseas, 13,026 domestic), and the 2000s continued this declining trend with 32,885 adoptions (17,998 overseas, 14,887 domestic). By 2013, the numbers had dropped significantly to just 922 total adoptions, with 236 sent overseas. However, even with these reductions, the cumulative impact over six decades remains immense.

When you examine the institutional care statistics alongside the adoption numbers, a clear pattern emerges. The declining population of children in orphanages did not reflect improved social welfare or better family support systems. Instead, it reflected a deliberate policy choice to move children out of the country rather than invest in protecting and supporting vulnerable families. The government had found a solution that served its interests: overseas adoption reduced the visible evidence of social problems, eliminated the cost of long-term institutional care, generated revenue through adoption fees, and maintained the fiction of ethnic and family homogeneity by removing children who didn’t fit the idealized image of Korean society.

Who decided your fate? Institutional staff recommended which children to keep and which to send abroad. Prospective adoptive parents made their choices. Children were commodified between these two powers, with no voice of their own.

Why This Was Wrong 

The overseas adoption system prioritized everyone’s interests except the child’s:

The Korean government’s interests: 

• Reduced child protection costs
• Earned money through adoption fees
• Maintained ideologies of “ethnic purity” and “normal families” by removing children who didn’t fit
• Structured adoptions as contracts between agencies and individuals to avoid state responsibility

The system’s failures:

• Receiving countries provided no proper post-adoption follow-up
• Many adoptive parents were inadequate or abusive
• Citizenship issues left some adoptees stateless
• Agencies restricted adoptees’ access to their own records, motherland visits, and family searches

The trauma inflicted on birth mothers:

Recent research (Shin Pil-shik, 2018; https://s-space.snu.ac.kr/handle/10371/170186) shows birth mothers wanted to keep their children but faced a society with no support systems. They were forced into institutionalization or adoption through various human rights violations. Records of birth mothers and families were often forged, deleted, damaged, or replaced during adoption—which is why many of you face such difficulty finding your birth families today.

Why This Means

Overseas adoption was not about helping children. It was structural violence—the Korean state’s systematic failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens while prioritizing “national interests” and “social normalcy.”

You have lived your entire lives in a state of forced transplantation, continuously aware of the void, constantly feeling the mismatch between your physical self and your cultural surroundings. This ‘active void’ isn’t something that happened to you once—it has shaped every day of your existence. You are not individual cases of misfortune. You are witnesses and survivors of Korea’s modern history.

Questions We Must Answer Together

First: How can we show solidarity with your experience?

How can Korean society support you in constructing lives on your own terms? And we must ask: Is it even possible to “fill” this void—or should we? Perhaps the void is not something to be filled but something to be acknowledged, witnessed, and honored.

Second: How do we take responsibility?

The Korean government must acknowledge its role in this structural violence. We must redesign all post-adoption processes centered on your lives and your knowledge—not on state interests or adoption industry profits. You are survivors of state-sponsored trauma. Korean society owes you recognition, healing resources, and material support.

Third: What are Korea’s and Gwangju’s specific obligations?

The state must urgently:

• Guarantee full access to all adoption records
• Support birth family searches with resources and expertise
• Investigate and restore forged adoption records
• Provide reparations

Gwangju specifically must examine its role as a sending region. What happened here? Which children were sent from Gwangju? Which agencies operated here? How were records kept or destroyed? What can Gwangju do now to support adoptees returning to trace their origins?

Conclusion: Late But Not Too Late

None of these questions have easy answers. The harm done cannot be undone. The years lost cannot be recovered. But today represents hope. You have returned to Gwangju. We are listening to your stories together. Though we are late—decades late—we are finally here to question together, remember together, and take responsibility together. 

Your uprootedness was not natural, not inevitable, not your fault. It was a choice made by those in power. Recognizing this truth is only the beginning, but it is a necessary beginning. 

Thank you for returning. Thank you for sharing your voices. Your testimony matters. Your survival matters. You matter.