Good news and bad
It certainly is good news that the Korean government is actively trying to change the social norms and stigmas associated withe adoption, and one hopes that like many concerted government policies in countries like Korea, it will eventually, if gradually, change attitudes.
But you have to be concerned that the government’s motives are the right one.
The government’s goal has received much media attention and popular support here. But adoption agencies and some adoptive parents and experts say the government’s new policies are concerned less with the children’s welfare than with saving face. Increasing the age gap and allowing singles to adopt have lowered the standards for domestic adoptions in a way that could be detrimental to the children, they say, even as the government has created unnecessary obstacles to foreign ones.
“The government is hung up on numbers and on South Korea’s image,” said Lee Mira, who oversees domestic adoptions at Social Welfare Society, a private, nonprofit organization that is the second largest adoption agency in South Korea. “When North Korea taunts South Korea by saying we’re selling Korean babies to foreigners, it hurts the pride of South Korea.”
This policy should be guided at all times by concerns for the welfare of the children first, over and above all other considerations.
