International adoption of South Korean children

The international adoption of South Korean children was triggered by casualties of the Korean War after 1953. The initiative was taken by religious organizations in the United States, Australia, and many European nations, and eventually developed into various apparatus that sustained adoption as a socially integrated system.

A 1988 article which was originally in The Progressive and reprinted in Pound Pup Legacy said that fewer than one percent of Korean adoptees adopted now are Amerasian, but most of the Korean adoptees for the decade after the Korean War were Amerasians who were fathered by American soldiers.

The first wave of adopted people from Korea came from usually mixed-race children whose families lived in poverty; the children's parents were often American military men and Korean women.

A 2015 article in Public Radio International said that Arissa Oh who wrote a book about the beginnings of international adoption said that, "Koreans have this myth of racial purity; they wanted to get rid of these children. Originally international adoption was supposed to be this race-based evacuation."

The start of adoption in South Korea is usually credited to Harry Holt in 1955. Harry Holt wanted to help the children of South Korea, so Holt adopted eight children from South Korea and brought them home. In part due to the response that Holt got after adopting these eight children from the nationwide press coverage, Holt made Holt International Children's Services which was an adoption agency based in the United States which specialized in Korean children.

Touched by the fate of the orphans, Western religious groups as well as other associations started the process of placing children in homes in the United States and Europe. Adoption from South Korea began in 1955 when Bertha and Harry Holt went to Korea and adopted eight war orphans after passing a law through Congress. Their work resulted in the founding of Holt International Children's Services. The first Korean babies sent to Europe went to Sweden via the Social Welfare Society in the mid-1960s. By the end of that decade, the Holt International Children's Services began sending Korean orphans to Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Germany.

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