Korean adoptee

The international adoption of South Korean children is a recent historical process triggered initially 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.

The start of adoption in South Korea is usually credited to Harry Holt in 1955. He wanted to help the children of South Korea and so adopted 8 children from South Korea and brought them home. He then created Holt International Children's Services in 1955. Holt created the system since before that point overseas adoption was not common in Korea.

International adoption of South Korean children started after the Korean War which lasted from 1950 to 1953. When the war was over, many children were left orphaned. In addition a large number of mixed race ‘G.I babies’ (offspring of U.S. and other western soldiers and Korean women) were filling up the country’s orphanages.

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 (Rotschild, The Progressive, 1988) 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.

For the next decade, most of the children adopted from Korea were fathered by American soldiers who served in the Korean war. But American Asians presently account for fewer than 1% of adoptees. Foreign adoptions serve many purposes for the government (Rothschild, The Progressive, 1988).

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