History of Adoption in Korea

Chapter 1

The Korean War and the Beginning of Intercountry Adoption

The Establishment of Institutions

• January 1954 Founded 'Child Placement Service’

• 1955 Organized ‘Catholic Relief Service’,‘The Seventh-Day Adventist Church Education Association'

• October 1956 Founded ‘Holt Adoption Program’

• 1957 Founded ‘International Social Services’

Annual No. of Adoptee

• 1954 Over 10 (President Rhee Syngman‘s order to deal with emigration procedures in a short period)

• 1955 59

• 1956 617

• 1957 486 (abolition of the refugee protection law in the U.S.)

Distribution of Adoptees

• 1958~1960 2,388 mixed-race children out of 2,700 intercountry adoptees

• 1955~1961 4,155 out of 4,185 mixed-race children were adopted into the U.S.

• ⇒ Most intercountry adoptions in the 1950s were mixed-race children adopted to the U.S.

The Outbreak of the Korean War, The Establishment of Child Placement Service.

As a national tragedy, the Korean War, which broke out on June 25th, 1950, and ended with a truce in July 1953, produced tens of thousands of war orphans including mixed-race children.

No Legal Standards for Intercountry Adoption

Then, most children were sent to the U.S., with only a small minority sent to the UK or some Scandinavian countries. But it was merely a pursuit of measures for mixed-race children, and there were no regulations on foreigners' adoption of Korean children, causing difficulties in the intercountry adoption of war orphans. Intercountry adoption in the 1950s was influenced not by domestic laws but by enacting and revising laws related to adoption in the U.S., such as the Displaced Persons Act and other laws related to orphans and immigration. In its early days, intercountry adoption started based on the article on 'fostering', which stipulated that 'children in welfare facilities can be placed in volunteering foster homes by certain procedures', in the 4th chapter of the regulation announced by order of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs in 1952.
Therefore, the government proposed the Act on Special Cases Concerning Orphan Adoption on July 23rd, 1955, and laid the bill as many as 6 times from 1957 to 1961. However, the session of the National Assembly was not maintained, leaving it as a pending issue.

The Beginning of Intercountry Adoption

The adoption procedures of 12 adoptees who left Korea with Holt in 1955 were carried out through Child Placement Service (Holt Adoption Program began its intercountry adoption procedures in June 1956, but Child Placement Service took charge before then).
Harry Holt's departure with the children was recorded and aired on many TV and radio channels in the U.S.