Academic Papers About Korean Adoption Which Refer to KSS.

  • “Adoption History” by Tobias Hubinette

    • A must read for anyone interested in the history of Korean Adoption

    • Excerpt 1:

      “On the 20th of January 1954, with a presidential order and under the patronage of the South Korean First Lady, Francisca Donner, Child Placement Service (Adongyanghohoe) was set up with initial grants from abroad and subordinated to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs for the purpose of providing international adoption of mixed children to the U.S. and other Western countries which had participated on the Southern side in the war (Bowman, Gjenvick & Harvey, 1961: 43-44; Chakerian, 1963: 19-20; Tahk, 1983). Between 1954-57, Child Placement Service worked together with the Geneva based International Social Service, handling child welfare issues since the 1920s, and signed bilateral agreements with the various receiving countries like with Sweden in 1966 (Department of Social Affairs, 1967: 38-41).”

      “In 1955, a third authorised agency entered the scene as Catholic Relief Service began placing Korean children in Catholic families in America. In 1957, International Social Service initiated its own adoption program (discontinued in 1966), and in 1958 Pearl S. Buck’s Welcome House also started to adopt children from Korea (Bowman, Gjenvick & Harvey, 1961: 44-45; Miller, 1971).”

    • Excerpt 2:

      “In 1964, Korea Social Service began to process international adoptions and it was the first agency to be entirely run by Koreans. In 1965 Child Placement Service was reorganised as a private agency and renamed Social Welfare Society in 1972 (Tahk, 1983, 1986a). In 1972 Eastern Child Welfare Society was founded as the fourth of the Korean agencies still handling international adoption today. Thus, at the beginning of the 1970s as many as seven agencies operated in the field: Seventh Day Adventists, Child Placement Service, Catholic Relief Service, Holt Children’s Services, Korea Social Service, Welcome House and Eastern Child Welfare Society (Chakerian, 1968: 49-57). To balance the numbers of international adoptions, a special agency for domestic adoption was created in 1964. Called Christian Adoption Program in Korea, it was later absorbed by Holt in 1976 (Chakerian, 1968; Miller, 1971; Yi Mi-sôn, 2001: 7). Between 1962 and 1970, a program for domestic adoption was openly promoted, requiring the country’s government workers and officials to take care of an orphan. As a result of this compulsory nationalistic campaign, the decade ended as the only one in which domestic adoptions exceeded international ones––8,247 cases versus 6,166 (Chông & An, 1994: 13).”

    • Excerpt 3:

      “In response to the North Korean accusations and to bolster the negative image of the country, a revision of the law, in 1976, renaming it the Special Adoption Law (Ibyangt’ûgryêbôp), made domestic adoption, foster care and sponsorship easier, and a plan for the gradual phasing out of international adoption by 1981 (with the exception from mixed and handicapped children) was announced (Breckenridge, 1977; Chun Byung Hoon, 1989; Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2002; Sarri, Baik & Bombyk, 1998; Korea Herald, 9//15/76; Korea Times, 7/18/86). At the same time, the number of receiving countries was restricted to eleven, and the agencies, limited to four, were required to be wholly run by Koreans: Social Welfare Society, Holt Children’s Services, Korea Social Services and Eastern Child Welfare Society. The Five Year Plan for Adoption and Foster Care (1976-81) aimed at reducing the number of international adoptions by 1,000 annually and simultaneously increasing domestic adoptions by 500 through the introduction of a system of quotas. Regulated by the Social Welfare Society, the quota was based on the number of domestic adoptions placed the previous year (Kim Una, 2002; Yun Yông-su, 1993: 42-43).”

  • THE FRACTURED VALUES OF BEST INTERESTS: STRUGGLES AND SPACES OF TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION  by Stevie Larson (Download)

    • Excerpt:

      “Thus, ISS began making inroads to potential organizational partners for a program in Korea. Its first stop was Kun Chil Paik, a Korean social worker trained in the United States and head of the Child Placement Service (International Social Service American Branch, 17 April 54 1962). Back when ISS was first asked to assist in the migration of child refugees in the Korean War aftermath, the indigent Child Placement Service was their partner organization before ISS was able to establish its own office and staff; after a couple years, they ended their relationship with Child Placement Service, accusing it of operating “completely on a basis of adoption by proxy” (Pettiss, 25 February 1960: 1). This time around, ISS hoped for a better outcome. They met with Paik and other voluntary agencies still operating in Korea to determine proper channels of funding, reporting, and oversight for a potential partnership, whereby Child Placement Service would process adoptable children from the local orphanages and ISS would simply monitor their work from afar and step in only for the international transfer of the adoptee. Their goal in the first year of operation was the successful placement of 100 Korean children, according to high quality service and standards that would eliminate previously encountered problems such as legal loopholes, opposition from location adoption courts, and staff shortages. ISS anticipated that if all went well, they could not only cede more and more authority to Child Placement Service to become a truly self-sufficient Korean agency that reflected welfare protocols, but also replicate the experience as a model for future forays into transnational adoption (Cherney, 1962).


      Initially, the arrangement looked promising. “We feel better about Korea than we have for a long time,” asserted Paul R. Cherney, the General Director of the International Social Service American Branch. “Now we are negotiating with, in addition to Child Placement Service, Welcome House, the Seventh Day Adventists, and established working relationships which will be mutually advantageous. Even Mr. Holt has agreed to accept ISS service on a test basis of two or three cases” (Cherney, 13 November 1962: 1). Then in 1964, Paik abandoned the Korean government-funded Child Placement Service to set up his own private agency, Korea Social Service (KSS), which began working closely with Holt Adoption Program to process 55 referrals (International Social Service American Branch, 14 September 1965). ISS shifted to a trial run of referrals from KSS, set to commence on January 1, 1966; it never got off the ground: The quality and handling of these cases by the Korea Social Service were to be evaluated by the Intercountry Adoption Committee after January 1, 1966. On October 20, 1965, during meetings of the International Council in Geneva, a conference was called by Stewart Sutton, the International Director, to review this arrangement….The referral of cases directly to the American Branch by the Korea Social Service was regarded as irregular, out of proper channels, and a handicap….Mr. Cherney was instructed to terminate the direct relationship with Korea Social Service. (1) While it’s likely that the “irregular” slate of cases being processed by KSS was attributed by ISS to their relationship with Holt Adoption Program, it is nonetheless surprising that ISS terminated their partnership with KSS so quickly, despite having worked with Paik since 1962 with no apparent problems. As it turns out, KSS’s problem was too much autonomy; it was KSS, and not the more closely surveilled Child Placement Service, that became the first transnational adoption institution entirely run and self-funded by indigent Koreans (Hübinette, 2006: 50), and their solution for self-sufficient funding was unsurprising: working with organizations like Holt to process the maximum numbers of children with minimal protection. This was a step too far gone for ISS; in their hopes that pursuing transnational adoption the ‘right’ way by dispersing authority to indigenous institutions and empowering them towards partial self-determination, those very institutions betrayed them by going down paths reminiscent of the “child rescue” 1950s era. Not long after this disappointing turn, Child Placement Service also became a private agency and renamed itself Social Welfare Society in 1971; yet another indigenous private agency emerged in 1972, the Eastern Child Welfare Society (50). By the time of the second and much larger Korean adoption boom in the 1970s and 1980s, these three private agencies – along with Holt Adoption Program – dominated the transnational adoption landscape on the Korean side; their values and practices so strongly mirrored Holt’s that ISS could have just as easily avoided South Korea entirely and no one would have noticed.”