Second Intl. Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies
International Adoption from Korea and Overseas Adopted Koreans:
The Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies
Symposium Date: August 3, 2010
Planned location: IKAA Korean Adoptee Gathering, Hotel LOTTE Seoul, Korea.
Symposium Sponsor: IKAA (International Korean Adoptee Associations).
Questions? Contact Kim Park Nelson, greg0051@umn.edu
- Introduction
- Symposium Purpose
- Past and Current Research
- Papers for Presentation
- Symposium Committee
International Scholars to meet in Seoul to present Korean Adoption Research
Scholars from around the world will present their Korean Adoption Studies research during the IKAA Gathering 2010 at the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies to be held Tuesday, August 3, 2010 in Seoul, South Korea at the Lotte Hotel Seoul.
Symposium Purpose
The purpose of this interdisciplinary symposium is for the top scholars working on Korean adoption studies to share intellectual production about Korean adoption with one another, but more importantly, with the global Korean adoptee community. Since the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies constitutes the first day of the International Korean Adoptee Associations Gathering for Korean adoptees, it is anticipated up to 800 Korean adoptees from all over the world will be present. In addition, the planners of the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies hope to take advantage of the Symposium’s location in Seoul in order to meaningfully connect with Korean scholars who have begun to develop interest in the growing field of Korean Adoption Studies.
Past and Current Research
For many years, the subject of international adoption from Korea and adopted Koreans was an under-researched area in academia. The field, as it existed then, was dominated by professionals in social work, psychology, and medicine. The first academic studies on Korean adoption started to come out in the mid-1970s, both in Korea and in the West, but it was not until the mid-1990s that one could begin to talk about a full-fledged field of Korean adoption studies.
In Korean academia, the majority of adoption studies discuss international adoption in terms of social welfare or legislation, and primarily from the perspectives of social work and family law. But Korean research interest in adult adopted Koreans has grown in recent years, with studies focusing on the life consequences for adoptees who have revisited Korea and/or reunited with their Korean family members, as well as cultural studies oriented textual analyses of adopted Korean self-narratives.
On the other side of the world, adoption scholarship in the leading adopting regions of North America, Scandinavia and Western Europe mainly focus on the behavioral and emotional adjustment of adoptees, including their attachment and adjustment to the adoptive family and assimilation and acculturation to the host culture. In addition, a growing number of studies have started to look at Korean international adoption from a comparative historical perspective and others have conceptualized it as a migratory practice linked to globalization and transnational processes. There is also a growing body of research on adoptees’ language detrition and attrition and their cultural output of art, film, and literature.
Finally, a new research trend that has emerged both in Korea and in the West deals with the question of an identity and community specific to adopted Koreans, in the context of existing theories of ethnicity, migration, and diaspora.
This symposium aims to bring together researchers who focus either on international adoption from Korea or on overseas adopted Koreans from these different perspectives and approaches.
Papers for Presentation
Karen Balcom
History and Women’s Studies, McMaster University, Canada
Presenting “Saving Children and Surviving War: US Servicemen Reflect on Humanity, War and Korean Children.”
Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist
School of Social Work, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
Presenting “Right to Define Family: Equality under Immigration Law for U.S. Inter-Country Adoptees.”
Catherine Ceniza Choy and Greg Choy
Departments of Ethnic Studies and English (respectively), University of California, Berkeley, USA
Presenting “‘History As Art of Memory:’ Re- imagining Loss in First Person Plural, Bontoc Eulogy, and History and Memory.”
Kimberly Ohmyo Gross and Richard Lee
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, USA
Presenting “To acknowledge or reject? A mixed-method study examining cultural socialization and opinions about adoption in transracial adoptive families.”
Hosu Kim
Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, CUNY College of Staten Island, USA
Presenting “A Tactile Love.”
Boonyoung Han and Min Ok Yang
Soongil University, Department of Social Welfare, South Korea
Presenting “Facility and Agency related experiences by Korean Unwed Mothers.”
Kimberly McKee
American Studies Department, King’s College, London, UK
“Silence, Citizenship, and Gender: The Status of Women and Intercountry Adoption in Korea”
Hyeon-Sook Park
Department of Scandinavian Languages, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea
Presenting “Korean adoptees in Sweden and their first language Korean.”
Elise Prebin
Anthropology, Harvard University, USA
Presenting “Gifts and Money Between Adoptees and Birth Families.”
Kim Su Rasmussen
English Department, Seoul National University, South Korea
Presenting “Adoption and Post-Existentialism: Reading Astrid Trotzig’s Blod är tjockare än vatten (1996).”
David Smolin
Cumberland Law School, Samford University, USA
Presenting “The Changing Significance of Korea Within the Intercountry Adoption System.”
Eli Park Sorensen
Department of English, University of Cambridge, UK
Presenting “Korean Adoption Literature and the Anxiety of Returning.”
Kim Stoker and Christina Higgins
Department of General Education, Duksung Women’s University, South Korea
Department of Second Languages, University of Hawai’i at Manoa,
Presenting “Learning Language as a Site for Belonging: Korean Adoptee Returnees Use of Korean as a Heritage Language.”
These thirteen papers represent the most recent and rigorous academic work that is currently being done in Korean Adoption Studies. This interdisciplinary academic Symposium is the only event of its kind, drawing from Korean Adoption Studies scholarship in Asia, Europe and the Americas, including disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in the behavioral sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. The First International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies took place in July of 2007.
Printed Proceedings to be Published
The selection committee for the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies is also producing a conference proceedings, which will publish full-length academic papers for most of the presented work, as well as papers by the editors and research by selected scholars unable to present at the Symposium.
Symposium Committee
Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies Selection Committee and Conference Proceedings editors are:
Kim Park Nelson, Chair and Head Editor
Department of American Multicultural Studies
Minnesota State University at Moorhead, USA
parknelson@mnstate.edu
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Department of English
St. Olaf College, USA
dobbs@stolaf.edu
Tobias Hübinette
Multicultural Centre
Botkyrka, Sweden
tobias.hubinette@mkc.botkyrka.se
Eleana Kim
Department of Anthropology
University of Rochester, USA
eleana.kim@rochester.edu
Kimberly Langrehr
Department of Counseling Psychology
Loyola University Chicago, USA
klangrehr@luc.edu
Lene Myong Petersen
Department of Learning
DPU, University of Aarhus, Denmark
lpm@dpu.dk
