A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee's Search for Her Roots
Another book to be removed from my collection* is Katy Robinson's A Single Square Picture A Korean Adoptee's Search for Her Roots.
I first read this book in 2002 after a visit to North Korea, and at the start of my fascination with Korea and Korean issues. Somehow, the only books that I managed to find that year in Beijing were those written by former Korean adoptees.
Perhaps that is the reason why despite my soft spot for Korea, the adoption issue will always induce in me feelings of sadness, futility, despair and regret. Especially after I had met some of these adoptees when I was in Korea in 2005.
Robinson's sense of despair was palpable when she wrote: "I despised my father and loved him with equal strength, as I did Korea itself, for the strong hold it had on me, while at the same time rejecting me as one of its own."
"No matter how much I craved a frank discussion with my father, it would not happen in a society that honored age, spoke in measured words, and strove for harmony above all else - even above truth."
Robinson was born out of wedlock, and she accepted that giving her up for adoption was a choice that her mother had to make.
As she reasoned: "Korean society did not easily forgive women. Her family's discovery of a former child could lead to disdain from her in-laws, divorce, and eventual ostracism for her current children. The discovery of a secret past would be the ultimate source of shame in a society that honored a woman's chastity above all else. This sounded melodramatic to my Western mind, but I also knew it was reality in Korean culture."
Despite earlier attempts, Robinson eventually gave up the search for her mother. Why?
"Who was to say my quest for the truth and the past was more important than my mother's honor? My mother was alive, but I would never meet her," Robinson wrote, adding that the "Koreans seemed to me overly sentimental on the one hand" yet "heartless on the other."
As for me, what right do I have, and who am I to castigate the Koreans? Especially when the Koreans have already castigated themselves, with even greater force and vigor?
As Robinson noted, Koreans admired and were grateful to foreigners who adopted Korean children, when their own countrymen would not. She said it was not uncommon for a foreign couple travelling to Korea to pick up an adopted child to be stopped on the streets and given "heartfelt thanks by complete strangers."
"But underneath the gratitude lay great shame and embarrassment at the legacy of being a "baby exporting" country," Robinson wrote.
Indeed, in a speech given to Korean adoptees by former Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the regret was equally profound and heartfelt.
Kim reportedly said: "I am pained to think that we could not raise you ourselves, and had to give you away for foreign adoption. The reason for the adoption was primarily economic difficulty. But there were other reasons. Koreans traditionally have a habit-of-the-heart that places too much importance on blood ties. And when you don't have that, people rarely adopt children. So we sent you away."
"Imagining all the pain and psychological conflicts that you must have gone through, we are shamed. We are grateful to your adopted parents, who have loved you and raised you, but we are also filled with shame."
* Though I will be most happy if Mr. ECP Flintstone wouldn't mind if I progressively transfer my former favourite books to him. And I hope that this footnoting style will meet with his approval.
I first read this book in 2002 after a visit to North Korea, and at the start of my fascination with Korea and Korean issues. Somehow, the only books that I managed to find that year in Beijing were those written by former Korean adoptees.
Perhaps that is the reason why despite my soft spot for Korea, the adoption issue will always induce in me feelings of sadness, futility, despair and regret. Especially after I had met some of these adoptees when I was in Korea in 2005.
Robinson's sense of despair was palpable when she wrote: "I despised my father and loved him with equal strength, as I did Korea itself, for the strong hold it had on me, while at the same time rejecting me as one of its own."
"No matter how much I craved a frank discussion with my father, it would not happen in a society that honored age, spoke in measured words, and strove for harmony above all else - even above truth."
Robinson was born out of wedlock, and she accepted that giving her up for adoption was a choice that her mother had to make.
As she reasoned: "Korean society did not easily forgive women. Her family's discovery of a former child could lead to disdain from her in-laws, divorce, and eventual ostracism for her current children. The discovery of a secret past would be the ultimate source of shame in a society that honored a woman's chastity above all else. This sounded melodramatic to my Western mind, but I also knew it was reality in Korean culture."
Despite earlier attempts, Robinson eventually gave up the search for her mother. Why?
"Who was to say my quest for the truth and the past was more important than my mother's honor? My mother was alive, but I would never meet her," Robinson wrote, adding that the "Koreans seemed to me overly sentimental on the one hand" yet "heartless on the other."
As for me, what right do I have, and who am I to castigate the Koreans? Especially when the Koreans have already castigated themselves, with even greater force and vigor?
As Robinson noted, Koreans admired and were grateful to foreigners who adopted Korean children, when their own countrymen would not. She said it was not uncommon for a foreign couple travelling to Korea to pick up an adopted child to be stopped on the streets and given "heartfelt thanks by complete strangers."
"But underneath the gratitude lay great shame and embarrassment at the legacy of being a "baby exporting" country," Robinson wrote.
Indeed, in a speech given to Korean adoptees by former Korean President Kim Dae Jung, the regret was equally profound and heartfelt.
Kim reportedly said: "I am pained to think that we could not raise you ourselves, and had to give you away for foreign adoption. The reason for the adoption was primarily economic difficulty. But there were other reasons. Koreans traditionally have a habit-of-the-heart that places too much importance on blood ties. And when you don't have that, people rarely adopt children. So we sent you away."
"Imagining all the pain and psychological conflicts that you must have gone through, we are shamed. We are grateful to your adopted parents, who have loved you and raised you, but we are also filled with shame."
* Though I will be most happy if Mr. ECP Flintstone wouldn't mind if I progressively transfer my former favourite books to him. And I hope that this footnoting style will meet with his approval.
posted by Maria Siow @ 12:05 PM
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