Historic step for adoptee rights, adoptees urge full inclusion in adoption law revision process

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PRESS RELEASE, from TRACK

Historic step for adoptee rights, adoptees urge full inclusion in adoption law revision process

Seoul, July 1, 2009 (TRACK) – Fifty overseas Korean adoptees and their allies participated in the second public hearing on the revision of South Korea’s civil and overseas adoption laws Wednesday at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family’s second public hearing sponsored by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI). The discussion marked the first time in 56 years of international Korean adoption that overseas Korean adoptees represented their own interests in a governmental forum.

The ministry is revising both the laws on domestic adoption and intercountry adoption, called the “Special Adoption Law,” which has been amended nine times since its enactment in 1961, each time without adoptees or birth families as shareholders.

Adoptees were able to participate because professional simultaneous translation was provided by KWDI. The first public hearing held Feb. 26 did not include professional translation despite requests made by Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK), a nonprofit organization aimed at healing the relationship between adoptees and Korean society. The language barrier prevented 30 adoptees and supporters from speaking about the proposed law revisions.

Jane Jeong Trenka, president of TRACK, saw the provision of professional translation this time as a step in the right direction, but recommended that translation into both English and French be institutionalized by the government. “Any fair, democratic process on adoption law, as well as any just and humane adoption and social welfare policy about us must include us,” Trenka said. “We need translation every time. The adoptees did not create the language barrier.”

During the hearing’s open discussion, seven adoptees and supporters addressed Professor Huh Nam-Soon of Hallym University who leads the ministry’s research committee. Adoptees asked how the central authority will help them gain better access to their files, histories and original identities and questioned its objectivity. They also criticized the government for not creating a comprehensive social welfare system and for failing to include adoptees and single mothers in the creation, development, and discussion of the revisions.

Professors and professionals monitoring the law revisions process from overseas said in a solidarity statement read by TRACK, “We urge Korea to include the adoptees’ and mothers’ voices as equal partners in the creation, development, and discussion about Korea’s new adoption law.”

This public hearing was originally intended to be the last one before the ministry sends its suggested revisions to the adoption law to the National Assembly. However, after seeing the number of adoptees and supporters who turned out to voice their opinions, Park Sook-ja, director of the department in charge of adoptions within the ministry, announced that another public hearing might be necessary to further discuss adoptee and single mother concerns.

Since the 1950s, South Korea has sent away the largest number of children for international adoption in the world, with over 160,000 Korean children ending up in mainly 14 Western countries, according to government data. Although it is the longest-running international adoption program in the world, the country is not yet in compliance with international standards. It has yet to ratify the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and holds reservations to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for a full understanding of the practice of adoption, both past and present, to improve the human rights of children and families affected by adoption.

Contact:

Jane Jeong Trenka, president

Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK)

010-2614-0294 (English)

http://justicespeaking.wordpress.com/

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This is the letter, on which I was one of the signatories, that was read at the hearing:


Dear Committee Members:

Throughout the years, many overseas adoptees in the global Korean
adoptee diaspora have fought to make the voices of adoptees visible in
adoption research and politics. This continuous struggle has always
taken place in cooperation with an international community of adoptees
and allies in many different countries. This struggle is global and is
not limited to the returnee adoptees in Korea. We hereby want to
express our deepest gratitude to all the adoptees who are present at
today's hearing to fight for the rights of the adoptees and birth
parents who are the most vulnerable parts of the adoption world.

We hope that the Korean government will listen to those whose lives
were completely changed through Korea's adoption system. We urge Korea
to include the adoptee and mothers' voices as equal partners in the
creation, development, and discussion about Korea's new adoption law.

Signed:

Dr. Tobias Hübinette, member of Adopted Koreans' Association of Sweden
and a critical adoption scholar

Dr. Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, member of AK Connection of Minneapolis,
assistant professor St. Olaf College

Dr. Eli Park Sorenson, Professor Kyunghee University and research
fellow at Cambridge University

Dr. Kim Su Rasmussen, Professor Seoul National University

Dr. Kim Park Nelson, member of AKConnection of Minneapolis, assistant
professor at Minnesota State University at Moorhead

Dr. Stefan Liess, University of Minnesota

Ms. Jae Ran Kim, MSW, LGSW. Adoption professional and doctoral student
at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work

Dr. Sarah Park, assistant professor at St Catherine University

Ms. Malena Swanson, member of Adopted Korean Association of Sweden,
LLM and lawyer

Mr. Jens Falk, M.D., Sweden

Mr. Lee Herrick, Professor of English, Fresno City College, California

Ms. Jane Jin Kaisen, visual artist and graduate student at UCLA, California

New Blog

I've started a new blog HERE (I posted a draft of another new poem, "Fire," which will stay up until Wednesday). I will be freewriting on my writing process this summer, hopefully making real headway on my second manuscript. Please visit me there.
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My fall reading calendar is filling up with two more invitations---Hartnell College, Salinas, CA (September 24) and a feature spot at the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival (November 14). Hope you can make it.

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Writing Workshops With Kim Sunée in Florida

My good friend and best-selling author of Trail of Crumbs, Kim Sunée, will be teaching two workshops in Florida, one from the June 22 to June 26, and the other from June 29 to July 3. For more details, visit her website at kimsunée.com.

June 29th - July 3rd, 2009 :
Eating Our Words, Cooking and Creative Writing Class with Kim Sunee and a guest chef!
Come join KIM SUNEE, author of the national bestseller, TRAIL OF CRUMBS and a guest chef for cooking classes and writing you life through food and travel. In this creavitve writing workshop, you'll learn how to focus your life stories, and use the nuances of plot, character, setting, theme, and dialogue to drive the narrative of your story. 9:30-12:00 & 2:00-4:30 every day. Maximum 10 writers. Fee : $700.00. Includes individual evaluation, group workshop sessions, & hand-outs.

Congratulations to Ken Chen, Recipient of the 2009 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award

I could not be happier for Ken Chen (pictured, left), who was just named the 2009 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His book, Juvenilia, will come out soon, and I can't wait for it. I met Ken last year when I read with Kim Sunée and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, where he serves as Executive Director. This could not have happened to a nicer person, and I hope you will all buy the book when it arrives.

Ken Chen is the Executive Director of The Asian American Writers’ Workshop. He is the 2009 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His work has been published in Best American Essays 2006 and was recently recognized in Best American Essays 2007. He started Satellite: The Berkeley Magazine of News + Culture and also helped found Arts & Letters Daily, a cultural website.

Summer Writing and Reading

Now that summer is here, I am hoping my writing picks up a bit. I've also got three somewhat time-consuming things behind me: two Guest Editor stints, one for the Rio Grande Review and one for Asian American Poetry and Writing (both issues are out soon; RGR is already up online)--and my full-time job, teaching at Fresno City College. This semester I had great students, so it was a pleasure, really. But now that grades are in and summer is here, for all intents and purposes, I am looking forward to writing more. What always gets me motivated to write is to read, and so I am delving into some poetry collections I've been wanting to crack open---Linda Gregg's All of It Singing, most notably. Other books I have waiting for me include: Christopher Buckley's Sky, Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Paris and Evil Spleen, and two of the many books owned by my recently passed on grandmother: a first edition hardback (1938) of Thomas Mann's The Coming Victory of Democracy and Franz Kafka's Diaries 1914-1923.

I am also trying to work through titles for my second manuscript. I want the word "acoustics" in it, and the one I'm thinking about now is All the City's Acoustics. What do you think of it? I know you haven't read the poems, but as a title alone, I like the sound of it. I think of Patricia Smith's response to the question about Blood Dazzler, where she simply said she just likes the way it rolls off her tongue. I've also thought of All This City's Acoustics (slight variation on the first), Han Acoustics, and Acoustic You. I have a feeling none of these will eventually be the title, for some reason. I wish something would come to me like This Many Miles from Desire did---that title came to me very early, and it never left.

from Oliver De La Paz, I learned about this

SURFACE FILIPINO-AMERICAN ACTIVIST MELISSA ROXAS NOW

BAYAN-USA, an alliance of 14 Filipino American organizations and chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan Philippines), is calling on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Department of National Defense, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to immediately surface Melissa Roxas, an American citizen of Filipino descent who was abducted in the Philippines on May 19. BAYAN-USA also urgently calls on our representatives in the U.S. Congress to act quickly to ensure the safe return of Roxas.