Decline in Domestic Adoptions
May 11th is Adoption Day in Korea. The government and related organizations have held a variety of activities to commemorate the occasion for a week, culminating on May 17th. However, the Korean society still has a long way to go in the area of domestic adoptions.Even though Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world, 2 babies are abandoned every 3 days. A total of 1,172 Korean children were adopted last year, with 45% finding new homes overseas. An important point to note is that the overseas adoption rate which had been in decline until 2013 started rising again in 2014. Statistics show that Korean babies are the 5th largest group of adoptees to the U.S.Korea is free from war and famine. It is a developed nation, part of the G20 and the OECD. Yet it remains an exporter of adoptees, with a low rate of domestic adoptions. Why is this?We meet adoptive families, overseas adoptees as well as experts from NGOs and academia to understand the obstacles to domestic adoptions in Korea.
