In 2010, Nodutdol visited with TRACK and a host of other advocacy organizations for unwed mothers. You can view these photos and others here: here
The Republic of Korea maintains one of the oldest international adoption programs in the world with more than 200,000 Korean babies and children sent overseas. The program has been described as a “model adoption program” for its rapid placement of hundreds of Korean children each year. But a growing movement of Korean adoptees, families impacted by adoption and Korean unwed mothers have come forward to share their stories often echoing a different reality than what has been often shared about overseas adoption.
Please join us for an evening discussion to learn about this growing international movement and its current efforts in public education, community building and advocacy. Presenters will share their work in organizing adoptees, increasing the visibility of birthmothers’ stories and supporting Korean unwed mothers who face considerable social and economic challenges for keeping their children. Guest speakers include Nodutdol member and CUNY professor Hosu Kim and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs from the Truth & Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK).
This is a free event. Light snacks and beverages will be provided.
Date and time
Friday, April 29 at 7:00pm
Location
Nodutdol for Korean Community Development
53-22 Roosevelt Avenue, 2nd Floor
Woodside, NY 11377
Take the 7 train to the 52nd Street-Lincoln Avenue subway stop.
For more information
Please contact us for more information at andy@nodutdol.org.
About Hosu Kim
Hosu Kim is an assistant professor at City University of New York – College of Staten Island, currently working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation research and a collection of in-depth interviews with Korean birthmothers. Since 2002 she has examined the phenomenon of transnational adoption from South Korea with a focus on Korean birthmothers. Her dissertation, A Virtual Mothering: A cultural critique of the emergent figure of Korean Birthmother in popular media examines the cultural politics of loss deployed in various figures of Korean birthmothers in popular media such as reality television shows and the Internet. Her work appears in Qualitative Inquiry, Scholars and Feminists Online, International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice ed. by Kathleen Bergquist, et.al., and Affective Turns ed. by Patricia Clough & Jean Halley. A Flickering Motherhood, one of her published works, has been translated into Korean and appeared in Theoria: A Journal of Feminist Theories and Practices (Vol. 19, 2008). She has been invited to present papers at several colleges and universities in the U.S., at a feminist-scholar’s colloquium, and at adoption conferences in Seoul, Korea. Kim has produced and performed auto-ethnographic pieces. One of them, The Taste of 6.25, part of “Still Present Pasts” (http://www.stillpresentpasts.org), a multi-media art exhibit on Korean Americans’ collective memories about the Korean War, is currently on a national tour of major U.S. cities.
About Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is currently an assistant professor of English and program director of American Race and Multicultural Studies at St. Olaf College. Previously, she taught at the City University of New York and Loyola Marymount College and also served as founding director of the SummerTIME Writing Program in Los Angeles, a college access program for inner-city high school students.
Jennifer’s debut collection, Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press 2007), received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motten Book Award, and her chapbook, Song of a Mirror, was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Series Chapbook Award. Her writing has appeared in journals and magazines in Europe, North America, South Korea, and New Zealand; has been anthologized in Echoes upon Echoes (Asian American Writers Workshop 2003), and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W.W. Norton 2008); featured on radio and in film; and translated into Greek, Korean, and Turkish. Widely collaborative, Jennifer has worked with composers, dance choreographers, and video artists to set her poetry to music and movement and to develop films drawing from her scholarship on overseas Korean adoption’s history. Her music collaboration, “Among Joshua Trees,” with Steven Gates won the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Series and debuted at Carnegie Hall. She is also the librettist for Anemone, a chamber opera about Korean comfort women, composed by Charles Ilwoo Lee and performed in Los Angeles.
Columns and new stories about Jennifer’s present research on adoptee birth searches and unwed mothers, supported through a grant from the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network, have appeared in Chosun Ilbo, Conducive Magazine, Conducive Magazine, Gyeonghyang News, Hankyoreh, Korea Herald, Korea Times, Pressian, and Yonhap News. Currently she serves as core staff for the Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea and is writing a book of essays about unwed moms’ realities with the Korean Unwed Mothers and Families Association. To learn more about Jennifer, please visit http://www.jkwondobbs.com.
About Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea
TRACK is Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea. We are an organization advocating full knowledge of past and present Korean adoption practices to protect the human rights of adult adoptees, children, and families. Since 1953, almost 200,000 Korean children have been sent overseas to 14 Western countries and 75,000 children have been placed domestically. At least 1.5 million Korean parents and grandparents combined have been separated from a child. In 2008, there were 1,306 domestic adoptions and 1,250 overseas adoptions. An average of 89% of overseas adoptees came from unwed mothers. Of the mothers, 69.6% were 20 years old or over. The adoption community includes adoptees, their birth families, and their adoptive families, as well as the societies and people affected, including unwed mothers and potential adoptees. http://justicespeaking.wordpress.com/
TRACK은 진실과 화해를 도모하기 위한 해외 입양인들의 모임입니다. TRACK은 성인 입양인, 아동, 그리고 가족의 인권을 보호하기 위하여 과거와 현재의 입양 관례에 대한 모든 지식과 정보를 대변하는 단체입니다. 1953년 이후, 약 20만 명의 아동이 서양 14개 나라로 해외 입양되었고, 7만5천 명의 아동이 국내 입양되었습니다. 이것은 최소한 1백50만 명의 부모와 조부모가 그들의 자녀와 헤어졌다는 것을 뜻합니다. 2008년 1,306 건의 국내 입양과 1,250 건의 해외 입양이 있었습니다. 해외 입양의 89%는 미혼모 가정에서 이루어졌습니다. 미혼모의 69.6%는 20세 이상이었습니다. 입양인 공동체는 입양인, 친생 가족, 입양 가족 뿐만 아니라, 입양과 연계되어 있는 사회 그리고 입양제도의 영향을 받고 있는 미혼모들과 잠재적인 입양인들까지 포함합니다. http://justicespeaking.wordpress.com/
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