Wednesday, September 4, 2013

EPs are Slow but Moving

As of July 31, 2013, there have been approximately 460 domestic adoption cases submitted to the court for the year 2013.  Using the 2/3 rule, that works out to be 306 intercountry adoption EPs that should be submitted or approved. 

But the actual EPs submitted is fewer than 306.  I think it looks more like around 300 EPs submitted.  Not breaking down the actual EPs submitted by each agency, and not wanting to disclose too much details, I think the EP movement is very slow, but it has caught up significantly in recent months. 

While I am pessimistic that MOHW will reach the 2013 quota level this year, I am confident that if the agencies are aggressive in their domestic adoption campaign, then the number of EPs will continue to climb, and may even come close to the quota level.

However, the agencies are in challenging position as the domestic adoption itself has slowed down significantly compared to the year before.  There just aren't enough girls for domestic adoption, as domestic adoption in Korea has preferred girls over boys by 7 to 3 in the past as it is now.

Due to the complexities of the Special Adoption Law, I am told that there are many cases of illicit adoptions happening in Korea, where adoptive parents work directly with clinics or birthmothers to obtain children, thus bypassing the agencies and the due process of adoption practices.  In this manner, the children are not registered with birthmother but are registered under the adopting parents name, as they pretend the babies were born from them.

The Special Adoption Law has resulted in hundreds of children being abandoned, and has caused havoc in decreasing even the domestic adoption while increasing illicit adoptions. This law clearly has proven that it is not in the best interest of children, and should be revised.



18 comments:

  1. Steve, is there any talk on the Korea end of possibly modifying the Special Adoption Law to try and address things like the abandonments, the illicit adoptions, and try and get children in need with their forever families sooner?

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    1. Dear Sarah,
      Thanks very much for asking this question. And thanks for your interest. MPAK-Korea has been intimately involved with the movement to advocate for the revision to the law. For the most part the Special Adoption Law is good, except for the part where it forces birthmothers to register their unwanted babies, and this has resulted in many many baby abandonement throughout Korea. There has been 194 abandonments just at the Baby Box since the law went into effect. God knows how many more throughout Korea. 43% of the 194 birthmothers have specifically blamed the Special Adoption Law for their reasons for abandonment, and the Ministry is still denying this. When they continue to deny this fact, they are in effect lying to the public, or maintaining their lies. This is very unfortunate. At any rate, the revision movement has many opposition, mainly from the most staunch anti-adoption advocate, supposedly the Rev. Kim Do Hyun of the KoRoot. He in fact openely labeled adoption as a form of child abuse. There are other adoptee groups and others that are against the revision, but we do have our share of allies that are behind the revision movement. In the end, we hope to bring the issue to the debate in the Cogressional members, and hopefully they will revised the law. We are working hard on this, and so are the opposition. Please pray for us as we are on the side of the children that need homes.

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    2. Steve,

      I have read that those against the proposed revisions to the law believe that expectant mothers are simply misunderstanding the requirements of the law and that more needs to be done to explain it to them correctly.

      I'm not sure that I fully understand myself how long a child remains registered on the family registry once a decision to place the child for adoption is made and whether anyone in the family is able to access this information once the child's name has been removed.

      Any insight that you can provide would be appreciated.

      ~ H

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    3. Dear Hannah,

      A great question. There is no misunderstanding of the requirement of the law. Many birthmothers have contacted the adoption agencies and they have been turned away because the agencies are forbidden to take the children without the registration by birthmothers. The agencies do explain to the birthmothers that if they register and relinquish their babies, then the records of children's births will be deleted from their registries once the children are adopted.

      However, there is no guarantee of adoption, and if the children have special needs and don't get adopted, or terminated later, or not adopted at all or entered into the institutions, then the records remain with the birthmothers.

      You see, for any birthmother that wish to relinquish her child, there is no guarantee of her privacy. This is the reason why so many choose to abandon as they feel there remains a risk that their privacy may not be kept if for some reason the children don't get adopted or adoption terminated later.

      There is a great irony in this law as one can ask, why is there the birth registry requirements in the first place, only to be removed from the records when the children get adopted? There are ways to keep the birth records for adopted children by the agencies without registering. There should be ways for birthmothers to relinquish their children lawfully without registering, and the agencies should be given the rights to accept children that have not been registered. If they do this, then there won't be as many children that will be abandoned through the places like the Baby Box.

      Many of the notes left by the birthmothers state that they tried to relinquish their children at the adoption agencies but turned away as they didn't want to register. They were clearly told by the agencies that the records will be removed once their chidlren are adopted, but the birthmothers did not want to risk this as there is a high probability that their children may not get adopted.

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    4. Thanks for the clarification Steve!

      It seems like maybe a 'middle-ground' revision to the law would be that the removal of the child's name from the family registry should occur when the child is relinquished for adoption rather than when / if the child is later adopted.


      ~ H

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  2. Hi Steve! Thank you so much for the information! Do you have any idea why the EPs are taking so long for approval? There seems to be no rhythm to help predict the approvals and we are all naturally feeling very anxious. Thank you so much!

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    1. I heard some rumors that the Ministry is requiring additional paperworks, namely regarding the criminal records related. Some agencies have done the works properly to the satisfaction of the Ministry, but some have been asked additional paperworks. I don't have a real details on this other than what I have heard.

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  3. Steve, what happened to the children who get abandoned and did not get registered at birth. Do they go to an orphanage? Can anyone adopt them in Korea? My heart goes to these orphans who desperately need a forever family?

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    1. I have wondered this same thing.... so sad. :(

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    2. These children will wind up in orphanages. Many orphanages are seeing increased number of abandoned children, and they are worrying whether they have enough resources to take care of them. They will be in orphanages, and if birth parents never contacts them for three years, then they become eligible for domestic adoption.

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    3. But how often do people adopt older children in Korea? Are there any statistics on this?

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  4. Hello Steve and thank you for your precious information. how much is the middle time of approval of the EP? and why did still spend several months before receiving a court date? Intention was not to the institutions shorten the waiting time? it 'a shame that our children continue to spend many months in the professional families ... I think it will difficult the separation from them when they have to take home with us.
    Thanks for the work and news for us!

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    1. I share in your frustrations. The whole thing with the new adoption law has been a great mess, and the people who pushed for it, and those that still want to keep it going with this mess need to answer to all the children whose opportunity to their homes have been dashed to the ground.

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  5. Hi! Me and my husband lives in Sweden and are waiting to go and get our baby boy in Korea. This network and blog gives us in Sweden a lot of valuable information, thank you so much!

    The new law is so frustrating and everything seems to be getting worse and worse. The other day we got some sad and frustrating news from our agency here in Sweden.
    They said that it is incredibly important for the court in South Korea that children adopted in Sweden become Swedish citizens. Of course, that's understandable. The Swedish agency has explained to the Korean court that the children automatically become Swedish citizens after the court decision. But the Korean court is not convinced and has said that they do not want to give court times to any new Swedish families, expect the eight families who are in Korea right now, until they know that the children who came this spring are Swedish citizens.
    Due to summer time and holidays here in Sweden the court processes for these families has been delayed and will probably not be ready until the end of the year. This means that it can take up to one year between the matching and news of the child to some families to the travel to Korea instead of the 6-7 months that they initially have told us. We got the decision of our cild in the end of June, but some families has been waiting since March :(

    The Swedish agency says that they are now working intensively against the court in Korea to convince them that they must continue to deal with the Swedish cases and with the hope that another group can travel in November / December.
    The thing is that the court process in Sweden hasn’t changed, it has been the same for years and it works. All children have been accepted as Swedish citizens.
    What I've heard from other adoptive parents here in Sweden is that this new decision from the Korean court can be because of the cases in the U.S. where Korean adoptees have been deported because of uncompleted processes in court that causes it. The irony is that the background of the requirement is removed in the us now by the children get passports and visas through the U.S. Embassy is already in place in Korea.

    This is so frustrating and depressing, I just want to go there and make them understand. My question to you is, do you think that it’s possible for the U.S and Sweden to work together on this, to insure the Korean court that all adopted children will become Swedish citizens? I feel that the agenscy in Sweden is a bit week and isn't able to influence the decisionmakers in Korea. Is there anything we can do to help? Is there anything MPAK can do?

    Thank you so much again for your tremendous work and valuable information!

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    1. I share in your frustration, and I feel very powerless to do anything. The court process is what it is. However, I am surprised at the fact that ther are eigh families that traveled to Korea, and they may not get the court's approval unless previously adopted Swedish families can show citizenship of their adopted children earlier. Something doesn't make sense why the families have been cleared to be in Korea and not be able to adopt yet.
      The court in Korea deals with each country separately, and what we do in the US does not affect what happens in Sweden. I am just hopeful that the agencies involved (both in Sweden and in Korea) can work things out with the court and make the adoption process flow smoothly. Sorry for not being able to provide a satisfactory answers to your questions.

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  6. Ugh. that's no good. Even on the US side, the Korean government is asking for The COC (Certificate of Citizenship) from families that came home in July. Unfortunately the US government (like any government) doesn't work fast. That means these families don't have the COC's yet. Please Steve, help the government/courts to understand how our process works if you can? They need to at least give families time to get the documents from the governments.

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    1. It looks like the agencies need to communicate with Korea that it would take some time to get the COCs. The court needs to understand this as well. I plan to find out some more on what's going on. Also, I hear about slowness in the court dates, and this is causing a lot of nervousness among the waiting parents.

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  7. I totally understand that it’s difficult for you to do something in this matter. I believe that the Korean court has come up with this new thing after the latest eight families got their dates in court in Korea. So I believe that it won’t be a problem for them, they will get their approvals there and be able to travel home to Sweden.
    The process has always been like this in Sweden and it has never been a problem before.
    I do not know why we can’t have the some process as the U.S thaw, that our adoptive children also get their passports by the Swedish embassy in Korea before they travel to Sweden, it might help.

    I will try to get the Swedish organization to not accept this and do all they can to convince the Korean court and also write a letter to the courts in Sweden explaining the problem to get them to priorities these errands.

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