Birth Mothers and Transnational Adoption Practice in South Korea

This book illuminates the hidden history of South Korean birth mothers involved in the 60-year-long practice of transnational adoption. The author presents a performance-based ethnography of maternity homes, a television search show, an internet forum, and an oral history collection to develop the concept of virtual mothering, a theoretical framework in which the birth mothers' experiences of separating from, and then reconnecting with, the child, as well as their painful,ambivalent narratives of adoption losses, are rendered, felt and registered. In this, the author refuses a universal notion of motherhood. Her critique of transnational adoption and its relentless effects on birth mothers’ lives points to the everyday, normalized, gendered violence against working-class, poor, single mothers in South Korea’s modern nation-state development and illuminates the biopolitical functions of transnational adoption in managing an "excess" population. Simultaneously, her creative analysis reveals a counter-public, and counter-history, proposing the collective grievances of birth mothers.

“Hosu Kim’s Birth Mothers and Transnational Adoption Practice in South Korea: Virtual Mothering, is an approachable book that manages to account for a significant historical breadth while also being succinct and clear. Any moments of repetition or circular writing are in fact helpful to readers as they navigate across time periods, genres, and media. Kim’s book is a memorable and necessary intervention in critical adoption studies.” (Jenny Heijun Wills, Adoption & Culture, Vol. 7 (2), 2019)

“This book is a must-read for scholars of adoption, mothering, kinship, gender, and affect studies. It breaks new empirical ground, by bringing into focus the often hidden experiences of birthmothers in transnational adoption and illuminates broader questions of motherhood in contemporary South Korea. It also offers an indispensable framework for understanding how birthmothers come into being at the interface of affect and media technologies.” (Eleana Kim, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, USA)

“This is a compelling and powerful study of birth mothers in South Korea whose experiences and perspectives have been muted by colonial rescue myths and Confucian patriarchal structures for over sixty years. By the way of a nuanced ethnography taking account of the birth mothers’ presence in and through use of media technologies, Kim has managed to both listen to the previously silenced voices of the birth mothers as well as to develop the concept of virtual mothering, which is a valuable contribution to the field of critical adoption studies.” (Tobias Hubinette, Associate Professor, Intercultural Studies at Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden)

“Theoretically nuanced and empirically rich, Hosu Kim’s analysis of the political and affective economies structuring the transnational adoption of Korean-born children is a revelation. We are asked to see, but also to witness, the complex layerings of silence, violence, and geopolitical history animating Korean birth mothers’ experiences of social death and enforced separation. Situated at the intersections of global biopolitics and embodied loss, the book offers both a ‘memorial site’ for performative longings, and an astute critique of the structural forces rendering shame as economic development policy. Kim’s aim is nothing less than a ‘transformative knowledge,’ committed to recognizing other forms of mothering, and other practices of scholarship.” (JackieOrr, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, USA)               

Hosu Kim is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, with an affiliation in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, USA.