I just learned that the IKAA Conference was featured on a segment of NPR's All Things Considered. Click HERE to listen to the program. Included in the broadcast was a mini-segment on the birthmother's protest against international adoption and for greater social welfare services that promote domestic adoption, foster care, and support for single mothers.
When I was at the conference, I met the NPR reporter but did not speak to him. He was seeking people to interview but I felt it was not my place (as a non-adopted person) to speak on behalf of the community given that there were 600 of them present and able to speak firsthand on the subject. One friend of mine spoke to the reporter offline to make sure he understand that there are more than 2 sides to the story - that it is not just those for and those against adoption. That those against adoption should not be portrayed as angry, ungrateful, or unhappy with their adoption and those for adoption should not be portrayed as enlightened, good, holy, etc.
I was disappointed that the segment included comments by one adopted Korean person who portrayed individuals against international adoption in Korea as "black and white" in their thinking. Such a statement reflects a straw man argument designed to simplify one position to make the other position appear stronger. GW Bush frequently (and annoyingly) applies this practice. I wish the reporter pointed out this misleading fallacy in the report.
Oh well, I wonder now if I should have spoken to him...
Korean Adoptees Examine Origins, Upbringings
by Jason Strother
All Things Considered, August 25, 2007 · Some 600 adoptees from South Korea recently attended a convention in Seoul to share experiences and to learn more about their birth country. Since the Korean War in the 1950s, more than 200,000 orphaned South Korean babies have been sent to live with Western families — over half of them to American homes. While the number of overseas adoptions from South Korea has declined, it still sends about 2,000 children abroad each year.
Posted by richlee at August 27, 2007 10:18 AM