New Policy Threatens Adoption Of Korean Kids

SEOUL, South Korea - A rich American couple adopt a Korean boy named Yung Soo, cut out his heart and have it transplanted into their ailing son, leaving the Asian child to rot on a garbage dump.

A second American couple adopt boys named Joonhwan and Inhwan and install them in their home by the beach with tons of toys and love. When the couple take a romantic trip to Hawaii, they miss the kids so much they pay the baby-sitter to fly them over to the islands.

The story of the first couple is a fiction of the Korean novelist Jung Do Sang, whose book ``An American Dream'' is widely seen by Koreans as a metaphor for worries that Korean children sent overseas are gutted of their identity and culture.

The second is the true story of Steve and Jane Ballback, a Corona del Mar, Calif., couple in their 40s who adopted twin boys and later an infant girl from Korea. They say that without the opportunity to be adopted, three children probably would be in orphanages because traditional Korean culture frowns on bringing strangers into the family home.

The two stories - fiction and fact - represent the powerful mix of emotion, myth and memory that is changing a longstanding special relationship between the United States and Korea.

While Koreans are proud of the export of Samsung stereos, Hyundai cars and Lotte chocolate bars found in the homes of millions of Americans, they are increasingly embarrassed by another popular export:

their children.

Since the Korean War ended in 1953, more children have been adopted overseas from Korea than from any other nation in the world. Last year, the U.S. government granted 3,552 visas for Korean babies adopted by U.S. families - down from 6,188 granted in 1986.

Stung by press reports during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, some of which said Korea was earning $20 million per year from the adoptions, political leaders vowed the era of wholesale adoptions would come to an end.

Earlier this year, the government of South Korean President Roh Tae Woo announced that adoptions will be reduced by 20 percent each year, with the door to overseas adoption swinging shut in 1996.

The decision has widespread ramifications for thousands of people. In Korea, families are being asked by the government to put aside tradition and bring children who are not their own into their homes.

``There is the whole idea of family lineage - the Confucian idea of purity of blood lines that makes adoption difficult,'' said Susan Cox, director of Holt International Children's Services, the Eugene, Ore.-based agency that is one of the largest sources of Korean adoptions in the United States.

Korean orphanages, which have seen their populations decline in recent years as the standard of living has soared, worry that a lack of overseas adoptions, coupled with resistance to adoption at home, could swell the ranks of children without families.

In the United States, the move will dry up what many say is the easiest and quickest way to adopt a healthy child. It means families will have to turn back to the often cumbersome bureaucracy for adopting U.S. children, or compete for the significantly smaller pool of available children from Latin America, India and the Philippines.

For the orphans, success of the new program would mean a chance to have a family in their native country, speak Korean and share in the future of their homeland. Failure would mean bleak years living unwanted at an orphanage, unable to leave.

Officials in Seoul declined to discuss the program on the record. But a top official in the Ministry of Health said the policy will not mean a flood of children to orphanages.

``Obviously, this is a very sensitive issue,'' said the official, who asked not to be identified. ``This is a good policy. It will work. There are changing social trends. People are having fewer children; there is more adoption here in Korea. There is also the liberalized abortion law, which makes it easier to terminate a pregnancy.''

While pointing to statistics that showed a drop in the overall number of unwed mothers, the official agreed that there is a need for improvement. The new policy comes at a time when the number of South Koreans adopting children is decreasing - from a high of 2,855 in 1985 to 1,888 last year.

To spur adoptions, the Korean government has promised prospective Korean adoptive parents lucrative tax breaks, subsidies and education programs. With the birth rate falling, infertility on the rise and industrialization driving up annual wages, the health ministry believes that the program can work.

If it doesn't work, the problem will be laid on the front porch of people such as Rim Hye Ok.

From a tiny house atop a garbage-strewn alley in the Yongsang district of Seoul, Rim, 71, is grandmother, teacher, social worker and song leader to 27 girls and 24 boys.

On a recent cool evening, a smiling but tired Rim sat in the little parlor of her small orphanage. Pictures of a blond Jesus compete for attention with Pee-wee Herman dolls and piles of donated white-and-black stuffed pandas.

Rim recites how the orphanage was created to help children left without parents during the Japanese occupation. Just as their numbers were waning, along came the Korean War in 1950. Rim packed up her 78 boys and girls and trekked all the way to the U.S. lines near the southern coastal city of Pusan.

After the war there was a new flood of orphans, some of whom were able to find homes in the United States with soldiers returning home. As generations passed, the small faces appearing at the door were more often casualties of the Korean economy than refugees from war.

Children often are left behind by families that cannot feed another mouth - at least until the child is old enough to work on the family farm or in the family business. The poor cannot pay to place their children in the home.

``The government helps a little,'' Rim said. ``Money donations - they are not really there. People will offer to help with some work, or give a chicken.''

Many of the children dream of a day when a new mother or father will take them away. But in a world that wants babies, adoption is a distant hope for the 9- and 10-year-olds. She is concerned that the new policy could mean more older children in her home.

``People don't adopt older children; everybody wants a little baby,'' Rim said.

At 8 p.m., the children line up six rows deep in the main room. As Rim pokes out a tune on a battered brown piano, the children stiffly stand at attention to sing ``Edelweiss'' - in English learned phonetically without understanding.

``I often wonder who is going to keep things going, who is going to help these kids,'' said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Mary Grimes, a frequent visitor to the orphanage. ``Every pipe that can bust does, every winter. Every roof that can leak does.''

Any more children could create a whole list of new problems for Rim.

Life after an orphan leaves the home means a return to work in the family's business or, for those without a family, low-level work and difficulty in arranging a marriage.

For four decades, the way out of the hard life was to get on a plane - usually to the United States.

The adoptions began soon after the war and were accelerated when Harry and Bertha Holt adopted eight Korean children in 1955. Holt International Children's Services has brought 45,000 children to the United States in the past 35 years.

One of the first to come over was an orphan from Seoul, who was given the name Susan Cox. Today she is development director for the Holt agency.

Cox said she hopes the new government policy is a success and praised efforts to find homes for Korean children in Korea. But she worries what will happen if the policy does not work as planned.

``I look forward to the day when they will not need to send children away,'' she said. ``But if they have to deny children the chance for a family, if they are kept in orphanages, that would be a real step back.''

Cox said Korean fears that their children are being sent to a foreign land where they are stripped of their identity is perhaps overwrought, but not a completely hollow concern.

``There was a time when we would say, the children are American now,'' Cox said. ``You must treat them as Americans only. But we learned that to say you must forget is to say somehow that your culture is no good.''

Holt now requires adopting families to ensure that children learn about their native country.

Cheryl and Jack Ringler hope that the Korean government's new adoption policy will not keep them from bringing a Korean baby into their lives.

Childless by choice, Cheryl came to the idea of adoption at work - 35,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. She's a United Airlines flight attendant on the Far East run.

``You would see (the Korean children) on the flights, coming over to meet their new parents,'' she said.

The home awaiting the Ringlers' child is a classic slice of California: a laid-back, tanned and trim couple, both 35, who live in a small hillside home overgrown with flowers and plants just a short walk down the road from the ocean in Laguna Beach, Calif.

If all goes well, the Ringlers would like to end up much like the Ballbacks, the couple from Corona del Mar.

In an immaculate house overlooking the sea, Steve and Jane tried to relax to talk about adoption. But their eyes were constantly drawn to two darting figures: Jaik Joonhwan and Brandon Inhwan, the 3-year-old twins they adopted from Korea 30 months ago. Later came a girl, Stacee Meesun, now 1.

``After 20 years of marriage, we didn't have a birth child, so you put two and two together,'' Jane Ballback said.

The couple looked at the options and decided on overseas adoption.

The Ballbacks are concerned that the new policy will close the door on the future for many Korean orphans.

``I just hope they are being honest with themselves about this,'' Steve Ballback said. ``They don't owe us their children. But they owe their children a chance for a good life.''

If anyone can evaluate the merits of the Korean government's new adoption policy, Christa Echan can.

In 1980, she came to Costa Mesa a scared little girl who spoke not a word of English. Today, she is preparing to enter Southern California College in Costa Mesa, Calif.

In the living room of her mother's home, the smile left Christa's face when she was asked how she came to the United States.

``I remember everything,'' Christa said. ``I was 8 years old, at school, and they told me to go home. My father had passed away. My aunt worked in an orphanage. She thought it would be best if my mom put my sister and I up for adoption. It was the only way that we could get a good education and not just go out and start working.''

Christa's mother agreed and the two girls were packed off to Angel's Haven, an orphanage in Korea run by evangelical Christians.

Life proved difficult at first for Christa and her sister, Kim. At 8 and 10, they were old by orphanage standards.

In Orange County, Calif., Barbara Echan was thinking about adoption. After bearing one child, a boy, Mike, she was unable to have more. She wrote to Angel's Haven, where Christa's aunt intercepted the letter. Liking what she heard, she wrote back.

Soon, Christa and her sister were on their way to the United States. Eventually, they would be part of a family that would include five adopted children.

Although her life began in Korea, she is now a Southern Californian. When she arrived in the United States 10 years ago, she spoke only Korean. Today the language is largely a memory.

Christa admits a few regrets, which were made more poignant during a recent visit to Korea.

``When I left, I remembered my mother as a young woman,'' Christa said. ``When I saw her again, she was old.''

But given a second chance, Christa said she wouldn't choose to live her life in Korea.

``I wouldn't want it differently,'' she said. ``I'm fortunate in so many ways, in so many things. My mom here, my family, the life God has given me.''