Koreaboo resources

Koreaboo is a story about an Korean adoptee seeking to forge a connection with her birth mother.

But what does that mean?

Read on to learn more about the history of adoption from Korea, hear from the perspective of inter-country adoptees and find additional resources. Use the contents link below to navigate straight to the section you want to see.

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Adoption & Korea
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This play was inspired by my life, but it's not a documentary. It's imagined from reality. With the support of my families in both Australia and Korea, I've written it from the inside out.

Michelle Lim Davidson

Adoption & Korea

The international adoption of South Korean children started around 1953, primarily to care for orphans resulting from the Korean War. It quickly expanded to include other orphaned and vulnerable children, with the USA, Australia, and Western European nations playing a key role. While initially viewed as a humanitarian effort, it evolved into a significant global phenomenon, with South Korea becoming a major source of adopted children for Western countries.

From the 1970s through the 2000s, thousands of children were adopted overseas every year.

"This play is an invitation into a particular lived experience."
Michelle Lim Davidson

Approximately 200,000 South Korean children have been sent overseas for adoption into primarily white families.
150,000 to the USA and 50,000 to Canada, Europe, and Australia.

In Europe, Korean children have been adopted by families in such countries as Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, and Luxembourg.

Approximately 3,500 children have been adopted to Australia.

Roughly 3,000-5,000 adult Korean adoptees return to Korea each year and there are an estimated 200 living in Korea for extended periods of time. According to Eleana Kim¹, while adoptees often desire to ‘fit in’ and suppress racial differences in their adoptive countries, they often face discrimination or rejection in Korea due to their Korean appearance but lack of Korean language skills and cultural knowledge.

Below are a range of web pages, articles, videos and podcasts that focus on the history of Korean adoption, the impacts felt by Korean adoptees and some of the gaps that have appeared when adoptees begin the journey of connecting with their birth families.

Everyone thinks that finding each other is the happy ending but nobody tells you how to live afterwards.

Hannah, Koreaboo

Read

KAIAN
History of Korean Adoption

SBS Voices
3 Things I Wish People Didn't Say to Me About Being Adopted

"I’m the same but I’m not"
Australian-Korean study participant

Law Society of NSW Journal
Left in the dark: examining Australian adoptions from South Korea

Melbourne Asia Review
Korean Transnational Adoption to Australia: ‘quiet’ migrants, diaspora, and ‘hometactics’

Watch & Listen

Vice Asia
These Korean Adoptees Are Returning to Their Birth Country, to Stay

Adopted Feels
Inside the Brain of an Adoption Therapist

"For a long time, I believed my adoption was an isolated event, a private twist of fate."
Michelle Lim Davidson

First Person Plural
A film by Deann Borshay Liem
First Person Plural follows the story of an 8-year old girl who is adopted by an American family, only to discover years later that she has a birth family in Korea. The film explores themes of race, identity, assimilation and birth family reunion.