The Relation Between the Korean Adoptees of “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying” and the Recent Scandals Regarding the South Korean Adoptee System

 

Dr O’Brien’s mention of the recent turmoil surrounding the South Korean adoptee system when we were discussing the short story “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying” piqued my interest. I had not heard of anything regarding the adoptee system in South Korea, but I was curious to learn more. Through reading articles surrounding this topic, I was able to connect some of the points back to the three girls, Mini, Ronnie, and Caroline in this story, furthering my understanding of experiences they had as Korean adoptees. I came to recognize the injustices of the system that are finally getting exposed, and viewed the girls in a deeper and more understanding way.

I read an article from the New York Times titled “World’s Largest ‘Baby Exporter’ Confronts Its Painful Past.” The article goes in depth about how South Korea’s adoptee system has proven to have many flaws, with recent stories coming to light regarding the corruption set in place. South Korea built a reputation as a country with a booming adoptee market, with more foreign adoptions than any other countries. This is due in part to the unique method that South Korea implemented of allowing adoption agencies to obtain fees through sending children abroad directly to their recipients, instead of having the adoptive parents travel to South Korea like other countries. Profit motives given to adoption agencies incentivized these agencies to mass obtain adoptees, through targeting unwed mothers’ babies and biracial babies, falsifying documents to make more children available for adoption, coercing mothers to give up their child even before the baby’s birth, and preying on unregistered babies.

In addition, the system set in place often disregards the level that the parents need to be at to raise and treat an adoptee well. This is seen by mention through the article: “And sometimes there was little or no follow-up from the firms on cases where children struggled with adjustment troubles or abuse in their new homes” (Choe 2023). This point particularly relates back to the short story, with all three of the girls experiencing familial problems in different ways. Mini has parents who are not present in her life, Caroline has parents with overbearing expectations, and Ronnie deals with an inappropriate relationship between her and her brother. The shared experiences of hardship revolving around their families are what ultimately causes them to perform a spell, unleashing the being “Mom” into each of them in hopes of an actual motherlike figure being present in their lives. Feelings of resentment are exemplified through the characters, with Caroline’s parents having “wanted best and they wanted it now,” Mini’s desires of her parents “Making [her] feel secure and safe…They did not try,” and Ronnie being described as “hating her family more than any of us” (Kim 448, 444, 451). Putting this in context with the recent revealing of the under-qualified recipients of many Korean adoptees forms a connection between these current events and those of in the story. 

The narrator’s description of longing towards their mother exemplifies the complicatedness and confusion many of the adoptees feel. They mention, “There are so many ways to miss your mother. Your real mother- the one who looks like you, the one who has to love you because she grew you from her own body, the one who hates you so much that she dumped you in the garbage for white people to pick up and dust off” (Kim 443). Current events shedding light on the processes that many agencies partake in to obtain children provide a deeper layer of complication. While the narrator mentions that their mother abandoned them, and while this may in some cases be true, the article brings up a point that many of the parents giving up their children are not doing it out of their own desire, but rather are forced or coerced into doing it. 

The many recent events unfolding regarding the horrible injustices of the adoptee system allow us to see more aspects of the characters' points of view and their lived experiences, thus providing a further understanding of the relation between both the current events occurring and the short story “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/17/world/asia/south-korea-adoption.html

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