Introduction
Introduction
This book examines the representations of transnational adoptees in South Korea in official discourses and media as well as the impact of adoptees on their birth families and on their birth country more generally. Drawing on the author's personal experience as an adult adoptee and her two years of ethnographic research in Seoul, this book explores the social facts of adoptee reintegration from the perspectives of South Korean individuals, families, society, and nation. It traces the history of transnational adoption from Korea and considers family meetings as a social service organized by the state on behalf of both parents and children. This book is divided into two parts. Part 1 discusses the national, public, and collective aspect of the return of Korean adoptees to their birth country and Part 2 analyzes the more private and interpersonal aspect of adoptees' reintegration within their birth families. This introduction presents vignettes that relate in chronological order the author's encounters with the adoptee–birth parent meetings phenomenon in South Korea. It also provides an overview of the chapters in this book.
Keywords: transnational adoptees, South Korea, adoptee reintegration, birth families, reintegration, transnational adoption, family meetings
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