“Disabled Children Have No Place to Stand in Korea“

Low domestic adoption rate of disabled children has been recently reported as a result of social prejudice and lack of aid in raising them.

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on the 9th, the number of healthy children adopted by people in foreign countries in 2001 was 1126 and 967 by domestic families, which make the comparison insignificant. However, a total number of handicapped children adopted domestically is only 9, whereas 432 were taken to foreign nations.

The year 2000 was similar in that there were 1726 foreign and 1668 domestic adoptions of healthy children while there were 634 foreign and 18 domestic adoptions of disabled children.

Actual Conditions

Currently, 5 domestic adoption agencies including Holt Children`s Services are nursing 1126 children who are awaiting new stepparents. 370 among them are handicapped and are mostly expected to be adopted by foreign families.

There is a great contrast between domestic and foreign families in their motivations for adopting disabled children.

In native adoptions cases, volunteers sometimes feel affection towards the children they have been caring for, or step parents first take care of the children on paid consignments and later do not want to hand them over to orphanages because no adopter appears. On the contrary, foreign stepparents often decide on adoption due to a sense of religious duty or charity, regardless of nationalities, skin colors, and health conditions.

Reasons for low domestic adoption rate

Although the social prejudice against disabled children and the traditional insistence on `blood-relation` play a major role for the low adoption rate, lack of government aid policy on education, nursing and medical care make the adoption even more difficult in reality.

Traffic facilities for the disabled are severely insufficient and opportunities of further education and employment are far less available than for the healthy.

The government began to provide aid for disabled children`s adoption in 1996 by providing for middle and high school education, 500,000 won per month for the family, and maximum of 1.2 million won for annual medical care. However, the aid is far from sufficient.

"We planned to pay for the mediation charge (average 2 million won) that new stepparents have to pay. But it was denied in the review process because `the ones who adopt are usually rich` and it was not needed." explained the Health and Welfare`s Children’s Health and Welfare officer, Lee Su Ran.

Foreign countries` aid conditions

Most advanced industrialized nations established various welfare policies like medical benefits to support families to raise their own disabled children, and adequate aid is provided in case of adoption.

In the case of the state of California, the government provides 345 to 484 dollars depending on age, plus maximum 1500 dollars depending on the degree of disability, which makes up a total average of 2000 dollars (2.63 million won) per month.

European nations, including Norway and Luxembourg, provide no extra aid for adoptions, but good social security systems provide a variety of medical benefits, which eases the burden of raising the children.

hanscho@donga.com