Book talk for Korean edition of Half a Million Women: Mothers Who Lose Their Children By Adoption
By Park Ju-yeon
Published Dec. 18, 2025
Translated by Marilyn Hook
“Although the numbers vary from country to
country, [total] estimates of women who gave up their babies for adoption
between World War II and the late 1970s due to being unwed range from hundreds
of thousands to millions. This period is called the ‘Baby Scoop Era’ or the ‘Forced
Adoption Era.’”
This is an excerpt from the publisher's preface
to the Korean edition of Half a Million Women: Mothers Who Lose Their
Children By Adoption. What exactly was the “Baby Scoop Era”? Let's consider
the case of the UK, the country the book examines. At least 500,000 women there
are estimated to have lost babies to adoption (based on statistics on children
adopted from 1945 to 1990), meaning one in 25 women gave a baby up for
adoption. That's a significant percentage.
This brings us to the expression "losing a
child." Adoption is commonly described as the process by which a person or
family "gains” a child. It's rare to hear the concept of someone
"losing" a child through adoption. We've all heard it described [in
Korean] with terms like "giving up," "abandoning," or
"sending away" a child.
“The term ‘lost a baby to adoption’ originated
in the West in the late 1970s with the ‘Honest Adoption Language’ (HAL)
movement. This movement arose in resistance to the ‘Positive Adoption Language’
movement, which sought to eliminate stigma around adoption and change
adoption-related terminology to more positive alternatives. Advocates for HAL
argue that positive language obscures the experiences of birth mothers and
adoptees who are separated by adoption. Therefore, they argue that the term ‘lost
a baby to adoption’ should be used instead of ‘gave a baby up for adoption.’”—
Half a Million Women
That’s right—if someone "gains" a
child in the process of adoption, someone else has "lost" the child.
Still, many may question whether the term "lose" is appropriate. To
answer that question, perhaps we should listen to the stories of people with
direct experience of adoption.
The Dec. 5 book talk for the Korean edition of Half
a Million Women. From left: Lee Tae-in, Jeon Se-hee, Noh Hye-ryeon, Jo So-yeon,
and Kwon Hee-jung.
Ms. Kwon is also the CEO of Antonia’s, the
publisher of this edition of the book. Half a Million Women was first published
in the UK in 1992. What prompted Ms. Kwon in 2025 to translate a book published
30 years ago? She said, " I translated and published The Baby Scoop
Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption and Forced Surrender (by
Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh) in 2023. This book was cited in that one, and the
title really resonated with me." After purchasing and reading the book, she
decided to publish the translation. The Korean title is a direct translation of
the English one.
“Fallen” women, mentally ill women, nameless women…
A long history of poor treatment toward unwed mothers
Women who lose their children through adoption
don't even have a name. Chapter 1 of Half a Million Women states,
"There is no simple, clear term to refer to the women who give up their
babies to be raised by others."[1]
This absence reflects societal expectations that mothers quietly disappear
after their babies are adopted. In other words, society demands silence from
these women. This silence is also one that has been cultivated over a long
period of history.
In the book, Ms. Kwon explained the history of unwed
mothers and adoption in England:
"With the spread of Puritan ethics in the
16th century, women's extramarital sex, pregnancy, and childbirth were heavily
stigmatized. The presence of unwed mothers and illegitimate children in a
village was a key factor in determining its moral standing. Later, in the
mid-19th century, with the arrival of the Victorian era and the establishment
of (conservative) sexual ethics, sexual relations were restricted to married
couples, and unwed mothers and illegitimate children were seen as disrupting
social order. Laws were also passed requiring that a guardian be appointed for
an illegitimate child at birth and that [responsibility for and authority over
the child] be transferred to the local government. In the early 20th century,
with the belief that children thrive in 'married, heterosexual, normal
families,' [the first] law governing adoption in its modern sense was
introduced in 1926."
Here, when adoption began to involve completely
severing the child from the biological mother, was the beginning of
"secret adoption.” Ms. Kwon explained, "After World War II ended in
the mid-20th century, the psychiatric perspective took over from the moral one,
and unwed mothers were diagnosed as pathological." She said, "Before
that, they had been considered corrupt and bad women, but now they were
pathologized as immature and mentally disabled. Because they were considered
'sick,' they were judged incapable of raising children, and their children were
given up for adoption. Later, with the advent of social welfare, [pregnant] unwed
mothers were forced to enter institutions. A system was established whereby
upon the child’s birth, it would be sent for adoption and the unwed mother
would be discharged. These procedures and systems were introduced to Korea
after the Korean War."
The Korean edition of David Howe’s, Phillida
Sawbridge’s, and Diana Hinings’s Half a Million Women: Mothers Who Lose Their
Children By Adoption, translated by Kwon Hee-jung, Lee Tae-in, Jeon Se-hee, and
Jo So-yeon, edited by Noh Hye-ryeon, and published by Antonia’s.
Around the time when the book was published in
1992, Western societies were seeing an increase in women giving birth out of
wedlock and a rise in sexual autonomy at the same time as adoptees began to
tell their stories and search for their biological mothers, which led to the
voices of biological mothers finally being heard.
“Adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary
problem”
“Married mothers who are emotionally, financially,
and socially stable receive an abundance of support from those around them.
Conversely, unmarried pregnant women, who are in extremely vulnerable circumstances
emotionally, financially, and socially, don’t even receive trust from their
families and society, let alone support. This leads them to lose confidence in
themselves and believe they will never be able to raise a child. Losing faith
in themselves at the moment of greatest need, unmarried pregnant women often
passively 'agree' to adoption when the time comes to decide between parenting
and adoption.”—Half a Million Women
Professor Lee Tae-in of Cheju Halla University
said she asks her students to discuss their thoughts on statements like,
"If you're poor, you shouldn't have children," and "If you don't
have confidence that you can raise your child well, you should give it up for
adoption.” She reported, "Students
generally say you shouldn't have children [in that situation], and you should
give a child up for adoption if you don't have confidence in your ability to
raise them. But when a student musters up the courage to say, 'I'd have the
child anyway and raise them,' the atmosphere shifts. I think this book is like
that. It's a book that speaks with courage.”
She also shared about her experiences
interviewing overseas adoptees, and addressed the issues with Korea’s current
adoption system.
“One adoptee said this to me: ‘Adoption is a
permanent solution to a temporary problem.’ It’s such a perfect way to describe
it. And actually, several people said similar things.”
Poverty, vulnerable circumstances, or the judgment
of others may be temporary. Yet, instead addressing these temporary problems by
providing support or seeking alternatives to adoption, society opts for
permanent separation of mother and baby.
Director Kwon Hee-jung said, “There’s a book
recently published in the United States called Relinquished: The Politics of
Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood (2024), which tells the
story of a pregnant woman in crisis who wouldn’t have given up her baby if she’d
had just $250 dollars.” She continued, “In Korea, if a pregnant woman in crisis
decides to raise her child, she can be included in the universal support system
and receive about 1.1 million won [about 750 USD] [per month]. However, if she
chooses the Crisis Pregnancy Protection and Childbirth System (which was
introduced on July 19, 2024, and allows pregnant women in crisis who want to
hide the fact of their unwanted pregnancy and childbirth to give birth
anonymously and have the baby put in the care of the state), the local
government jurisdiction where the child is born will receive 1 million won per
child for three months. Isn’t this welfare system blatantly unfair? What if we
gave the woman [that extra] 1 million won for three months?”
The “conspiracy of silence” that surrounds women
who have lost their children
What happens to the women who "choose"
to give their babies up for adoption? What are their lives like afterwards? Surprisingly,
Korean society has never asked this question. It simply covers the adoption up
as if it never happened. The book describes this as a "conspiracy of
silence."
“This was the time when the birth mother wanted
to talk to people, to mull things over, to rehearse the options, but there was
no one willing to listen. It seemed, to the mother at least, that there was a conspiracy
of silence. Although she wanted to give voice to her feelings, other people
did not want to hear. […] Even after she gave the baby up for adoption and
returned home alone, the silence continued; others continued to act as if she
had never given birth or given her baby up for adoption.” —Half a Million
Women
Jeon Se-hee, director of the Better Adoption
Network, highlighted the Post-Adoption Centre mentioned in the book,
explaining, "The Post-Adoption Centre, established in London in 1986, is
unique in two ways. First, it provides services to all three parties involved
in the 'tripartite adoption model' (adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth
mothers). Second, it offers lifelong, specialized services." As word
spread about the center's services for birth mothers, more and more birth
mothers began to join.
Ms. Jeon continued, “They said they couldn't
tell anyone about their pain, and even if they did, they were told, ‘You
shouldn’t talk about that anymore,' so [at the centre] they were able to
express emotions they had not been able to deal with before, they were able to
open up about their complex feelings. They said that only then did their
emotions begin to resolve, and they found strength in other areas of their lives."
“We've come to realize that adoption is not the
end, but rather the beginning of a turning point, a major incident that will
continue to impact the lives of birth mothers, even until their deaths," Ms.
Jeon revealed. "We must not bury this issue, but rather bring it out into
the open, continue to discuss it, provide counseling, and take responsibility
together as a society."
A slide on open adoption being discussed at the
book talk for the Korean edition of Half a Million Women. (Photo credit:
Antonia’s)
Institute open adoption, not the Crisis
Pregnancy Protection System
The Crisis Pregnancy Protection and Childbirth
System, which allows women to give birth anonymously, is currently in operation
in South Korea. At the forum, Social
Welfare Research Institute director Cho So-yeon criticized this system, explaining,
"The biggest problem with the system is that it leaves no information
about the birth parents, which poses a problem when preparing for adoption. Even
if you try to match a child with a good adoptive family, there's no
information. The fact that there isn’t even any health information makes the adoption
extremely nerve-wracking for adoptive parents."
Professor Lee emphasized that the way that
pregnant unmarried women think about their situation depends on our society,
and added, “It’s time to decide whether our society is going to help these
women and work together to raise their children, what kind of standards [the
conservative standards of the past or different ones] we’re going to use in our
perspective.”
Ms. Jeon said, "The book states that women are
subject to contrasting judgments based on their marital status, and I
agree." She added, "Unmarried women are criticized for having sex,
but married women are criticized if they don’t have sex. The same goes for
pregnancy and childbirth. We can be criticized for not adopting, and for adopting.
The fact that only women are judged by these standards is problematic."
Professor Noh Hye-ryeon of Soongsil University questioned,
"Is it right for society to convey the message that single mothers are
shameful and should be hidden away, and that it's better to hide and abandon
their children?" She emphasized, "We need to understand that adoption
has a lifelong impact on adoptees, adoptive parents, and biological mothers,"
and, "Therefore, it's absurd to think that once a child is adopted, that’s
the end of it, and that what happens afterward has nothing to do with us."
Ms. Kwon argued, "For ethical adoption, we
should guarantee the rights of biological parents through open adoption and
explore ways to maintain the connection after adoption." In open adoption,
the biological parents choose the adoptive family and maintain contact, even
after adoption, through various means, such as photos, phone calls, and
in-person visits. Ms. Kwon explained, "Examples from the United States
have proven that open adoption brings positive benefits to all parties
involved, including by helping adopted children discover their own identity and
reduce feelings of abandonment, and providing adoptive families with insight
into their child's medical history and cultural background.”
By amplifying the long-suppressed voices of
women who lost their children due to being forced into making an impossible
choice, the book Half a Million Women: Mothers Who Lose Their Children By
Adoption is a revelation that points out what our society has missed, or
rather, what it has intentionally excluded and buried.
*Original article: https://www.ildaro.com/10345
[1] Translator’s note: Most of the quotes from the book in this article
are re-translations of the Korean edition. I was not able to get ahold of the
original English edition.
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