ABSTRACT
Korea is the country in the world that so far in modern history has sent away the largest number of its citizens for international adoption. Since 1953, at the end of the Korean War, 160,000 children have been dispatched to fifteen main host countries in the West on the continents of Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 1999). The demographic scope, time span, and the geographical spread are absolutely unique in the history of child migration, and still, more than 2,000 children leave Korea annually for international adoption. This intercontinental transfer and circulation of Korean children on a mass scale was for many years silently taking place in the shadow of Korea’s rapid, but nonetheless brutal, path to modernity and nation-building.
