Introduction

After the publication of I Wish for You a Beautiful Life, I received letters from many Koreans who had been adopted overseas. Having read that book, many of these adoptees wanted to visit Ae Ran Won, and a lot of them have actually now done so. They said, "I could not read this book without tears, but I was pleased to know about the love of my birth mother, who had given up me. But why? I was not able to find the answer about why she had to send me away. I want to know that."

I delivered this feedback to birth mothers who had joined an Ae Ran Won self-help group after moving out of our facility. These were not the birth mothers of those specific adoptees, but we discussed how the circumstances of Korean unwed mothers are often quite similar, and we wondered if it would be good to talk and write about the reasons they had to send their children, whom they loved, to be adopted abroad.

I met Dr. Sook Wilkinson in Minnesota in 2003. She is the co-editor of the book After the Morning Calm: Reflections of Korean Adoptees. She said, "After the Morning Calm is full of adoptees' life stories from the time they arrived in America. I hope that at some time a prequel-the story up to when Korean birth mothers sent their children abroad-will be published." I said that Ae Ran Won and Korean birth mothers would try to provide that part of the story. When I returned to Ae Ran Won, I delivered Sook Wilkinson's message to the birth mothers in our programs. They all agreed, but asked for more information about what the adoptees wanted to know.

Since then, I have asked adoptees whom I've met to share their thoughts about what they would hope to learn from a book of birth mothers' stories. When I relayed these discussions to the birth mothers, they felt positive about it. One birth mother commented, "If it helps adoptees, I would gladly open up my wounded past." Another said, "I don't know whether my child will read this or not, but if someone is helped from this writing, when my birth child needs help, someone around him may lend a hand." I put a notice on the homepage of Ae Ran Won, inviting members to participate, and, with an attitude geared to sharing and healing, birth mothers started writing their stories as if they were opening up in front of their children.

As they wrote, some of their families criticized them. "You should not be proud of what you have done." "Why would you want to let the whole world find out about it?" "Aren't you ashamed of yourself at all?" However, they never gave up on telling their stories, and they willingly accepted the criticism. The mothers thought that this was the one thing they could do, as birth mothers who had not been able to raise their own children, to ease the pain and curiosity of adoptees who are longing to understand why some birth mothers had to choose adoption.

It was not easy for these women to put into writing what they had in mind. They had to write honestly about themselves while being continually reminded of painful memories. They had to re-experience the pain, the helplessness, and the loss they had been trying to conceal. They often had to call me, and some cried again and again as the feeling of emptiness that had been buried in their hearts floated up into consciousness and became hard to bear. Sometimes they were captured by shock and chaos as painful memories vividly flashed back. Then they rushed to hold onto me and could do nothing but cry. The act of sending their children away may have been "in the past," but it was simultaneously "present" for each mother. These feelings surged constantly as they wrote their stories, line by line. This book would not have been possible without all the pain that the birth mothers endured, but it gives them huge pleasure to have shared these stories for the sake of their children.

There have been slight changes in Korea's patriarchal culture. Previously, the human rights of unmarried mothers and their children were not acknowledged. Any pregnancy before marriage, even if caused by rape, was never acceptable. The pregnant woman was considered to be lucky if the perpetrator decided to have mercy and take care of her.
Until recently, people considered abortion to be a solution to pregnancy before marriage. Some people have visited me at Ae Ran Won and asserted, "If these girls were your daughters, would you still let them give a birth? If you really want to help them, persuade them all to have abortions, and send them back home." However, public awareness of the seriousness of Korea's low birthrate has influenced the general acceptance of pregnancy and childbirth. Some people have encouraged me, saying, "You are doing an important job saving lives," and observing that sometimes "even married couples hesitate to take charge of their own children when they get divorced; it is great that an unmarried mother is willing to raise a child alone."

As the Korean National Assembly and the Government revised the Single Mother-Child Welfare Act in December, 2006, an amendment clearly stated that facilities may support unmarried mothers who request support in order to raise their children. However, no budget is allocated solely for this purpose. As a result, only a few of the more than forty maternity homes in South Korea have made space for unmarried mothers and their babies, and supported, through fund-raising, the mothers who keep their babies.

At the same time, the number of unmarried mothers who want to raise their children has been rising, and these mothers need support facilities. Since 1999, Ae Ran Won has been developing such a support system. According to statistics for 2008, 80% of unmarried mothers who entered Ae Ran Won decided to raise their children themselves. That percentage will increase even more in coming years. By contrast, only 1% did so in 1995, and by the year 2000 about 20% of the unmarried mothers kept their babies. The increase over the years was mostly because Ae Ran Won opened group homes for these mothers, and found other means of support, which gave more women the option to keep their babies. Ae Ran Won had previously supported unmarried mothers, from 1989 to 1994. At that time, the outside nursery took care of children three years and older, so Ae Ran Won had to build an inside nursery to take care of the babies, while supporting the mothers with vocational training. This program was shut down in July 1994 by an administrative order of the Seoul City government, which did not then understand why Ae Ran Won wanted to support unmarried mothers in keeping their babies.

Clearly, many challenges remain. The Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family is currently establishing comprehensive policies for unmarried mothers and making a roadmap for further assistance of birth mothers' sustenance and child rearing. Similar plans launched by the Ministry of Female and Family were abrogated because the budget was not secured in advance, which left harsh memories with those who fought for these plans. Needless to say, we should first secure the budget to put these plans into effect.
There are as yet no social support systems in Korea other than the facilities for unwed single-parent families. Single mothers are able to receive assistance only if they enter one of the fifteen unmarried single mothers' group homes in the nation. However, the amount of housing is insufficient compared to the number of the mothers who are raising their children. If an unmarried mother fails to be admitted to a group home, then she is on her own.

Unmarried single mothers can receive 50,000 won per month for child rearing as social welfare aid from the government. However, most of them give this up because each would have to reveal the fact that she is an unmarried single mother in front of local officials and make them understand her situation. In addition, the government limits this aid, giving it only to those mothers whose monthly income is very low, and ending the support when the child is ten years old.
The unwed mother has to face her local community's inhospitality without preparation, even though she needs help desperately. In this situation, mothers get worn out by the struggle to care for their babies and themselves, and sometimes give up on motherhood and even life itself. The result, as indicated by statistics from the Child Abuse Prevention Center: abuse, abandonment, and relinquishment of children.

In 2006 Ae Ran Won established the Me.You.Us. Support Center, an unwed single mothers' support center that helps women even if they are outside established facilities. Now the service helps women become more self-reliant in addition to assisting with child-rearing concerns. I am hopeful that this model will secure a position in a new paradigm of seeing to the welfare of Korean unwed single mothers and their children.

I am grateful to all of the people who helped to get this book published.

More than anything else, I appreciate the many birth mothers who answered the question "Why?" by opening up and sharing their painful pasts. After writing, many of the birth mothers said things like, "I am really relieved now because, even if I were to die suddenly, my child could learn from this book why I had to decide on adoption." They are now waiting for any response from the book's readers.
I sincerely thank Mr. Brian Boyd, who donated all the proceeds from publishing I Wish for You a Beautiful Life to Ae Ran Won. The proceeds developed into a fund that became the seed money for a group home. He has promised to publish this book under the same conditions. The proceeds of this book will be used to assist unmarried single mothers who are having difficulties in their local communities, and for the social, psychological, and financial support of unmarried mothers and their children. I deeply appreciate Brian Boyd.

Thanks to Ms. Hyun Kyu Lim, an artist who contributed her precious paintings and changed Ae Ran Won into a nice place like an elegant gallery, and who has supported the unmarried mothers' child rearing efforts. I deeply appreciate that she has permitted the use of these paintings in this book for free.

I also thank Ross Oke, who was in charge of translation coordination and proof reading, Hyenah Seo, Hana Schneider, and my daughter, JooYun Jun, who participated in translation, and Soyoung Park at Brown University for the final proof reading. I appreciate that this book could see the light thanks to the efforts of all these people.

I would like to mention that, as in I Wish for You a Beautiful Life, you can find that many birth mothers process their experiences with the help of Christian concepts and words. Some of these expressions translate better than others, but they can help us understand the birth mothers' deep feelings of self-blame and guilt related to being unable to keep their children. Like the sense of urgency a person who is drowning must feel, the sense of powerlessness felt by mothers who have to send their children away leads them to pursue the absolute being. Many of them take the view that "If there is an absolute being, I sincerely hope that He takes care of my baby." At the same time, some birth mothers develop strong religious belief systems that are important aspects of their worldview and manner of coping with loss.
At Ae Ran Won we are keenly aware of the undeniable fact that human beings are not complete figures, and we deeply respect the many and varied approaches that birth mothers take to working through their experiences. It is my great hope that people will learn to live together in harmonious society rather than criticize others who do not match their own standards or outlook.

Ae Ran Won has established a support system for unwed mothers and children, and developed the system to assist them more effectively. I hope all these little efforts bear fruit to promote public awareness regarding the human rights and welfare of unwed mothers and their children. We hope a good result will come out for more concern and support from the government and from the society. I hope Korean society will consider the children of unwed mothers as equal to any other children. I think it can be approved by establishing related laws and regulations to hold the birth fathers also responsible. The unwed mothers should not solely be blamed.

Selection from one of the chapters from Dreaming a World:

Worse Than a Criminal?
(baby born in 1998)

Hello! First of all, I would like to greet those of you who are reading my story.

Several years ago, I was an unwed mother who had to give up a beautiful infant daughter for adoption to a family in the United States. I now write this story as a lawfully married mother of two children-a three-year-old boy and a seven-month-old baby girl.

The reason I've chosen to write my story is that I wanted to explain why I put my baby up for adoption. I realize that some people might think that I'm writing to placate my guilt, but that's not true. I recently read a newspaper article about international adoptees who had a difficult time coping with their sense of abandonment and lack of understanding over why they were given up. I was hoping that my story might offer them a glimpse of what life is like for many birth mothers who do not have the option of keeping and lovingly raising their own children, even though they would like to. However, I certainly don't expect those who read my story to agree with the decision I made, nor am I hoping to generate sympathy.
I was born into a troubled family. Most people I know in Korea remember their childhood and adolescent years as times of school, parental love, and friendship. For me, though, these were times I would rather forget. My parents fought virtually nonstop and more or less neglected me, so I looked to my older sister as both a parent and as my only friend.

Living in that home environment, drawing was the only activity that gave me solace and peace. Drawing was everything to me in those days, as it also gave me the strength and confidence I needed to cope on a daily basis. However, my parents wouldn't even allow me that little shred of happiness, saying that I was wasting my time. While I was at school, they would tear up all the pictures I had drawn at night. Sometimes they would even come into my room and take the drawings away after I had fallen asleep. Being at home became increasingly unbearable, so I started going to a local church to be in a more positive environment. But even that did not last very long. Since neither of my parents believed in religion, they were adamantly opposed to my going to church.

After spending my childhood and teen years in such an unhealthy environment, I finally graduated from high school and immediately started working. I also resumed going to church, without my parents' knowledge. I could no longer bear living with my parents, so, at the urging of a friend from church, I left home on a cold winter night. Since I didn't have anywhere to stay, and was not earning enough to rent a room, I decided to stay in a small storage room at my church. I couldn't even keep in contact with my older sister and most of my friends because I didn't want my parents to find out through them where I was. I had lived in this way for six years by the time I turned twenty-five.

That period of my life was filled with loneliness and sorrow. Despite the hardships, what kept me going was the strength I drew from God. In the best way I knew how, I tried to learn and grow from the teachings of Christ, so, in many ways, those days were very special to me. At the same time, I was so caught up in my own survival and self-pity that I didn't have very good interpersonal skills or judgment. My maturity, confidence, and inner strength were not where they should have been, considering how old I was at the time.

Despite trying to stay strong, I was so lonely that I often cried in envy and longing when I saw seemingly happy families in my neighborhood, especially at night when I could see them through their apartment balconies. "I bet those people don't fight and resent one another. Had I been born into one of those families, I might have been able to go on to college to study drawing," I would say to myself. I would console myself by believing that the happiness and acceptance that seemed to elude me would sooner or later come my way. I desperately wanted to believe that, because hope was all I had going for me.

It was around that time that I met the man who would shatter my life.
He was an employee of a company close to where I worked. We had known each for about three months without much interaction, but once we had a chance to have tea together, our relationship developed rapidly. We went from being mere acquaintances to friends, and before I knew it, we were talking of getting married. I had never experienced so much happiness. He took care of every meal, called me endlessly on the phone, and took me wherever he went. I was so intoxicated with happiness that I loved, accepted, and believed everything about him. I would do what he asked, including having a physically intimate relationship. Since we were going to get married soon anyway, I was not worried about becoming pregnant. Carrying a child of the person one loves is not only natural, but a blessing as well, or so I thought. I found out I was pregnant eight months after we had begun dating.

Strangely enough, even before I told him the news, he suddenly, and without explanation, severed all contact with me. Since no one knew him very well, including his former coworkers, I was unable to get in touch with him. Still, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I waited for him. I was exactly two months pregnant then, and could already feel the baby growing inside of me, so giving up hope was not an option. A few months after his disappearance, I found out that my boyfriend was actually a married man with two sons. What's more, he had amassed a huge debt from constantly borrowing money from his coworkers and anyone else foolish enough to lend him money. This included some of the people I worked with, who had discovered all this about him while looking for him when he had failed to pay them back.
By that point, I was six months pregnant and had no idea what I was supposed to do. He used to introduce me to his friends and colleagues as his girlfriend whom he would soon marry. Because he had told me he was a devout Christian, we had shared many long conversations about God and our faith. How could that man have been a married father of two? I had not once doubted him, but it all turned out to be a big lie. At first, I had trouble believing what people were telling me about him, but soon, reality sank in and I realized what a fool I had been. I was completely devastated and lost.

As far as I knew then, no one knew about my pregnancy. I hadn't even told the pastor and his wife at my church-I was very close to them-because I had planned on telling my fiancé first and then sharing the news with everyone else. Because it was my first pregnancy, I hadn't gained much weight and my belly still wasn't conspicuous. But time kept flying by and the baby grew steadily, so I knew that everyone would soon discover the secret I'd been trying so hard to hide. Feeling desperate and full of regret, I could not forgive myself for having been taken for a complete fool.

I spent day after day in tears, while battling depression and insomnia. When I tried to pray to God to pull myself together, I could only feel anger and resentment. How could you have done this to me, God? You knew this was going to happen, but instead of guiding me, you just abandoned me. It was bad enough I was never loved by my parents, but what is your reason for dropping me into this abyss? At the very least, you could have helped me by spontaneously aborting the baby at the onset of my pregnancy! I alternated back and forth between cursing God and beseeching him to help me find a way out, but he didn't seem to be listening.

Since I couldn't allow myself to bring a fatherless child into this world full of intolerance and misery, I wanted to have an abortion even though it was already too late. But once I saw my baby's peaceful image on the ultrasound screen and heard his heartbeat, I just couldn't go through with it. For once, I realized how sacred and precious human life was. I could still hear the doctor saying, "Congratulations! Your due date is August 26." All of a sudden, it dawned on me that God must have had a reason for everything, even for the child I was carrying. Since God had already given me the gift of life, I figured there must be a silver lining in my situation as well. I began praying to God for his guidance every step of the way.

By this time I could no longer conceal my growing belly, and my coworkers started whispering and snickering behind my back. Some people openly criticized me, saying that I was a prostitute who would sleep with anyone, and they treated me accordingly. Some male colleagues even went so far as to boast that they had slept with me. Those who weren't as openly critical would stop their whispers and giggles whenever I appeared, and then resume as soon as they thought I was out of sight. The thought of quitting my job had crossed my mind on countless occasions, but I didn't want to give those people the satisfaction of seeing it as an admission of guilt. In fact, I became determined to prove them wrong, and decided I would quit only after changing their opinion of me, even though I had no idea how to go about it.

At my church, people began asking whether I was ill, so in desperation, I told them that my failing health was causing my stomach to become bloated with fluids. At that time, I was working as a Sunday school teacher and was a member of the church choir. The thought of my pupils' parents finding out about my pregnancy was frightening because they would have stopped sending their kids to me, claiming that such an immoral person should not be allowed to teach and influence their children. I was also certain that the choir would force me to leave. The church had been my only refuge and I could not risk being driven out. I was willing to endure all the humiliation and contempt at work, but I was much more afraid of being disowned by my church community. If I were to lose that, I didn't think I would have a reason to go on living. Despite the guilt I felt, I went on deceiving everyone at my church.

The time passed, and soon I was approaching my due date. In preparation, I scheduled five days off from work before and after my delivery date. As much as I had wanted to think straight and stay focused, I was out of my mind from anticipation, fear, and nervousness. The closer it got to the due date, the more fearful and frantic I became. I desperately longed for someone to stay by my side and help me get through the ordeal even though I was used to taking care of myself and being alone. Then, around ten o'clock on Saturday night about ten days before my due date, I began experiencing a severe stomach pain similar to menstrual cramps at thirty-minute intervals. For a short while, I failed to understand that this was the signal of the start of labor, but when the cramps began occurring at ten-minute intervals around midnight, I finally realized that the baby was about to arrive.

I quickly grabbed the bag I had packed and the large amount of money I had set aside for the hospital fee, and went to a small, privately owned hospital close to where I lived. In the waiting area after checking in, a nurse gave me some forms to fill out and asked me about my family situation. When I informed her that I was an unwed woman without a family, she asked me whether I had the money for the delivery. I handed her the envelope containing the money. She told me to wait a bit and went away, but soon came back. She handed my money back to me and told me to go to another hospital. The hospital refused to admit me because I was an unwed woman with no guardian present. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard, but there was no time to protest as the contractions became more forceful.

I could barely walk, but I had no choice except to find another hospital. After about ten minutes I found one in the area, a bit bigger than the one before. It never occurred to me that two hospitals would turn me away in the condition I was in, but the second hospital treated me even worse. I felt anxious and fearful as I told my baby, "Please, little one, hang in there just a bit longer." By then, even more forceful contractions had started coming at five-minute intervals. I was in so much pain that I could hardly understand what the nurses were saying to me. But once they found out I was not married, the tone of their voices and attitude took a sharp turn-they told me to stop whining because other women could endure the delivery pain just fine so I needed to step up to it. I still wonder how they would have spoken and treated me had I been a married woman with family members at my side.

I was devastated. I called up an acquaintance, a former coworker with whom I hadn't been in contact for a long time, and told her what was happening. With no hesitation, she and her mother rushed to the hospital and offered to be my guardians for the night. I felt so much more secure and was at last able to lie down on a delivery table. Just as I was feeling a bit relieved, the doctor in charge of the hospital came and told us to leave, saying that he couldn't accept non-family members as my guardians. In disbelief, I told him that the baby was just a push away and begged him to let me deliver, but to no avail-he said that I was in good enough shape to find another hospital nearby. He even got irritated and angry at my friend and her mother when they started pleading with him as well, and yelled at all three of us to get out at once.

When we left the second hospital, I was no longer able to walk. My friend's mother carried me on her back until we hailed a cab. We then went to a much bigger hospital. Unlike the first two, this hospital admitted me.

(Story continues in Dreaming a World)