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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 05:53:37 -0400
From: Barbara Larcom <larcom@bcpl.net>
To: Peter Grimes <p34d3611@jhu.edu>
Subject: [Fwd: South Korea: IMF ORPHANS]
---2133065211-599097979-898713031=:15434
Tue, 23 Jun 1998 15:13:33 -0700 (PDT)
Tue, 23 Jun 1998 15:13:17 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 15:11:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Njoki Njoroge Njehu <wb50years@igc.apc.org>
Sender: owner-50-years@igc.apc.org
Subject: South Korea: IMF ORPHANS
To: 50-years@igc.org
Saturday, June 20, 1998
IMF ORPHANS
Parents dump children as recession hits
By JOHN LARKIN, Herald Correspondent in Seoul
Ji Seung-yeop is too young to know why his father went to jail, or why
his mother dropped him and his sister off some weeks ago at an
orphanage.
Technically they are not orphans, as their parents are alive. But for
the time being four-year-old Seung-yeop and five-year-old Yu-na have
effectively been orphaned by South Korea's deepening recession, which
is breaking up marriages at an alarming rate.
Their passage from home to orphanage is typical of a growing number of
cases across South Korea this year. Rising unemployment and the
resulting financial stress on low-income families is creating a social
phenomenon of recession orphans.
It began when their father lost his office job and was jailed for
bankruptcy. Then their mother disappeared after packing them off to
Seoul's Angels' Haven Orphanage.
"Usually the father loses his job and can't pay the bills, so the wife
gets fed up and runs away," said Ms Jennifer Yoo, a social worker at
the orphanage.
Seung-yeop and his sister, believe it or not, are the lucky ones.
Their father, now out of jail, has insisted that he will return for
them when he finds work. Others will never see their parents again.
Since March, Angels' Haven has taken in 20 children aged four to seven
brought by a parent, usually a newly jobless father, who cannot afford
to keep them while he looks for work. Before this it had 34 children,
few brought in by parents.
The orphanage, opened in 1953 to shelter Korean War orphans, says it
has rarely seen this sort of desperation. Father Park Mun-su, a United
States-born Catholic priest, explains that the war produced huge
numbers of orphans.
"To see kids being orphaned for financial reasons means the present
situation is like a war for some people," he says.
Mr Cho Kyu-hwan, director of Angels' Haven, says some parents tell him
it will be three years before they pick up their children. He knows
from experience that while some will return, others won't.
He notes sadly that orphanages across Seoul are reporting similar
increases in "IMF orphans", named for the International Monetary Fund,
which delivered a record bailout to South Korea last year and is
blamed by many Koreans for the downturn.
There are no figures on their numbers, only anecdotal evidence from
social workers who say the problem is getting worse. Even before the
economic crisis it was difficult to pin down orphan numbers, as
official estimates are usually lower than those of social workers.
"It's a bad situation, and it's going to get worse," says Mr Cho.
"These children have parents who cannot take care of them since they
have lost their job and sometimes their house."
The recession has worsened the already chronic problem in Korea of
discarded children. Orphans and adoption is a sensitive subject in
this country, where the importance of family bloodlines has for
decades produced unwanted children.
They have parents, but are forced out of families by strict social
expectations based on Confucianism.
For example, a widowed or separated woman with a child stands little
chance of finding a husband who will accept the child of another man.
Usually, the man wants to continue his bloodline, and the child is put
in a nursery or orphanage, or simply left outside a church or even on
the street. Sometimes the motive is financial. Korean marriages often
fall apart if the man cannot provide for the family.
Usually it is the woman who leaves, and this explains why most
children are left at orphanages by the father. His wife has probably
left him for a wealthier man.
"The father doesn't know what to do, so he takes the child to an
orphanage," says Ms Margrit Ninghetto, a Swiss nurse who has worked in
South Korea since 1985.
"The recession is making the problem even worse," says Ms Ninghetto,
who worked at an orphanage before taking a job last month at the
Angels' Haven rehabilitation hospital. "The so-called IMF-era is
making it easier for parents to drop off their children."
Mounting concern has resulted in television networks running community
service announcements exhorting poor parents not to dump their
children on the street, but to take them to nurseries or orphanages.
Ms Ninghetto says the majority of orphans have parents who in trying
to avoid social shame have discarded them. Any thought that the
decision is made easily is wrong, she says, as most parents agonise
over their dilemma.
Nevertheless, she believes orphanages are treated like permanent
day-care centres by some cash-strapped parents. At her previous
workplace, four children languished as orphans despite having contact
with their parents who had begun lives with new partners.
Ms Ninghetto says the Korean media have picked up the plight of the
IMF-orphans, recently reporting on a three-year-old dropped at a
market and going unnoticed for an entire day before being taken to an
orphanage.
"The IMF is certainly having an influence on the number of orphans.
Whether it's used as an excuse or not, the result is the same for the
child."
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