Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption

by Elise M. Prébin

Overview

Examines the impact of adoptees on their birth country and birth families

A great mobilization began in South Korea in the 1990s: adult transnational adoptees began to return to their birth country and meet for the first time with their birth parents—sometimes in televised encounters which garnered high ratings. What makes the case of South Korea remarkable is the sheer scale of the activity that has taken place around the adult adoptees' return, and by extension the national significance that has been accorded to these family meetings.

Informed by the author’s own experience as an adoptee and two years of ethnographic research in Seoul, as well as an analysis of the popular television program "I Want to See This Person Again," which reunites families, Meeting Once More sheds light on an understudied aspect of transnational adoption: the impact of adoptees on their birth country, and especially on their birth families. The volume offers a complex and fascinating contribution to the study of new kinship models, migration, and the anthropology of media, as well as to the study of South Korea.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814760260
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	05/06/2013
Pages:	231
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Elise Prébin was born in South Korea in 1978, was raised in France, and is now living in New York City with her husband and daughter. In 2006 she obtained her PhD at University of Paris X-Nanterre in social anthropology, was a postdoc and lecturer at Harvard Universityfrom 2007 to 2009 and served as Assistant Professor at Hanyang University(South Korea) from 2010 to 2011. She is now an independent scholar.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Meeting the Birth Country
1. Shift in South Korean Policies toward Korean Adoptees, 1954–Today
2. Everyday Encounters
3. Holt International Summer School or Three-Week Re-Koreanization, 1999–2004
4. Stratification and Homogeneity at the Korean Broadcasting System, 2003
5. National Reunification and Family Meetings
Part II: Meeting the Birth Family
6. Stories behind History
7. Meetings’ Aftermaths
8. Evolving Relationship with My Birth Family
9. Management of Feelings
10. Meeting the Lost and the Dead
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Thoughtfully written, drawing on her own life experience as well as her anthropological training, Prébin provides us with a new window into the complex world of trans-national adoption. She weaves together kinship, media, and globalization as well as recent Korean history to offer us lessons about today's adoption practices."-Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Weaving A Family: Untangling Race and Adoption

"A compelling ethnography of Korean adoptee reunions, which come to life not as inevitable kinship connections, but as social and cultural work. To great effect, Prébin zooms in on South Korea’s signature reunion television program as a window on nothing short of the country’s emotional life. . . . A must-read for those with interests in adoption, kinship, media, and the Koreas."-Nancy Abelmann,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"In this beautifully written book, Elise Prébin breaks new ground in the literature on transnational adoption. Juxtaposing the halting, uncertain course of her own emerging relationship with her birth family to the highly stylized emotional scripting of a popular Korean TV show, Prébin situates adoption in the context of other narratives of separation while analyzing its potential for realizing biological relatedness. She offers a highly original account that moves away from polarized debates to engage with the implications of transnational adoption over time for the birth family, the adopted person, and the sending nation, providing a powerful new voice that will transform the way we understand relatedness.”-Barbara Yngvesson,Hampshire College

Editorial Reviews

"Anthropological readers will admire the innovative way in which the author uses various recent anthropological perspectives when dealing with a topic that did not even exist a generation ago. She also invites us to rethink the supposedly fundamental distinction between the anthropologist and 'the other' that dissolves in her case."

European Association of Social Anthropologists - Jan de Wolf

"In this beautifully written book, Elise Prébin breaks new ground in the literature on transnational adoption. Juxtaposing the halting, uncertain course of her own emerging relationship with her birth family to the highly stylized emotional scripting of a popular Korean TV show, Prébin situates adoption in the context of other narratives of separation while analyzing its potential for realizing biological relatedness. She offers a highly original account that moves away from polarized debates to engage with the implications of transnational adoption over time for the birth family, the adopted person, and the sending nation, providing a powerful new voice that will transform the way we understand relatedness."

Barbara Yngvesson

"A compelling ethnography of Korean adoptee reunions, which come to life not as inevitable kinship connections, but as social and cultural work. To great effect, Prébin zooms in on South Koreas signature reunion television program as a window on nothing short of the countrys emotional life. . . . A must-read for those with interests in adoption, kinship, media, and the Koreas."

Nancy Abelmann

"Thoughtfully written, drawing on her own life experience as well as her anthropological training, Prébin provides us with a new window into the complex world of trans-national adoption. She weaves together kinship, media, and globalization as well as recent Korean history to offer us lessons about today's adoption practices."-Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Weaving A Family: Untangling Race and Adoption

"A compelling ethnography of Korean adoptee reunions, which come to life not as inevitable kinship connections, but as social and cultural work. To great effect, Prébin zooms in on South Korea’s signature reunion television program as a window on nothing short of the country’s emotional life. . . . A must-read for those with interests in adoption, kinship, media, and the Koreas."-Nancy Abelmann,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"In this beautifully written book, Elise Prébin breaks new ground in the literature on transnational adoption. Juxtaposing the halting, uncertain course of her own emerging relationship with her birth family to the highly stylized emotional scripting of a popular Korean TV show, Prébin situates adoption in the context of other narratives of separation while analyzing its potential for realizing biological relatedness. She offers a highly original account that moves away from polarized debates to engage with the implications of transnational adoption over time for the birth family, the adopted person, and the sending nation, providing a powerful new voice that will transform the way we understand relatedness.”-Barbara Yngvesson,Hampshire College

From the Publisher