Although webtoons have become one of the largest consumed media in South Korea, and many webtoons have been adapted to both film and television, there has been a lack of research on webtoon to television adaptations. This thesis will investigate the specific characteristics of the webtoon that make it suitable for television adaptation using the webtoon I Sneak A Look At His Room Everyday by Yu Hyŏn Suk and the television series Flower Boy Next Door directed by Chŏng Chŏng Hwa.By using narrative structure and character analysis the two works will be compared and contrasted to discover the similarities and differences that enable a smooth media conversion.The second part of the thesis looks into what a webtoon is and how it has evolved during the years. To explore the characteristics for media conversion the webtoon and the television series were analysed both separately and compared to find the commonalities and the differences.The results indicate that using similar storytelling methods such as story-arcs play a large role in the success of webtoon to television adaptation. Both media needs to keep their viewers on their toes to make them want to read/watch further.

In recent years the female divers of Chejudo, Haenyŏ, have been featured in various media. The purpose of this study is to examine how Haenyŏ are portrayed in a children’s book particularly focusing on them by analysing the book Mom is a Haenyeo. The method used for this study was a qualitative method using analysis questions to facilitate the process of analysis. The findings show that Haenyŏ are portrayed accurately and in a positive light, but also that there were aspects that were slightly romanticised.  

This study aims to analyze the development and shifts in perception of the tattoo practice. For centuries, the negative image of tattoos has been manifested in Korean society and has only shown visible changes in the past two decades. In recent years, the topic of tattoos in South Korea has become notably more popular and broadly discussed. To give a structured and detailed historical review of the tattoo custom in Korea, two articles in Korean by Kim Hyŏng-jung (2013) and Yi Tong-ch’ŏl (2007) served as main sources. By conducting a semisystematic review with a qualitative approach, the accessed data was examined, compared, and synthesized. The results show that the tattoo practice, although still not fully accepted by all, has gradually developed into its own culture in contemporary South Korean society.

The purpose of this study is to depict and examine the perception of black Koreans in South Korean children’s literature. This study examines my research questions through four theoretical frameworks: “culture and identity”, “post-colonialism, nationalism and racism”, “blackness and black Koreans’ portrayal in Korean media” and “multiculturalism in Korea”. My study raises the question how multicultural literature can help or not promote a new perception of otherness in South Korea.

The method used for this study is qualitative text analysis. The primary source of information is a close-reading of Won You Soon’s book “Please find Charlton Sunja Kim” and interviews with the author of this book. The findings show that there are still some stereotypes about black Koreans and blackness that prevail in South Korean society and can still be found in recent literary works.

The study is dedicated to the literary and cultural analysis of a number of Korean poems dealing with the image of the cuckoo and written in the 15th century in the ci genre. The "Songs of the Cuckoo" (Chagyusa) are important sources for understanding the reaction of the Korean intellectual elite to the usurpation of the throne by Sejo and their support for the overthrown ("abdicated") ruler Tanjong in the Early Choson period. In the beginning, the paper discusses the general image of the cuckoo established in Chinese and Korean literary tradition. Then follows an analysis of two poems composed by the overthrown king Tanjong on the place of his exile.

Since 1953 and the end of the Korean War, an estimated half a million predominantly non-white children from the non-Western world have been transferred for international adoption to the custody of white adoptive parents in North America, Northern and Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. This huge child migration which today involves close to 30,000 children annually, is generally treated as a family planning method or as a child welfare practice in the countries of origin, and as a way of showing solidarity or curing infertility in the receiving countries. Furthermore academically, studies of international adoption are usually limited to the fields of medicine and psychiatry, or to social work and psychology. Instead of following in the footsteps of this dominant way of looking at international adoption and merely reproducing mainstream adoption research, I will here examine and analyze international adoption from a different perspective by historicizing and contextualizing the phenomenon within anthropology and migration history, American empire building and international relations, and Korean military authoritarianism and patriarchal modernity. I will make use of international adoption from Korea as the principal case study, as Korea has by far provided the most internationally adopted children and since the practice itself was initiated in connection with the Korean War. International adoption will be put in relation to a particular Western mode of adopting, and to other previous and contemporary child and forced migrations, and set within the context of the emergence of American world dominance after World War II. At the other end, international adoption will be connected to Korea’s modernization process, and seen as a disciplining method of regulating and controlling women’s bodies and reproduction in the name of developmentalist thinking and social engineering. At the end, I am arguing that it is necessary to study international adoption from many different angles and perspectives to be able to fully understand its origins, history, current status and future.

Adoptionen av barn från Korea till ett 15-tal västländer har nu pågått i snart 50 år. Från Koreakrigets slut 1953 och fram till idag har 150 000 barn adopterats bort, däribland 8500 till Sverige, och fortfarande lämnar 1700 barn landet för adoption varje år. Denna omfattande migration är på många sätt unik i modern tid. Den i Norden bekanta överflyttningen av 70 000 finska barn till Sverige på 1940-talet har i absoluta tal slagits med mer än det dubbla, och faktum är att inget annat Tredje världen-land under efterkrigstiden har adopterat bort så många barn som Korea. Den koreanska utlandsadoptionen skedde länge obemärkt, men från 1980-talets slut har den utvecklats till en starkt symbol- och känsloladdad offentlig fråga. Detta är ett försök att beskriva hur adoptionsfrågan i landet växte fram och vilken betydelse den spelar i ett koreanskt sammanhang.

Korea är förmodligen det land i världen som mest förknippas med internationell adoption. Sedan Koreakriget 1950-53 har 150.000 barn adopterats bort till ett 15-tal västländer. Koreas program för internationell adoption betraktades länge närmast som en statshemlighet, men sedan slutet av 1980-talet och framför allt under Kim Dae-jungs presidentskap (1998-2002) har adoptionsfrågan (ibyangmunjê) hamnat på den politiska dagordningen. Adoptionsfrågan har också lämnat spår efter sig i Koreas populärkultur. Ämnet har figurerat i allt från TV-dramer och serier (manhwa) till filmer och musik. Denna artikel kommer att fokusera på de sista två medierna, närmare bestämt spelfilmer och popsånger.

The point of departure for this paper is my own finding as an investigative journalist covering Nazism for the Swedish media and as a Ph.D. candidate in Korean Studies belonging to the Swedish Asian Studies community, saying that there is a high preponderance of Nazis and extreme rightists among scholars and writers in Asian Studies of Sweden and in many other Western countries as well. The paper sets out to map and investigate this bizarre but nonetheless unpleasant phenomenon by using Asian Studies of Sweden as the principal empirical evidence together with sporadic information on Asianists in Germany, United States, Denmark, France, Italy among others. After having presented an historical disciplinary overview of Swedish Asian Studies and established the rich frequency of Nazis and extreme rightist political views among Swedish Asianists, the question posed is why Nazis and Extreme Rightists are attracted to Asia in the first place? The paper tries to answer this question by conceptualising Asia as a topos of both fear and desire, either as the Urheimat of the white race and as a continent of once great civilizations worthy of admiration, or as the eternal threat to Western civilization in the forms of the yellow, Jewish, red or green perils which therefore has to be conquered and controlled, and thoroughly explored and researched. The paper ends by pointing out that Asian Studies outside Asia is not just a safe haven and free zone for Nazis and Extreme Rightists, but also a reservation for those who still harbour feelings of colonial romanticism and white supremacy, as it is an elitist community dominated by white males who are married to Asian women, and white females who have adopted Asian children, and who often are characterised by strong desires to go native, consuming orientalist popular culture and appropriating all kinds of other things deemed to be Asian.

Den internationella adoptionen av icke-vita barn från den postkoloniala världen till Väst har pågått i över ett halvt sekel, och har i samband med globaliseringen formligen exploderat i omfattning. Samtidigt har under samma tid en organiserad rörelse uppstått bland de internationellt adopterade själva, och särskilt bland de från Korea som utgör den största gruppen. Den adoptivkoreanska rörelsen har utvecklat en omfattande kulturell produktion, och som en del i denna utveckling har också ett antal självbiografiska texter publicerats. Denna studie undersöker ett antal adoptivkoreanska livshistorier med syftet att försöka förstå den adoptivkoreanska existensen. Studien konstaterar att det unika med adoptivkoreanerna är deras transrasiala vita elitidentifikation som hela tiden ifrågasätts, och som gör dessa till flytande subjekt som ständigt riskerar att stereotypiseras, rasialiseras och essentialiseras av omgivningen. Studien riktar slutligen kritik mot både den dominerande adoptionsforskningen och det postmoderna hyllandet av transidentiteter, och argumenterar för att en djupare förståelse för hur det är att vara internationellt adopterad kan bidra till att förstå den utbredda psykiska ohälsan och de höga självmordstalen inom gruppen.

Internationell adoption har under efterkrigstiden starkt kommit att förknippas med solidaritet med Tredje världen. Från 1950-talet och fram till idag har hundratusentals icke-vita barn fått nya familjer och nya hem i Väst. Detta är ett försök till en analys av den svenska bilden av internationell adoption sedd med bakgrund av den allmänna svenska bilden av Korea som land. Korea är det land i Tredje världen som har lämnat ifrån sig den proportionellt sett största andelen barn medan Sverige är det land i Väst som har tagit emot mest i förhållande till den inhemska befolkningen. Analysen inleds med en genomgång av artiklar publicerade i svensk dagspress under den internationella adoptionens två första decennier 1951-71 för att synliggöra relationen mellan den adopterade och adoptivföräldrarna. Därefter följer en genomgång av artiklar om Korea publicerade i svensk media 1996-2000 för att illustrera den svenska bilden av ursprungslandet.

This is a study of popular cultural representations of international adoption and adopted Koreans in Western countries. The study is carried out from a postcolonial perspective and uses a cultural studies reading of four feature films and four popular songs as primary sources. The aim is to examine how nationalism is articulated in various ways in light of the colonial experiences in modern Korean history and recent postcolonial developments within contemporary Korean society. The principal question addressed is: What are the implications for a nation depicting itself as one extended family and which has sent away so many of its own children, and what are the reactions from a culture emphasising homogeneity when encountering and dealing with the adopted Koreans? After an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 gives the history of international adoption from Korea, and Chapter 3 is an account of the development of the adoption issue in the political discussion. Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 analyse the cinematic and lyrical representations of adopted Koreans in four feature films and popular songs respectively. Chapter 4 considers the gendering of the colonised nation and the maternalisation of roots, drawing on theories of nationalism as a gendered discourse. Chapter 5 examines the issue of hybridity and the relationship between Koreanness and Whiteness, which are related to the notions of third space, mimicry and passing. Linked to studies of national division, reunification and family separation, Chapter 6 looks at the adopted Koreans as symbols of a fractured and fragmented nation. Chapter 7 focuses on the emergence of a global Korean community, with regards to theories of globalisation, diasporas and transnationalism. In the concluding chapter, the study argues that the Korean adoption issue can be conceptualised as an attempt at overcoming a difficult past and imagining a common future for all ethnic Koreans at a transnational level.

Föreliggande artikel är en studie i den svenska Koreabilden sedd genom artiklarna om Korea i Nordisk familjebok och Svensk uppslagsbok publicerade åren 1876-1955 med den allmänna synen på Östasien, Japan och Kina som bakgrund. Syftet har varit att med inspiration från postkolonial teoribildning undersöka och beskriva den svenska bilden av Korea under aktuell tidsperiod för att identifiera de föreställningar och uppfattningar om Korea och koreaner som fortfarande än idag i hög grad präglar gemene svensk. Flera arbeten finns om den svenska bilden av Japan och Kina, däremot inget om Korea. Första delen redovisar forskning om den svenska och västerländska synen på Östasien, Japan och Kina, och innehåller också ett avsnitt om gula faran-motivet, medan andra delen undersöker den svenska bilden av Korea genom artiklarna i uppslagsverken och den tredje slutligen utgörs av en avslutande diskussion.

Since the end of the Korean War over 150,000 Koreans have been adopted to 15 different Western countries. Up until recently, governments and organisations, and groups and individuals variously involved with Korean adoption were the only ones who spoke for and represented the adopted Koreans who were subalternised and deprived of their voice and agency. As a result, the group was invisibilised in migration and diaspora, and ethnicity and race contexts, overlooked by Asian and Korean overseas communities, and underresearched by Asian and Korean Studies scholars. A Western colonialism perceived international adoption as a rescue mission, and as a left-liberal progressive act and a way of creating a multicultural family, and a Korean nationalism utilised the adoptees as physical bonds with Western allies and made claims on them as part of its diaspora policy. For the adoption agencies, Korean adoption was marketed as the flagship of international adoption, while adoption researchers represented the group as the most ideal transracial adoptees. It was not until the end of the 1980s when adopted Koreans started to organise themselves and reach out to each other, that the group for the first time was able to speak up and speak out about their own experiences and make themselves heard of in the public. From the mid-1990s, there has been a veritable explosion of adopted Korean autobiographical works creating a cultural field of its own and encompassing such diverse genres like novels, plays and poems, performances, art works and paintings, comics and children’s books, and documentaries and films. These self-narratives make it possible for the first time to listen to the voices of the adopted Koreans themselves beyond what has been previously written and said on the group. The purpose of this study is to try to understand the adopted Korean experience by examining a corpus of adopted Korean autobiographical texts. Drawing upon a social-constructivist understanding of subjectivity and postcolonial, queer and feminist theories of hybridity, performativity and intersectionality, the point of departure is that the adopted Koreans have been subjected into a white self-identification, while they at the same time always risk being racialized into Oriental stereotypes, minoritised into non-white immigrants, and essentialised into Korean nationals. Furthermore, the group as a whole is often infantilised and proletarianised as being adopted and orphaned children, and feminised and heterosexualised as being ethnic East Asians. The study starts by reviewing previous studies of adopted Koreans, theories of subjectivisation and ways of reading self-narratives. After a background to Korean adoption, Western colonialism and Korean nationalism, and the adopted Korean movement, the study goes through the four principal identifications (Whiteness), imaginaries (Orientalism), discourses (Immigrantism) and interpellations (Koreanness) which adopted Koreans usually encounter and are navigating between, and looks at how these intersect with issues concerning class and age, and sexuality and gender, by citing and interpreting excerpts from the selected self-narratives. At the end, an attempt is made at conceptualising the adopted Korean existence.

I år är det exakt 50 år sedan adoptionen från Korea till ett 20-tal västländer inleddes. Den direkta orsaken till denna unika och omfattande migration inbegripandes 150 000 individer står att hitta i Koreas tragiska 1900-talshistoria med ingredienser som kolonialism, delning och inbördeskrig. Internationell adoption som företeelse uppkom i efterdyningarna av andra världskriget när barn till de amerikanska ockupationstrupperna i Japan, Italien och Tyskland adopterades till USA, men det var genom Koreakriget som verksamheten kom igång på allvar, och inget annat land i världen kan idag tävla med Korea i siffror räknat.

Sverige är med sina 45 000 utlandsfödda adoptivbarn världens ledande mottagarland på det internationella adoptionsområdet i proportion till den inhemska befolkningen. Sverige kan likaså uppvisa en lång historia av att ta emot utlandsfödda barn för adoption som går tillbaka ända till 1930-talet, vilket också gör landet unikt i ett internationellt adoptionssammanhang. Den internationella adoptionen av utländska adoptivbarn till Sverige har med andra ord pågått i långt över ett halvt sekel, och är vid det här laget både en allmänt socialt accepterad metod att skaffa barn på liksom en genom lagar och praxis statligt sanktionerad och legitimerad verksamhet. Det torde vara rimligt att utgå ifrån att Sveriges dominerande ställning inom det internationella adoptionsområdet även gjort att landet närmast automatiskt har utvecklats till ett föredöme för tillvaratagandet av utländska adoptivbarns rättigheter. Lika rimligt vore väl också att argumentera för att Sveriges världsledande position åtminstone borde förpliktiga till just detta, nämligen att stå som modell för värnandet av internationellt adopterades rättigheter. Den allmänna synen både inom och utom landet har nog fram tills helt nyligen varit att så också är fallet utan att någon egentligen undersökt saken mer i detalj. Med utgångspunkt från just Sverige som världsledande adoptionsland, föreställningen om Sverige som det förlovade landet för utlandsfödda adoptivbarns rättigheter samt det nya barnperspektiv som slog igenom vid slutet av förra seklet, kommer jag här att reflektera kring och plädera för utländska adoptivbarns rätt att få behålla sin ursprungsidentitet i form av ursprungsnamn och ursprungligt födelsedatum och registrering av korrekt födelseort och biologiska föräldrar i svensk folkbokföring.

Studier av etnicitet, nationalism och diaspora har efter avkolonialiseringen och den postmoderna vändningen fått ett enormt utrymme inom samhälls- och humanvetenskaperna. För etnicitetsforskningen framhålls Fredrik Barth som den förste som intresserade sig för mötet mellan olika kulturer i stället för att som tidigare studera dessa isolerade från varandra, vad gäller nationalismforskningen visade Benedict Anderson att nationella identiteter är föreställda gemenskaper och inte naturgivna som tidigare ofta antagits, och för diasporafältet kan nämnas Gabriel Sheffer som satte fokus på den internationella dimensionen av migrationerna. På senare år har dessa fält kommit att sammansmälta under beteckningen transnationalism med trion Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch och Cristina Szanton Blanc som dess kanske mest inflytelserika teoretiker. En transnationell etnisk grupp, migration eller diaspora strävar efter att upprätthålla banden med både hem- och värdland och för att därigenom skapa utrymme för identiteter och praktiker som verkar och sträcker sig utöver dessas geografiska gränser. Denna modell rörande samspelet mellan en diaspora och dess hem- och värdland har applicerats på en mängd skilda grupper såsom chilenare och iranier i Sverige, tyskar och judar i förskingringen, syriska migräntär, tibetaner i Indien och kubaner i USA. En grupp som dock lyser med sin frånvaro i dessa sammanhang är utlandsadopterade som överhuvudtaget sällan går att finna som studieobjekt. Med utgångspunkt från studier om diaspora och transnationalism, och med inspiration från postkolonial teori ställer jag mig här frågan om det finns en adoptivkoreansk identitet. Jag inleder med en historisk bakgrund till internationell adoption från Korea samt en demografisk överblick. Därefter följer en redovisning av den svenska och västerländska synen på internationell adoption, en sammanfattning av adoptionsforskningen, den koreanska synen på adoptivkoreaner uttryckt i den pågående diasporapolitiken och en presentation av den adoptivkoreanska rörelse som håller på att växa fram. Slutligen avslutar jag genom att försöka svara på frågan om det finns en adoptivkoreansk identitet och i så fall vad en sådan består av.

In 1983, the American political scientist Benedict Anderson (1983) showed us that all nations and ethnic groups are socially constructed imagined communities in his groundbreaking study on the formation of various European nation states. Before Anderson, all nations, and especially nation states, were more or less considered essentialist facts. The concept of an imagined community is nowadays applied to all the world´s different nations, from classical Western states like Denmark or France to former colonies like Indonesia or Nigeria, and from ethnic groups without a nation state like the Kurds to indigenous people like the Saami. Further on, in the age of globalisation and transnational migration, no one would deny that diasporic people like the African Americans or the European Jews also have their own imagined communities. However, one specific group is with few exceptions continuously absent in today´s ethnicity, diaspora and migration studies, namely inter-country adoptees. Instead, it is more or less assumed that inter-country adoptees, albeit having a foreign origin, are fully integrated citizens of their respective host countries with no relationship at all neither to a homeland nor between themselves. This paper will look at the adopted Koreans, by far the biggest inter-country adoptee group worldwide, in relation to Western views and research on inter-country adoption contrasted by Korean nationalism and diaspora politics. By using postcolonial theory, I will argue for the existence of an adopted Korean community that is in the process of developing in the third space between the Korean homeland and the host countries in the West, transgressing borders, cultures, religions and languages.

Since 1953 and the end of the Korean War, an estimated half a million predominantly non-white children from the non-Western world have been transferred for international adoption to the custody of white adoptive parents in North America, Northern and Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. This gigantic child migration, which today involves close to 30,000 children annually, is generally treated as a family planning method or as a child welfare practice in the supplying countries, and as a way of showing solidarity or curing infertility in the receiving countries. Furthermore academically, studies of international adoption are usually limited to the fields of medicine and psychiatry, or to social work and psychology. Instead of following in the footsteps of this dominant way of looking at international adoption and merely reproducing mainstream adoption research, I will here look at international adoption from a different perspective, conceptualized as a trade and trafficking in children taking place between the twin projects of coloniality and modernity, and using Korea as the principal case study. International adoption will be put in relation to a particular Western method of adopting children, and compared to other previous child and forced migrations of non-white populations in the history of European colonial empires and various child rescue operations within the context of the emergence of the American Empire after World War II. Further, international adoption from Korea will also be linked to a long Korean tradition of giving away human beings as tributes to dominant powers and set in comparison with the comfort women issue. Finally, international adoption will also be connected to Korea’s brutal modernization process, and seen as a disciplining method of social control and biological purification, to control women’s bodies and reproduction. At the end, I am arguing that it is necessary to study international adoption from many different angles and perspectives to be able to fully understand its origins, history, current status and future.

International adoption, the movement of children from predominantly non-Western countries to adoptive parents in the West, was initiated on a large scale in connection with the Korean War. International adoption from Korea is intimately linked to the decline of traditional Korean society and the dispersal of people of Korean ethnicity from the Korean peninsula. Starting with the collapse of the Chosôn dynasty, and escalating during the colonial era, this dispersal reached its peak with the national division and the civil war and reached its conclusion with the rise of post-war industrialisation. All of these dramatic, and in all respects, tragic events took place within less than a century and in the course of three generations, affecting every Korean individual struggling to survive and causing extreme strain on every Korean family trying to stay together in the chaos.

This paper is a presentation of a study of representations of adopted Koreans in Korean popular culture. After a background to the history of international adoption from Korea and an introduction to the Korean adoption issue, the paper looks at the representations of adopted Koreans in four Korean popular songs and feature films respectively. At the end, these representations are linked to the ethnic and postcolonial character of Korean nationalism and to the fractured and fragmented state of the Korean nation itself, and conceptualised as an attempt at reconciling with a tragic history and imagining a new future for a global Korean community.

This article is a presentation of a study of representations of adopted Koreans in Korean popular culture. After a background to the history of international adoption from Korea and an introduction to the Korean adoption issue, the article looks at the representations of adopted Koreans in four Korean popular songs and feature films respectively. At the end, these representations are linked to the ethnic and postcolonial character of Korean nationalism and to the fractured and fragmented state of the Korean nation itself, and conceptualised as an attempt at reconciling with a tragic history and imagining a new future for a global Korean community.

International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this paper. This forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more than 150,000 adopted Koreans dispersed among 15 host countries on the continents of Europe, North America and Oceania. Both the demographic scope, the time span and the geographic spread are unique in the history of child migration, and still over 2,000 children leave Korea annually. This paper deals with the Korean adoption issue and representations of adopted Koreans in Korean popular culture. With the background of Korean nationalism with its notion of the nation as family and its strong emphasis on homogeneity, the point of departure is the very existence of the adopted Koreans as a delicate threat to nationalist ideology, causing anxieties of disrupting a supposedly fixed national identity, and calling in question what it means to be Korean. After a background to international adoption from Korea and a theoretical framing of the Korean adoption issue, the paper analyses the representations of adopted Koreans in four feature films and popular songs respectively; Chang Kil-su’s Susanne Brink’s Arirang (1991), Pak Kwang-su’s Berlin Report (1991), Kim Ki-duk’s Wild Animals (1997), and Lee Jang-soo Love (1999), and Sinawe’s Motherland (1997), Clon’s Abandoned Child (1999), Sky’s Eternity (1999), and Moon Hee Jun’s Alone (2001). In the popular cultural representations, the adopted Koreans are subjected to an ambiguous position as both tragic and shameful symbols of the nation’s historical suffering and as essentialised overseas compatriots in the construction of a global Korean community.

This paper is a study on Swedish images of Korea before 1945 seen through the entry “Korea” in two Swedish encyclopedias published between 1884-1933, and through seven travel accounts written by Swedes who visited Korea between 1904-38. By the use of postcolonial theory, the purpose is to examine and identify Swedish images of Korea as a way of understanding the background to present day’s perceptions of the country and its people in Sweden. The first part is an introduction to postcolonial theory and the concept of Orientalism. The second part is an overview of the relationship between Sweden and Korean, and an examination of the Swedish encyclopedias. The third part is an examination of the travel accounts, while the fourth and final part summarizes both historical and contemporary Swedish images of Korea.

Since the end of the Korean war (1950-53) 150,000 Koreans from the R.O.K. have been adopted to a dozen Western countries. Still every year around 2000 children leave the country for overseas adoption. Western military engagement in the war started the history of adoption as the first children who were sent overseas were bi-racial. No other country in the world has sent away so many children for adoption as the R.O.K. From the 1860s when the Choson dynasty crumbled as a result of Western imperialism, and especially during Japanese colonial rule between 1910-45, Koreans emigrated or were forcefully transported abroad in the thousands establishing a tradition of displacement. The emigration continued during the authoritarian regimes between 1948-92, creating a diaspora which today numbers 5 million people. Since the end of the 1980s when adoption became an open issue in after years of shame and secretiveness, adopted Koreans have been treated as a diasporic community of Korean ethnicity. This is truly evident when studying the media and the acts of the government during Kim Dae-jung´s presidency. Even if the existence of the adopted Koreans was hidden for many years, today they are remembered and play a role in the globalization of Korea. The adoption from the R.O.K. is viewed as a result of colonialism and Western hegemony, and the adopted Koreans as one of the most extreme results of modern Korean history. The adopted Koreans are seen as an integrated part of the worldwide Korean community together with the Chosonjok in China, the Chaemi Kyopo in the U.S., the Zainichen or Chosenjin in Japan and the Koryo Saram in Central Asia. The continuing adoption of children from the R.O.K. is a sign of the country´s dependency to the West and a symbol of a postcolonial nation perceived not only as one big family but also as a dispersed family.

Since the end of the Korean war (1950-53) 150,000 Koreans from the R.O.K. have been adopted to a dozen Western countries. Still every year around 2000 children leave the country for overseas adoption. Western military engagement in the war started the history of adoption as the first children who were sent overseas were bi-racial. No other country in the world has sent away so many children for adoption as the R.O.K. From the 1860s when the Choson dynasty crumbled as a result of Western imperialism, and especially during Japanese colonial rule between 1910-45, Koreans emigrated or were forcefully transported abroad in the thousands establishing a tradition of displacement. The emigration continued during the authoritarian regimes between 1948-92, creating a diaspora which today numbers 5 million people. Since the end of the 1980s when adoption became an open issue in after years of shame and secretiveness, adopted Koreans have been treated as a diasporic community of Korean ethnicity. This is truly evident when studying the media and the acts of the government during Kim Dae-jung´s presidency. Even if the existence of the adopted Koreans was hidden for many years, today they are remembered and play a role in the globalization of Korea. The adoption from the R.O.K. is viewed as a result of colonialism and Western hegemony, and the adopted Koreans as one of the most extreme results of modern Korean history. The adopted Koreans are seen as an integrated part of the worldwide Korean community together with the Chosonjok in China, the Chaemi Kyopo in the U.S., the Zainichi Chosenjin in Japan and the Koryo Saram in Central Asia. The continuing adoption of children from the R.O.K. is a sign of the country´s dependency to the West and a symbol of a postcolonial nation perceived not only as one big family but also as a dispersed family.

This paper can be seen as a case study of the relationship between a diaspora and its homeland, and the construction of an ethnic group, namely the adopted Koreans and the Republic of Korea. With regards to diaspora and ethnicity studies in a post-colonial and global setting, the paper argues that the adopted Koreans are constructing their own ethnic identity in the third space between their Korean homeland and the host countries in the West.

The paper looks at Korea as the country which has sent away the largest number of its citizens for international adoption in modern times, and Sweden which harbours the highest proportion of international adoptees in the world. The focus is on the adopted Koreans of Sweden, their role in the development of the Korean adoption issue and how they are perceived as a physical bond between the two countries. Furthermore, the adopted Koreans are also turning up in Korean popular culture, and play a part in present day's diaspora politics and the construction of a nationalism embracing all ethnic Koreans.

After the Korean war 150,000 Koreans from South Korea have been adopted to Western countries. Still every year around 2000 children leave the country for overseas adoption. Western military engagement in the war started the history of adoption as the first children who were sent overseas were bi-racial. No other country in the world has sent away so many children for adoption as the R.O.K. From the 1860s when the Choson dynasty crumbled as a result of Western imperialism, and especially during Japanese colonial rule, Koreans emigrated or were forcefully transported abroad in the thousands establishing a tradition of displacement. The mass emigration continued during the authoritarian regimes, creating a diaspora which today numbers 5 million ethnic Koreans. Since the end of the 1980s when adoption became an open issue in the country after years of shame and secretiveness, adopted Koreans have been treated as a diasporic community of Korean ethnicity. This is truly evident when studying the media and the acts of the government during Kim Dae-jung´s presidency. Even if the existence of the adopted Koreans was hidden for many years, today they play a role in the globalization of Korea. The adoption from South Korea is viewed as a result of a colonial history and a sign of the country´s dependency to the West. The adopted Koreans are seen as one of the most extreme results of modern Korean history and a symbol of a divided, dispersed and postcolonial nation which is in the process of creating a new ethnonationalism embracing all Koreans on the peninsula and overseas.

This paper deals with international adoption from Korea. The forced migration of Korean children has by now been going on for over half a century creating a diaspora of 150,000 adopted Koreans divided between 15 main host countries. Both the number and the time span are unique in the history of child migration, and still 2000 children leave Korea annually. The paper will go through the various stages of international adoption from Korea reflecting the upheavals and turbulences of modern Korean history. The massive uprooting and dispersal of Korean children was for many years silently taking place in the shadow of Korea’s transformation from a war-torn and poverty-stricken country to an economic success story in the postcolonial world, and it wasn’t until 1988 that the subject became a public issue. In 1988, Korea became the showcase of the world during the summer Olympics in Seoul. Western journalists suddenly started to write about the international adoption program and portrayed Korea as the world’s leading child exporting country. The unexpected attention was painful and humiliating for a newly democratised and industrialised Korea who had to face the fact of being the country in the world having sent away the largest number of its citizens for international adoption in history. Thus, the Korean society was finally forced to start to discuss the subject in public, and from then on the adoption issue (ibyang munjê) has appeared as a recurrent subject in Korean media and popular culture. The paper aims at examining images of adopted Koreans as they are perceived and conceptualised in a Korean context. How are adopted Koreans imagined in Korea, and what are the issues brought up with the background of Korean nationalism and diaspora politics? What is the role of the adopted Koreans in contemporary Korea with regard to on-going processes of globalisation and reunification? The study is carried out by the use of discourse analysis of articles published in the newspapers Chosun Ilbo, Hankyoreh and Kookmin Ilbo supplemented by popular cultural artefacts as primary sources.

Nationalism is a heavily gendered discourse, as the nation is often embodied as a woman. The gendered manner of nationalism and woman as a privileged sign of the nation is the perspective when reading the Korean feature film Susanne Brink’s Arirang. Released in September 1991, directed by respected Chang Kil-su and based on an authentic story, the film depicts the life of Susanne Brink, an adopted Korean woman of Sweden. The narrative trajectory of the film starts with her departure from Korea at the age of three, continues through her hardships as an adoptee in Sweden with an abusive adoptive family, two suicide attempts and endless misery as a single mother to a mixed child, and ends with the reunion with her Korean family some 20 years later. In Susanne Brink’s Arirang, Korea is embodied as a female adopted child, and in accordance with the reproductive associations of gendered nationalism, the aspect of representing the nation becomes even more apparent by the fact that children are commonly seen as the destiny of the nation. If women are the origin of the nation, children are the nation’s future. As international adoption intrudes upon and disrupts both the nation and the family, adopted children naturally become a matter of strong nationalist concern. The message conveyed in this issue-oriented film is that international adoption is a degrading trade in the country’s own children humiliating the nation, and that the adopted Koreans are leading miserable existences and need to be protected and rescued by male power. Korea performs as a passive and victimised female adopted Korean who simultaneously suffers from colonial oppression and puts the nation to shame in her disgraceful transgressions of Korean womanhood, and her shameless state as a single mother to a mixed child. It is only through the recovering of Susanne, accomplished by the intervention of Korean male power, that the nation is able to take back its honour.

International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this study. The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more than 150,000 adopted Koreans dispersed among 15 main host countries on the continents of Europe, North America and Oceania. Both the demographic scope, the time span and the geographic spread are absolutely unique in a comparative historical child migratory perspective, and still over 2,000 children leave Korea annually. This massive intercontinental displacement and dispersal of Korean children was, for many years, silently taking place in the shadow of Korea’s transformation from a war-torn and poverty-stricken country to a formidable economic success story in the postcolonial world. Even if the subject of international adoption and adopted Koreans turned up now and then in the political debate throughout the years, it was not until the end of the 1980s that a comprehensive discussion started. Ever since, the adoption issue ibyang munjê) has been haunting Korea as a recurrent subject in Korean media and popular culture. This paper is a reading of the pop group Clon’s song Abandoned Child from 1999 and the world-famous Korean director Park Kwang-su’s film Berlin Report from 1991 where adopted Koreans are seen as symbols of a divided and dispersed nation. With the background of Korean nationalism with its notion of the nation as family and its strong emphasis on homogeneity and continuity, the point of departure is the very existence of the adopted Koreans as a delicate threat to nationalist ideology, causing anxieties of disrupting a supposedly fixed and unified national identity, and calling into question what it means to be Korean and who belongs to the Korean nation. The reading is grounded on the fact that the subject of separated families is considered to be one of the most important aspects of the Korean reunification discourse, and has become a powerful metaphor of the Korean nation itself. Abandoned Child is the most typical of Korean adoption songs in representing the fate of Korea’s 150,000 lost children, and the adoptee of the song is easily transformed into a powerful symbol of one of Korea’s numerous separated families. In Berlin Report, the divided and dispersed Korean nation is represented by two separated adopted Koreans longing and searching for each other as the adoption issue is set upon the reunification issue, and their individual traumas become the national trauma of all Koreans.

International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this study. The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more than 150,000 adopted Koreans dispersed among 15 main host countries on the continents of Europe, North America and Oceania. Both the demographic scope, the time span and the geographic spread are absolutely unique in a comparative historical child migratory perspective, and still over 2,000 children leave Korea annually. This massive intercontinental displacement and dispersal of Korean children was for many years silently taking place in the shadow of Korea’s transformation from a war-torn and poverty-stricken country to a formidable economic success story in the postcolonial world. Even if the subject of international adoption and adopted Koreans turned up now and then in the political debate throughout the years, it was not until the end of the 1980s that a comprehensive discussion started. Ever since the adoption issue (ibyang munjê) has been haunting Korea as a recurrent subject in Korean media and popular culture. This paper is a reading of the pop group Clon’s song Abandoned Child from 1999 and the world-famous Korean director Park Kwang-su’s film Berlin Report from 1991 where adopted Koreans are seen as symbols of a divided and dispersed nation. With the background of Korean nationalism with its notion of the nation as family and its strong emphasis on homogeneity and continuity, the point of departure is the very existence of the adopted Koreans as a delicate threat to nationalist ideology, causing anxieties of disrupting a supposedly fixed and unified national identity, and calling in question what it means to be Korean and who belongs to the Korean nation. The reading is grounded on the fact that the subject of separated families is considered to be one of the most important aspects of the Korean reunification discourse, and has become a powerful metaphor of the Korean nation itself. Abandoned Child is the most typical of Korean adoption songs in representing the fate of Korea’s 150,000 lost children, and the adoptee of the song is easily transformed into a powerful symbol of one of Korea’s numerous separated families. In Berlin Report, the divided and dispersed Korean nation is represented by two separated adopted Koreans longing and searching for each other as the adoption issue is set upon the reunification issue, and their individual traumas become the national trauma of all Koreans.