by Clara Guzman
Longingly, Jang has a “lifelong wish” that is in her own words, “to meet my father.” Recently, Jang Yeon Hee took a DNA test in the hope of finding her American father who left her pregnant mother in 1954 and “never bothered to visit again to see me.” Jang is one of estimated tens of thousands of so-called GI babies born to American soldiers and Korean prostitutes as a consequence of the Korean War. GI babies faced lives “filled with a sense of alienation, racist attacks [from Koreans in Korea] and longing for their birth parents.” Left in Korea, Jang and other GI babies were doomed to “lonely and impoverished li[ves]” due to their “lowliest roots.” Her poignant story typifies the fate of GI babies who did not have the good fortune to be adopted by Americans. The vast majority like her (95%) wished that they had had the chance to move to America during the era of 1953 - 1960 when thousands of mixed-raced children were “exported” to America. GI babies comprised the very first wave of postwar adoptions because “Amerasians had the most urgent needs” and their adoption by Americans served multiple, mutually beneficial purposes both for Korea and the United States. In fact, GI babies developed into a political tool for the South Korean government, while American opinion was shaped largely by the media’s portrayal of GIs and GI babies. In turn, public sentiment fueled thousands of adoptions by stimulating Americans' paternal sense of Christianity, synergizing with their anti-Communist mission in the Cold War, and fulfilling America’s sense of duty consistent with White Man’s Burden. Therefore, during the post-Korean War period of the 1950’s, GI babies by their half-American heritage and their conspicuous circumstances catalyzed an American mission to save them through intercountry adoptions, promoted by the South Korean government and the American media for Christian and Anti-Communist purposes; thus, the outcasts of Korea strengthened South Korean-American ties and highlighted America’s paternal superiority reminiscent of White Man’s Burden. Setting the International Stage for GI Babies Because the Korean War was never won, South Korea and the United States have always had a uniquely close relationship. In 1945, when Japan relinquished its thirty-five year occupation of Korea, the United States with Soviet Union decided upon a seemingly-temporary split of Korea along the 38th parallel latitude line. When North Korea invaded the South in 1950, the US felt acutely its responsibility to free South Korea from the clutches of the Communist North and sent soldiers pouring in to fight, but the Korean War was never won. Instead, on July 27, 1953, a cease-fire agreement ended fighting but kept North and South in a stalemate. More than 60 years later, the Koreas have never signed a peace treaty, and the US continues its military presence and exceptional influence in South Korea to this day. During this post-Korean War period of 1953 to 1960, America was struggling with new international and domestic issues. The US was paramountly concerned with its international image as the bastion of the Free World in the Cold War fight against Communism. Meanwhile, at the homefront, racial tensions were heightened by segregation and immigration as multiculturalism as we know it today had yet to emerge in America. African Americans were starting to gain momentum in the Civil Rights Movement, but whites in the South wanted to maintain Jim Crow laws of racial discrimination. In a seemingly strange contradiction, Americans at this same moment in history were opening their hearts and homes to mixed race children by adopting thousands of GI babies from Korea. GI babies, the Bottom of Society, Comprise the First Wave of Adoption By virtue of their destitution, ostracism, and ambiguous legal status, GI babies developed a unique political and social position in South Korea and America relations. GI babies are called 튀기 (twigui) in Korean, meaning “half-person” and “child of a foreign devil,” which exemplifies the “ridicule and contempt” these children faced daily in the harsh Korean society.” In fact, “60 percent [of these children] lived below average Korean standards and 30 percent were in dire circumstances.” Pearl Buck, the famous Nobel Prize winner, noted that these “mixed blood orphans” in Korea constituted “the lowest class of citizen.” In homogeneous Korea, where racial purity is valued, the people considered the GI babies to be the most shameful form of social outcast, “one of the country’s major social problems.” Since GI babies’ mothers were prostitutes and women of low socioeconomic status, neglect, abandonment, abuse and even stonings were common. Out of scandal and poverty, these biological mothers often gave up their mixed-race babies. In fact, the social condemnation was so extreme that one GI baby called “Elizabeth” watched as her outraged grandfather and uncles in Korea hanged her mother. Furthermore, the GI father left Korea at the end of his military duty and never returned, even with the knowledge that a Korean woman was pregnant with his child. Therefore,, legally, a GI baby had neither US citizenship nor Korean citizenship which could only be passed down from a Korean father. Thus, rejected from society and unrecognized by the government, GI children equated to “non person[s]” socially and politically. Early on, immediately after the Korean War, paternal grandparents in America or rarely, the soldier himself or other military personnel adopted a selective few GI babies. Because of publicity about these earliest adoptions, America started to learn of the Korean War orphan problem, and American sentiment toward these ostracized “children of American fathers” grew into a sense of responsibility for these half-Americans “who need[ed] homes.” According to earliest available records from the Korean Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, from 1955 to 1960, America adopted 2087 GI babies classified as “Korean-Caucasian” or “Korean-Negroid.” Therefore, rejected by Koreans but wanted by Americans, GI babies constituted that most important first surge of Korea-to-America adoptions that eventually grew into a large scale international adoption system exploited by the South Korean government as a political lever. Programmatic Export of GI Babies & Political Gain by South Korea Motivated by his beliefs and cultural values, Syngman Rhee spurred American adoption of GI babies and thereby strengthened South Korea’s political alliance with America. Syngman Rhee, the first South Korean President, promoted a nationalism “characterized by [Korea’s] shared bloodline and ancestry,” an ideology called “one nation, one race” stressing that those not of full Korean blood were outsiders. Therefore, GI babies contradicted the Korean ideal of racial homogeneity. In fact, Rhee’s well-known opinion was that GI babies “will never have any real place in Korean society,” revealing a common prejudice that encouraged ostracism of these children in Korea. Officially, the South Korean government “benevolently” announced that it “want[ed] to help [GI babies] in any way.” However, Pearl Buck recorded Rhee in private, saying he desperately wanted the immediate removal of these half-Koreans “even if we have to drop them in the Pacific Ocean” So, the South Korean government prioritized the removal of all the GI babies in order to maintain Korea’s centuries’ old united front of racial purity. At the same time, hundreds of Americans expressed their eagerness to adopt these unwanted children by sending requests directly to President Syngman Rhee. Rhee responded personally with a promise to see through the adoptions of the unwanted children to these hopeful Americans. In fact, as early as 1954, the Korean courts had approved a new intercountry adoption law, illustrating how South Korea early on recognized the benefits of adoption. Thus, adoption developed into a solution for South Korea to “purify the population” and “to simultaneously maintain good will with America.” As intercountry adoptions increased, intergovernmental cooperation expanded as Korea and America had to combine legal procedures during the adoption process, thereby strengthening the collaboration between Korean and American courts. In fact, President Rhee admitted that the South Korean government utilized the intercountry adoption of GI babies “as channels for foreign aid from wealthy nations” and wrote in a letter to his ambassador, Im Byung Jik: “We should keep in mind the larger aspects of national interest such as… the military aid we continue to receive.” Thus, President Rhee actively took advantage of American interest in helping “our [Korean] girls and their children[GI babies]” as a means to further diplomatic and political bonds with America. Therefore, motivated by “one nation one race” ideology, President Rhee sought to promote the export of GI babies and took advantage of the adoption processes as a means to fortify South Korea’s alliance with America. Harry Holt, International Good Samaritan and Catalyst of Korean Adoptions Following his Christian duty, Harry Holt established the first official adoption agency that placed orphaned GI babies into good Christian homes in America and opened up large scale adoptions by the thousands. In 1955, after visiting postwar Korea, an evangelical Christian named Harry Holt returned to America with eight newly adopted children, “four boys and four girls born to Korean mothers and American soldiers.” These adoptions required the permission of a private law, “the Holt Law,” that was expedited by Congress. Holt’s adoption of these eight GI babies “received a lot of media attention and inspired thousands of families across the nation to seek out [half] Korean children” Eager to adopt orphaned GI babies, thousands of American couples wrote to Harry Holt for help. To fulfill these requests, Harry and his wife, Bertha, launched the Holt Adoption Program in 1956 which marked the start of official intercountry Korean adoption. “Overnight,” Holt became known as the “creator of Operation War Orphan…[that] shuffl[ed] the unwanted children from Korea to homes throughout the United States” Holt’s top priority was to place GI babies in Christian homes, evidence of how essential his Christian faith was to his mission. In fact, Bertha insisted that “the Lord is the real sponsor of these [adopted] children” (6d) not the couple themselves in Life Magazine. The Holt Adoption Program became so important to propagating the idea of adoption from Korea that from 1957 to 1960, it placed every 2 out of 3 babies, 2209 (64%) out of 3450 in all. Holt became an icon of Korean adoptions called the “International Good Samaritan.” To date, Holt has placed about 60,000 Korean children into American homes. Therefore, Harry Holt publicized the plight of the GI baby and his personal Christian mission and founded the Holt International Children’s Services which catalyzed thousands of GI baby adoptions by Christian Americans. Christian Americanism as a Force for Adoptions In the late 1950’s, the adoption of GI babies grew increasingly popular by appealing to Americans’ sense of Christian moral duty to care for these pitiful outcast orphans. The Christian movement in America to adopt GI babies began with the establishment of the Holt Adoption agency which was born out of Holt’s conviction. In Life magazine’s special Christianity issue of December 1955, Bertha Holt articulated that “the tragedy of the unwanted children left behind by the GI’s haunted Harry” and the “Lord was speaking to him” to open an adoption agency. The American media played up this portrayal of the Holts as the model Christian American family. As a result, other American parents considered adoption of these abandoned children “as a way to demonstrate [their] Christian belief” as well. One couple who adopted a half Korean baby claimed that they as “professing Christians” had felt the need to “help relieve the misery of malnutrition and death” of GI “children, abandoned by other Americans.” Dozens of American citizens sent letters to Senator Wayne Morse expressing that “half-Americans running about as beggars” in Korea were “shameful for America” as the world’s superpower and that adoption amounted to “a wonderful missionary opportunity to bring these children into American Christian homes and raise them to be American citizens.” Taking responsibility for GI babies equated with being a good American citizen and a good Christian. In another letter, a parent pleaded Senator Morse “to pass [a Congressional bill for adoption] so children of our American soldiers can be brought to the States to be [raised] as good citizens in a Christian nation.” In fact, this American Christian movement that fueled Korean adoption helped drive US courts to change their immigration laws for permanent large scale international adoption in 1961. Therefore, Christianity and American identity became intertwined and synergized to increase Korean adoption by appealing to the public as missionary work caring for the children of fellow Americans. GI Baby Adoptions as Anti-Communist Statement The promotion of the adoption of GI babies functioned as an Anti-Communism statement during the Red Scare Era of the 1950’s. In the beginning of the Cold War, Congress designed the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 to rescue those “flee[ing] from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or other Communist-dominated areas.” While North Korea had turned to Communism, America strove to keep South Korea democratic by taking in Koreans fleeing from Communists, especially orphaned Korean children, the “true victims “of Communism. America’s role and image in the world arena assumed prime importance as anxiety and even hysteria from the threat of Communism mounted due to such events as the Warsaw Pact of 1955, the Hungarian Revolt of 1956 and Castro’s invasion of Cuba in 1959. Hence, American media actively cultivated positive images of American soldiers delivering “Korean war orphans...to a haven of safety from Communist aggression.” Another newsflash featured a group of soldiers rescuing orphans “running away from the advancing Communists.” To ensure South Korea’s loyalty in the battle against Communism, America wanted war orphans and refugees to remember “that it was an American who helped them, not a Communist.” On the homefront, adoption of a Korean child, especially a GI baby, corresponded to a purposely anti-Communist act. In fact, the famous novelist, Pearl Buck, argued that abandoned GI babies would be “highly susceptible to Communist influence” because if left in Korea, “they would come to despise the nation of the fathers who abandoned them.” Therefore, during the height of the Cold War, adoption of GI babies transformed into an application of the Containment policy to hinder the rise of Communism in South Korea. American Media’s Shaping of American Opinion of GI Babies The media played an indispensable role in promoting the adoption of thousands of GI babies by propagating stories to appeal to prospective adoptive parents and showcase heroic humanitarian acts by GIs. During the Korean war, numerous stories of GI babies emerged in the American media which portrayed the “cruel” suffering and exclusion these outcasts faced in Korea. The tone and visual images triggered a strong sense of responsibility in Americans readers. Heartbreaking stories of GI babies “filling up all the orphanages” sparked adoption movements by Americans who were motivated by Christian and Anti-Communism values. For example, the Christian Century published an ad about adopting GI babies called “You could have saved this little girl!” As a result, American families began to feel a patriotic and moral obligation to rescue these deprived children by adopting them. In addition, they believed the American government had a duty to care for GI babies who were the offspring of their own soldiers. At the same time, the media refrained from printing any reports that would criticize the irresponsible soldiers who fathered and abandoned GI babies. Instead, the news repeatedly displayed heartwarming accounts of generous GI’s helping the Korean people. One Sergeant Creed Harris, who gave food and clothes to Korean children, made a “dramatic plea [to the American public] for help for these children” through the Los Angeles Times. Also, a story surfaced about “generous” American soldiers saving 1,100 children from starvation and providing them with shelter. Other articles attested to the large monetary donations from American soldiers, totaling more than 13 million dollars that financed South Korean relief including orphanages. In conclusion, the media propagated the benevolent portrayal of Americans by featuring white humanitarian heroes of pitiful Korean children and thus, persuaded thousands of Americans to adopt GI babies. America’s White Man’s Burden in Korea The GI baby adoption movement intensified America’s sense of parental moral obligation toward Korea and its children, as articulated by Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem, White Man’s Burden. Ever since the outbreak of the Korean War, America has felt a military, economic, and racial superiority over Korea by acting as South Korea’s protector. While the American press depicted GIs as benevolent fathers to Korean orphans, it also characterized Korea as a land of severe hardship and destitution and a backward third world country unable to care for its own children. Additionally, President Eisenhower believed that as the world superpower, the US had a special “responsibility” to spread its care and “protect[tion] to allies in need, demonstrating America’s role as the superior. In fact, GIs had derogatory terms for Koreans such as “yellow niggers” and “gooks,” evidence of how Americans stationed themselves above non-whites. By indicating that Korea was an inferior country and culture, America defined its hierarchic relationship with South Korea. Thus, GI babies known as 튀기 or “child of a foreign devil” truly embodied Kipling’s “half devil half child” and perpetuated America’s sense of White Man’s Burden. Conclusion For over 70 years, South Korea and the United States have shared a special alliance, one to which former South Korean ambassador to the US, Han Duk Soo, credits his nation’s “economic growth, prosperity and security” and one that former US ambassador to South Korea, Kathleen Stephens, calls “a relationship forged in blood.” As offspring of Korean women and American soldiers, GI babies are truly both Korean and American by “blood,” and as such, they played a unique role in strengthening US-South Korean relations, in furthering the international and domestic aims of both countries, and in advancing multiculturalism in America. Post Korean War, North Korea posed a constant threat to the newly formed South Korea who relied on United States’ military occupation. So, early on since 1953, the South Korean government actively encouraged American adoptions of GI babies in order to affirm its political alliance with America, the Free World’s superpower. Likewise, America utilized GI baby adoption to showcase its benevolence and parental superiority on the international stage during the height of the Cold War. The result of this South Korean-US alliance was thousands of GI baby adoptions which started a vast international adoption movement that today accounts for over 150,000 adoptees from Korea to America. As Americans started to adopt GI babies by the thousands in the late 1950’s, these mixed race adoptees constituted the very beginnings of multiculturalism in America at a time when segregation and Jim Crow laws were still alive and well. However, true multiculturalism had yet to exist in America as interracial marriage remained illegal in many states until 1967. In fact, the unintentional multicultural effect of GI baby adoptions actually originated from a sense of white man’s moral and cultural superiority over Korea as defined by American Christianity and media. In conclusion, GI babies drew two nations closer together into an enduring alliance and heralded future generations of racial mixing that would transform America into the true melting pot society that we live in today.