In 2007, 7,774 babies were born out of wedlock in South Korea, 1.6 percent of all births. (In the US, nearly 40 percent of babies born in 2007 had unmarried mothers, National Center for Health Statistics data shows.) Nearly 96 percent of unwed pregnant women in South Korea choose abortion, the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs said.
Of unmarried women who give birth, about 70 percent are believed to give up their babies for adoption, a government-financed survey found. In the US, the figure is 1 percent, the Health and Human Services Department reports.
For years, the South Korean government has worked to reduce overseas adoptions, which peaked at 8,837 in 1985. To increase adoptions at home, it provides subsidies and extra health care benefits for families that adopt, and it designated May 11 as Adoption Day.
It also spends billions of dollars a year to try to reverse the declining birthrate, subsidizing fertility treatments for married couples, for example.
“But we don’t see a campaign for unmarried mothers to raise our own children,” said Lee Mee-kyong, a 33-year-old unwed mother. “Once you become an unwed mom, you’re branded as immoral and a failure. People treat you as if you had committed a crime. You fall to the bottom rung of society.”
The government pays a monthly allowance of US$85 per child to those who adopt children. It offers half that for single mothers of dependent children.
The government is trying to increase payments to help unwed mothers and to add more facilities to provide care for unmarried pregnant women, said Baek Su-hyun, a Health Ministry official. But the social stigma discourages women from coming forward.
“My former boyfriend’s sister screamed at me over the phone demanding that I get an abortion. His mother and sister said it was up to them to decide what to do with my baby because it was their family’s seed,” said Chang Ji-young, 27, who gave birth to a boy last month.
Families whose unmarried daughters become pregnant sometimes move to conceal the pregnancy. Unwed mothers often lie about their marital status for fear they will be evicted by landlords and their children ostracized at school. Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women’s Development Institute found.
Choi said her family changed its telephone number to avoid contact with her. When her father was hospitalized and she went to see him with her baby, she said, her sister blocked them from entering his room. When she wrote to him, she said, her father burned the letters. Last year, about three years after the birth, he finally accepted Choi back into his home.
“That day, I saw him in the bathroom, crying over one of my letters,” she said. “I realized how hard it must have been for him as well.”
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