Television Mothers: Korean Birthmothers Lost and Found in the Search-and-Reunion Narratives

• Published in: Cultural studies, critical methodologies critical methodologies, 2012-10, Vol.12 (5), p.438-449
• Main Author: Kim, Hosu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adopted Children; Adoption; Child adoption; Discourse Analysis; Family relations; Intervention; Korea; Koreans; Mothers; Nationalism; Politics; Reconciliation; South Korea; Television; Transnationalism
• ISSN: 1532-7086; 1552-356X
• DOI: 10.1177/1532708612453007

This article considers the emergent figure of the Korean birthmother whose children have been placed into transnational adoption by focusing on the longest-running Korean television search-and-reunion show; such shows have played an important role and served as a critical cultural and technological institution through which Korean adoptees search for and reunite with their Korean birthmothers. Incorporating discourse analysis and autoethnographic writing, based on the author’s experience as a translator for the show, this article unveils the processes through which the figure of the Korean birthmother emerges as a biogenetic, affective, and developmental maternal figure that is central to South Korea’s nationalistic narrative of its long involvement in the transnational adoption. By treating this Korean birthmother that emerges through television technologies and narratives as a virtual mother, I offer an intervention into the naturalizing and nationalizing force of adoption discourse and thereby help to map out a politics of reconciliation for the losses in numerous lives of birthmothers and adoptees.