by Dr. Horace H. Underwood  

Professor Emeritus, Yonsei University

Lots of Korean children are adopted overseas each year. This has become a big issue in Korea lately, as some Koreans consider it embarrassing to their nation. I, on the other hand (partly because I have two adopted children who used to be Korean) consider it one of the finest things that Koreans do, allowing their children to be adopted by people who really want them. The fact is that Koreans do not adopt children very much, and many Koreans cannot understand that my wife and I really love our adopted children.

Traditionally, Koreans did adopt occasionally. If one did not have a son, one might adopt the second son of a relative (a "spare") to carry on the family line. The adoptee need not be young; often the adoptee would be in his teens or older before the need to adopt would be recognized. But the person to be adopted had to be related to you, and in the correct generation (the next generation after yours in the clan register).

Americans don't care very much about being related to the adopted child, but they want to adopt young. My elder daughter came to my house when she was five days old - that's the way to do it, no?

Americans and Koreans are equally crazy in our view of the world. In the makeup of any human being there is a mixture of heredity and environment. But we Americans tend to believe only in environment. Look at that adoption pattern - get 'em young and they can become anything, right? We want to adopt infants! Then there will be no problems! Koreans, on the other hand, tend to believe only in heredity. Look at that adoption pattern - get 'em from the family and we know what we're getting, right? We want to adopt relatives! Then there will be no problems!

Of course, heredity determines much of my height, aptitudes, even diseases. Environment determines much of my behavior, achievement, even diseases. Thus both Koreans and Americans are wrong. But being wrong never affected a good solid social attitude (theirs or ours).

The American attitude to environment and heredity may come from the American experience, where everyone was an immigrant and the new land determined what you were; anyone could become anything, and the past was left behind (in theory, and never mind the marginalized). The Korean attitude to heredity may come from the Korean experience, where everyone was in the same place for 5000 years and family determined what you were; no one could become anything (in theory, and never mind actual social mobility).

Of course, modern Korea is built on a denial of all the resignation and fatalism implicit in this attitude. Now everything changes; everything can be changed. But both attitudes are strong in Korea - yes, everything changes, must change; but at the same time in some ways nothing changes, particularly in people and relationships. Old attitudes to adoption have not changed. People without sons still adopt, but instead of adopting relatives, they sometimes conceal the adoption not only from the child, but even from the neighbors, the wife getting progressively more "pregnant," then going to the hospital and bringing home the adopted newborn publicly as her own. A child known to be adopted may be bullied or (worse) pitied by neighbors and classmates.

While the Korean attitude toward heredity may be of only academic interest to that majority of people who have not adopted, it affects a large group of people whom I deal with as an international educator. These are the hyphenated Koreans, most often Korean-American. The typical experience in Korea of Korean-Americans can be quite negative. Their first introduction to Korea is in the taxi from the airport, where the taxi driver scolds them for not speaking Korean well. They have often felt varying degrees of isolation in their home countries, and had expected that in Korea they would feel at home. But they are soon disabused of that notion.

A survey was conducted some years ago among the summer session students at Yonsei's International Division, 95% of whom are Korean-American, about their ideas of Korea and Koreans. The results were much as expected - it's a beautiful country, they like the food, they don’t like the traffic, Seoul is bigger and more modern than they expected, they feel satisfied with their study experience, etc. But one figure stood out. When asked about the basic character and attitude of the Korean people, 64.8% of these young Korean-Americans replied that Koreans were an unkind people, and only 25.4% that Koreans were a kind people (plus 9.8% "other").

The problem is heredity and environment. If a student was born in New York, went to high school in California, speaks only English, and is a student at the University of Michigan, I, speaking as an American, know that that student is an American. But the average Korean will believe such a student is a Korean - but a "bad" one. If your parents were Korean, then you are too! If I can say "Ann-young-hash-im-niker" ("hello"), no matter how badly, Koreans will say how impressed they are by my Korean language skills. If one of those students makes even a slight error in grammar, particularly in the small suffixes that indicate politeness and relative place in society, they are criticized severely - because they are Korean, and Koreans don't make those mistakes.

Among the students on American campuses are growing numbers of students who look Korean but aren't. As Americans, they don't accept their "place" in the Korean hierarchy. Meanwhile, the Koreans among your international students do accept hierarchy. The Koreans are often graduate students, who think they are in charge. The Korean-Americans are often undergraduates - nobody is in charge of them. So you have two Korean student associations, not always talking to each other. All because of heredity and environment.

Korea is said to be the most homogeneous nation on the face of the earth. Among South Korea's 48 million people, the largest, in fact the only, resident minority group is the 10,000 Chinese. They are scattered around the country - Korea is the only country in Asia without a Chinatown. Only one out of every 4800 people is from an ethnically different group.

One of the greatest assets of Korean society is its homogeneity - all one language, one culture, one race, one nation, allowing mass education, communication, and understanding within the boundaries of the country.

One of the greatest liabilities of Korean society is its homogeneity - no experience of diversity, no openness to difference, sometimes a bit of racism and xenophobia thrown in, with these negative points not merely a sad reality which exists despite inclusive ideals, as in the U.S., but part of an ideology of purity and uniqueness and exceptionalism which is reinforced by government, education, media, and family.

It is the homogeneity of Koreans which makes it possible to begin to describe something called "Korean culture." I always remind myself that individual variation can be very great. Nonetheless, many Korean I meet and work with seem to fit the patterns I have described, and others, including Koreans themselves, have recognized these patterns as forming something "Korean."

All these characteristics from all these sections fit together - hierarchy, personalized loyalty, group orientation, nationalism, and heredity - to produce a cultural group that has survived a long time. Korean culture is changing, but slowly, and these characteristics will not disappear in our lifetimes. As we try to understand Koreans, so they also try to understand us. Maybe we can use the opportunities now open for those of us in international education, Koreans and Americans, to meet each other in the middle.

About the author:

Horace H. Underwood is the fourth generation of his family to live in Korea. His great-grandfather was one of the first Protestant missionaries to arrive in Korea in 1885, and later founded Yonsei University, where his family has continued to teach. Dr. Underwood first went to Korea in 1946 at the age of three; after earning a doctorate at SUNY Buffalo he served for 30 years as a professor in Yonsei's English Department. During that time he also had various other posts in international education, including Director of the Division of International Education and Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies, and Executive Director of the Korean American Educational Commission (the Fulbright Commission.) In 2004 he retired and moved to a home in South Carolina near his granddaughter, but still returns to Korea regularly as a member of the Board of Directors of Yonsei University and as a friend of Korea. Dr. Underwood can be contacted at: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it