Broken bloodlines: a South Korean adoptee tells the mothers’ tales
Agnès Dherbeys returns to South Korea, from where she and many others were adopted, to meet some of those who were impelled to abandon their children
The South Korean economy is the 15th largest in the world. The little Asian country of 50 million people is also a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the G20 group of major economies.
South Korea has not always been so economically strong, though, and its current status has been won through a lot of hard work and sacrifice. The Korean war (1950 to 1953) took a terrible toll on the country, as did the extreme poverty that followed. Those tough times have had a lasting effect on the many children who were put up for adoption by parents who couldn't afford to keep them.
I was one of them, and was later adopted by French parents.
A number of essays have been dedicated to the issue of adoption and to the challenges faced by South Korean children who were uprooted and forced to accept a new identity - but, to my knowledge, no one has yet given a voice to the birth mothers.
Over the course of last year, I met some of those mothers as part of my "Omone" (Korean for "mother") photography project, visiting my country of birth armed with revived childhood fantasies and a camera.
Over the months of talking with these women, a clearer picture slowly emerged of how Korea was 30 years ago. The circumstances they faced and the reasons for doing what they did paint a portrait of a harsh, poor and ultra-conservative society. South Korean children are still put up for adoption abroad, but 90 per cent of them now are born to single mothers. Those parents from an earlier time who had fewer choices, or none at all, are victims of massive and irrevocable trauma. They have for decades carried their burden - sorrow, regret and shame - with little or no support.