It is
the afternoon of January 15 at the
Sangrok Orphanage in Namhyeon-dong,
Gwanajk-gu, Seoul. Five-year-old
Eun-ji (a pseudonym) was sleeping.
Her teacher said, "she's been
sleeping for quite a while because
she was playing so energetically."
Our conversation woke up Eun-ji, who
said, "imo", and snuggled up to the
teacher. The teacher said, "her
mother is Mongolian and only when
she comes here she does she say 'imo'
and recently she has been saying it
a lot less."
With
the increasing number of divorces in
multicultural families, Kosian
children (mixed-race children with
one Korean parent and one parent
from another Asian country) such as
Eun-ji are rapidly increasing as
well.In 2008 there were 11,255
multicultural divorces, 9.7 percent
of total divorces.
In
2002 there were 144,910 divorces of
which 1.2% (1,744) were
multicultural, so in comparison the
total number has increased 6.3 times
and the percentage has increased 8.1
times. In May of 2009 there were
167,090 multicultural households
nationwide, just 1% of the 2008
total of 16,917,000, showing that
the situation of divorce in
multicultural families is serious.
It is
not known how many Kosian children
are being neglected due to break-ups
of mulitcultural families. There are
only estimates. Of the 21,551
mulitcultural couples who divorced
from 2004 to 2008 some 2,004 had
children who were still minors.
Experts believe many of them have
been neglected.
The
children of multicultural broken
homes may wait all day at home for
their mothers to come home from
work, or be placed in the hands of
their grandparents, or stay in an
orphanage. They might also go back
to the home countries of their
mothers, with whom they do not
communicate, as illegal immigrants.
Eun-ji was born in 2006 to a
Mongolian mother and Korean father.
But
not long after Eun-ji was born her
father suffered a stroke and bad
times set in. Her father asked his
mother to take care of her and her
mother , but Eun-ji's grandmother
refused, calling them "an unlucky
mother and daughter".
There
are 63 Koasians like Eun-ji who have
been sent to live in the orphanage.
Most orphanages do not allow
reporters in, fearing they would
disturb the children, so it is very
likely there are many more.
A,
born to a Southeast Asian mother and
a Korean father with mental and
physical disabilities, was placed in
an orphanage in Yeongnam in 2006,
when her mother fled. B, born in
March of 2005 to a Vietnamese mother
and a Korean father with a physical
disability, was taken away from her
troubled parents after eight months
and palced in an orphanage in
Chungcheong.
C, who
lives in an orphanage in Honam, was
placed there after her Filipina
mother returned home when she began
showing symptoms of mental illness.
At the 18 women's shelters
nationwide there are 232 marriage
immigrants and their children, who
were unable to deal with the
husband's violence any longer.
Most
children from broken multicultural
homes are unable to receive proper
education or medical treatment due
to poverty, showing the urgent need
for policies to rescue them from
neglect. Gwon Mi-suk, counselling
head at the Women Migrants
Humanrights Center , said, "migrant
women who have children with Korean
citizenship must be allowed to more
easily take Korean citizenship."
Gwon
Oh-hui, mother superior at the
Bethlehem Children's Center
said, "there needs to be a large
increase in the facilities and
caregivers available for children
from multicultural families that
have fallen apart."
