Russia halts international adoptions to US

As we've often seen in Korea, international adoption can be a touchy issue, fraught with emotion (though cooler heads ultimately prevail, usually). I can only imagine how badly this would have played out in the some parts of the South Korean media had this been a Korean adoptee instead of a Russian:

Russia has frozen all adoptions to the United States, the foreign ministry announced Thursday as national outrage simmered over a towheaded 7-year-old Russian orphan sent alone on a plane back to Moscow by his adoptive mother.

A U.S. delegation is due in Moscow in coming days to discuss the crisis with Russian officials. Russia is pressing the United States to sign an agreement that would more carefully screen would-be parents and monitor the families upon their return to the United States, foreign ministry officials have said.

"Russia believes that only an agreement which will contain effective tools for Russian and U.S. officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated," foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said at a briefing Thursday. ...

Ever since the child turned up waiflike in the Moscow airport with nothing to explain himself but a letter from his adoptive mother calling him "mentally unstable," anger has boiled in Russia.

Substitute Russia and Moscow for Korea and Seoul and I think we have our answer (and yes, I recognize the inherent unfairness of knocking Korea for something that is purely hypothetical and hasn't happened, but it's not like I'm always engaged in this kind of practice).

Katherine Heigl's Korean baby forces her to quit Grey's Anatomy

Never underestimate the power of whiny Koreans to get you to do things that you might not want to do. Katherine Heigl, made famous by "Grey's Anatomy," a hospital drama named for the medical books that were compiled about the same time the show first went on the air, and made famouser by Knocked Up, in which she showed a bajayjay comin' out her vajayjay, is leaving GA for good and with little fanfare.

And the reason is her screaming, pooping, spitting-up ball of joy:

"I am done. We just finalized our agreement. Everyone had been working really hard to find an amicable and gracious way of letting go and moving on. It’s sad but it’s what I wanted.”

Heigl, who has been on maternity leave, explained that adopting a daughter has changed her priorities and she no longer wants to work full time. She was scheduled to appear in the season's last five episodes. But ABC Studios allowed her to leave without fulfilling that part of her contract.

That means the Jan. 21 episode was Izzie Stevens' last hurrah.

“I know I’m disappointing the fans,” she said to EW. “I just had to make a choice. I hope I made the right one.”

Well good on her for not just having a nanny raise her baby while she's on the set. And just to remind readers, Katherine Heigl's child is an adoptee from South Korea (see here, here, and here), just like her sister.

Tragedy compounded by tragedy

It was just four months ago, in early October 2008, that popular South Korean actress Choi Jinsil [최진실/崔眞實] committed suicide. 

In 1991, the troubled Ms Choi was the star of Susanne Brink's Arirang, a movie that depicted a very unflattering picture of overseas adoption of Korean children. I blogged about that movie and the issue here. 

Now comes news that the real-life Susanne Brink, on whom the movie was based, has passed away on January 23, at the age of forty-five. The influential adoptee activist changed how adoption of Koreans — and probably other country's children — was perceived. (Hat tip to djkimcheelove)

I admit that I don't share the conclusion that all overseas adoptions should be stopped, but I do think that the process — who was adopting, how (if at all) they were screened, who was being adopted, and especially how they came into a position to be adopted — needed much more scrutiny. Susanne Brink's work and the movie about her brought that spotlight. I hope others will continue it in her absence.