Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States by Kimberly D. McKee (review)

Adoption & Culture Vol. 7, Issue 2 (2019) Copyright © 2019 by The Ohio State University Reviews Rev. of Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States KIMBERLY D. MCKEE. U of Illinois P, 2019 250 pp. $99.00 (Hardback) ISBN: 978-0-252-04228-7. By Kira A. Donnell Conventional narratives of transnational adoption in Western contexts frame adoption as an act of benevolence, rescue, and love. White adoptive parents open their hearts and their homes to Asian orphans in need, providing them with a life of privilege and love that would otherwise be unattainable to these children, who are presumed to be forlorn, abandoned, and forgotten in Asian orphanages. Kimberly D. McKee’s Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States challenges this narrative by revealing what McKee calls the transnational adoption industrial complex (TAIC) and demonstrates its growth as “a neocolonial , multi-million-dollar global industry that commodifies children’s bodies” (2). McKee argues that rather than understanding adoption as only an altruistic act of saving, we must realize the ways in which the TAIC produces children as objects available for trade and distribution. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Disrupting Kinship thus examines the micro- and macro-levels of transnational Korean adoption, placing the seemingly disparate parties and agendas that comprise the TAIC in conversation with one another to uncover the interconnectedness of American military imperialism, Korean social welfare policy, and notions of citizenship and family that operate to promote transnational adoption “as a social welfare mechanism and tool to aid stratified reproduction” (4). Building on erin Khuê Ninh’s discussion of gratitude and filial duty and Sarah Ahmed’s discussion of the feminist killjoy, McKee proposes the “adoptee killjoy” and the “every adoptee” to describe the ways in which adoptees disrupt the constructed fantasy narratives of adoption, family, and gratitude: “the adoptee killjoy REVIEWS   291 disrupts adoption narratives of child rescue through political activism,” while the every adoptee, who operates in contrast to the adoptee killjoy, “belongs to the broader adoptee community that lacks engagement with the activist adoptee community ” (11, 12). Although the every adoptee lacks the political activism of the adoptee killjoy, the every adoptee “gives voice to the nuances of adoptee identity and underscores how adoptees do not exist within a strict binary framework” (12). As such, every adoptees, in their own way, also disrupt the traditional adoption narratives of rescue and gratitude. McKee approaches her interrogation of the transnational adoption industrial complex from multiple disciples, perspectives, and methodologies. Through this interdisciplinary approach, McKee makes three important interventions in the burgeoning field of adoption studies. First, she traces the origins of the TAIC through the United States’ military involvement on the Korean peninsula during the Cold War, demonstrating how international adoption became a naturalized method of family-building in the Western world (and -deconstruction in the Global South/East). Secondly, she challenges and queers the normalization of American transnational adoptive families. McKee problematizes political and sociocultural concepts of citizenship to explore how adoptees are granted or denied legitimacy and belonging in familial, national, and international domains. Thirdly, Disrupting Kinship challenges assumptions of a monolithic adoptee community by highlighting three discrete, yet overlapping, sites of adoptee expression. McKee analyzes literature, oral histories, and online content by adult adoptees to demonstrate the ways in which adoptees are knowledge producers and experts on adoption, contesting notions of adoptees as passive, perpetual children. McKee’s first chapter contextualizes the growth of the TAIC in social and economic conditions in South Korea that promoted transnational adoption as a social welfare solution and describes the process through which adoptees are commodified . The gendered South Korea policy on citizenship in tandem with limited support for single and working parents has led to South Korea’s reliance on transnational adoption as its de facto social welfare support. Concurrently, the rendering of Korean children as social orphans by adoption agencies manufactures adoptees into interchangeable commodities, ready to be consumed by American families. The falsification and/or erasure of adoptees’ natal histories ensures their availability and adoptability to prospective adoptive parents, who are encouraged to “shop” for a child that piques their interest. After constructing the concept of the TAIC...