Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption

3. Holt International Summer School or Three-Week Re-Koreanization, 1999–2004

52 > 53 Apprenticeship of Childhood Every year, the program offers the same range of activities in its cultural classes, with minor variations. Therefore, despite their brevity, these activities appear to provide a mandatory corpus of knowledge. During their stay at the Ilsan Holt Center, where all the classes took place, HISS participants made only brief excursions to Seoul with the assistants—an American adoptee in 1999 during my own participation in the program and myself in 2004—to go shopping, see the Korean performance of an American musical (Fame), observe a traditional performance, and attend a dinner theater. Study time and leisure time were clearly delineated, and some participants complained about the lack of freedom and autonomy. Although brief and superficial, this accelerated apprenticeship was part of a child’s education. Korean adoptees were all adults in age, yet they had to be reeducated from the beginning, that is, disciplined.4 Prior to their flying to Korea, HISS participants had to complete a form and read the rules. In 1999, they had to promise to respect South Koreans by avoiding any provocative outfits (no tank tops, no miniskirts). Although no uniform was required, participants received a T-shirt bearing the Holt logo and seemed to be regarded as school students. During the program, participants could not smoke cigarettes in public or drink alcohol, especially at Ilsan Holt Center, “so that mentally challenged residents would not try to imitate them,” social workers explained. Going outside the center after nine o’clock at night without an escort—a social worker or a volunteer—was forbidden so that nobody would get lost. Participants were also compelled to attend all the classes indicated on the program. The whole program was described on a poster in both Korean and English. Completion of this learning program, combined with a good attitude, would be validated at the end by a diploma. When they first arrived at the center, participants received instructions from the volunteers. Adoptees themselves, these volunteers stayed with the participants the whole time they were at the center and helped social workers, who usually returned home at night. Volunteers led a tour of the big house built by the founder himself. Bedrooms with ondol, the traditional Korean floor heating system, and mattresses on the floor hosted three or four participants—genders separated but nationalities mixed. Everyone was instructed to wear plastic slippers inside the building and to take them off at the entrance to bedrooms, and to fold his or her personal mattress every morning and put it in the lower compartment of the closet along the wall. Accommodations were simple, and disabled residents of the center did most of the cleaning and maintenance. Two friendly Korean 54 > 55 God will make a way Where there seems to be no way He works in ways we cannot see He will make a way for me He will be my guide Hold me closely to His side With love and strength For each new day He will make a way He will make a way By a roadway in the wilderness He will lead me And rivers in the desert will I see Heaven and earth will fade But His word will still remain And He will do something new today With love and strength For each new day He will make a way He will make a way Religious in nature, these lyrics seemed applicable to anyone, like the Gospels or the Psalms, their obvious sources of inspiration. In this context, the lyrics identified adoptees as people in difficulty, a bit lost and in need of a guide to find their way. God was their guide, but as helpless children, they would also receive help and encouragement from Holt staff. After the song, each participant introduced him- or herself in English—first name, last name, and citizenship—and was applauded. In 1999 and 2004, all participants were over eighteen, as mandated by the program. The oldest participants were in their early thirties, and some were married with children. A majority were graduate students or professionals who had worked for several years and found it frustrating to be treated like children in primary school. As the days went by, more and more complained about the constraints imposed by the program on leisure activities and about the impossibility of sleeping late: volunteers had to wake participants up in the morning, sometimes by banging a spoon...