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So far, I have identified the material conditions that have made possible the emergence of the Korean orphan. I examined the construction of the Korean orphan in the militarized scene of the orphanage, in the fantasies of the U.S. military, and in the humanitarian desires of American civilians. In this chapter, I return to the orphanage to investigate further the material conditions that enabled the configuration of a new American family, as depicted in the “Holt Family Portrait.” Specifically, this chapter concerns itself with how an orphan becomes an adoptee. How does a seemingly unwanted orphan become a desirable Korean adoptee? I ask this question to suggest that the term adoptee—as I demonstrated in the first three chapters with the term orphan—is not a natural, transparent, and inherently knowable category of identity. Rather, this chapter, along with the next one, illustrates that it takes ongoing work, time, energy, and resources to construct an adoptee—to turn an orphan into an adoptee. Thus, these two chapters focus on the subject formation of the Korean adoptee. Drawing on Holt Adoption Program newsletters and documents from other adoption agencies, such as administrative files, letters, and memos, I investigate the functions and inner workings of the orphanage and its effects on the orphans during the 1950s and 1960s. Although the orphanage was a site of militarization that produced Korean orphans as militarized subjects during and immediately after the war, the withdrawal of American troops at the end of the war resulted in the waning imprint of militarization within the orphanages. Processes of normalization and Americanization replaced militarization as efforts to recruit Americans as adoptive parents became increasingly prioritized. Thus, I argue that the orphanage—now a site of normalization—worked to normalize orphans in order to make 101 4 NORMALIZING THE ADOPTED CHILD them adoptable. It is here, within the walls of the orphanage, where the subject formation of the adoptee takes shape. The images and the discourses that circulated around the postwar Korean social orphan—as discussed in the previous chapter—may suggest that the orphans in South Korea were ready for adoption as they were. This chapter suggests otherwise, as I attend to the behind-the-scenes labor that was expended to not only turn orphans who were categorized as unadoptable into adoptable children but also to prepare adoptable children for American life. Although the extra effort to make these children desirable may not have been necessary for servicemen who had preexisting relationships with their adoptive children before their adoption, these added initiatives were necessary to spark and sustain the interests of civilians back home who did not have any prior contact with these children. Indeed, it was seeing and touching these children that prompted American GIs to adopt the orphans with whom they had contact.1 Because the average civilian in the United States did not have access to these children in the same way that GIs did, more labor needed to be exerted to get civilians halfway around the world to bring them into their family. This extra care and effort to make orphans desirable and adoptable is the subject of this chapter. I begin by explaining how the withdrawal of U.S. military forces opened up a new sphere of influence. If the U.S. armed forces assumed control of Korean orphans during and immediately after the Korean War, then American civilians like Harry Holt quickly took charge of the orphan situation during the postwar years. By establishing the Orphan’s Foundation Fund and Holt Adoption Program in 1956, as well as working with legislators to change Asian immigration laws, Holt institutionalized Korean adoption in the United States. He also built his own orphanage in South Korea, which directly supplied his adoption agency with orphans for adoption. Because Holt’s orphans were specifically slated for adoption (rather than sponsorship) in the United States, he implemented policies and procedures to help prepare the orphan for travel to the States. Part of this had to do with visa requirements (such as passing medical examinations), but much of it had to do with making the orphan appealing to Americans. Therefore, in the second section, I examine Holt’s Il San orphanage as a processing station that prepared Korean orphans for adoption. More specifically, I identify and examine the various techniques used to turn orphans into adoptees. These techniques—or technologies of power, as Michel Foucault calls them—were centered on processes of normalization.2 The orphanage, as an institution...

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