아메라시안(Amerasian)의 존재 양태와 국제입양(1945~1975) - 베트남-미국 혼혈아를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between Amerasians and international adoption from World War II to the Vietnam War. The paper focuses on the Vietnam-U.S. mixed-race children while looking at the whole picture of Amerasians who had born in Philippines, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. The conclusion of the paper is that no matter what the dictionary, conventional or scholarly definition, Amerasians were socially an orphans to the country of birth and were destined to be the subject of international adoption during the Cold War.<BR> The paper consists of four chapters. Following the introduction, chapter 2 examines the origins, population, and characteristics of Amerasians in the Philippines, Japan, Thailand, and Korea. Chapter 3 focused on the Vietnamese Amerasian and examined its scale and living conditions in detail. Chapter 4 traces the relationship between Japanese and Korean Amerasians and international adoption, focusing on Pearl Buck, the Welcome House/Pearl Buck Foundation, and Holt and Holt International Children’s Services, representing the first and second phases of international adoption. Chapter 5 analyzes the activities of Rosemary Taylor and Friends of Children of Vietnam, which shifted the focus back to Vietnam and brought about the third phase of international adoption. It also reveals that the unprecedented Babylift Operation in 1975, which airlifted 3,000 ‘war orphans’ from Vietnam, corresponded to actually a full-fledged and one-sided international adoption operation.