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Susanne Seong-eun Bergsten / Courtesy of Susanne Seong-eun Bergsten

In an interview with poet and translator Don Mee Choi, Korean poet Kim Hye-soon spoke about the language of death. Feminine writing, she says, unlike masculine language, "begins from a place of emptiness/nothingness, a place that's full with the presence of absence."

This is where my language begins and ends: with loss. A loss of family, sisterhood, culture, language and native country. My native country, Korea – I am its present absence. My voice, my speech, is Korea's phantom limb, its ghost — haunting all of us, including myself.

Starting in the 1950s in the aftermath of the Korean War and continuing to present times, more than 200,000 children were adopted abroad, making Korea the largest "exporter" of children in history. I was one of those children. Let us be clear: there is no Korean history without the presence of our absence. There is no Korean language without the ruptures of our disappearances. We, who never learned our native tongue but nevertheless had to find a way to speak.

In the past decade, many Korean adoptees and original families have come forward with stories describing a corrupt system, which failed to protect the children and their original families and has deceived adoptive parents. There are stories of mothers whose children were stolen during birth and put up for adoption, and children who got lost or kidnapped in public places, never to be seen again.

In my case, my paperwork was never falsified, nor were my parents deceived by agents of the adoption industry. But even in the best of cases, such as my own, there is a loss that can never be undone. I had a great childhood with Swedish parents who raised me in a home full of love. I also had a chance to reunite with my Korean family and both my families have met, embraced, wiped each other's tears, and shared laughs and meals together. And yet, I often wonder who I could have been if I had grown up with my sisters in Gwangju and what it would feel like to speak and listen to my Korean mother effortlessly, without the labor and hazards of translation and mistranslations. I wish I could ask her about her dreams. How can I know my mother's dreams without knowing the language in which she dreams?

Susanne Seong-eun Bergsten on her first birthday at her home in Sweden / Courtesy of Susanne Seong-Eun Bergsten

Right now, Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating the country's past adoption practices, which have been tainted by corruption and coercion. Korean adoptees from around the world have filed a case with the commission in which they are looking into hundreds of adoptees' cases where adoption papers have been falsified, adoptees were given new identities and registered as orphans when they, in fact, had living family members and relatives, some of whom were searching for them for years.

In much of the discourse, popular as well as juridical, intercountry adoptions are often posited as being in the best interest of the child. But what does "the best interest of the child" really mean in the context of adoption?

The "best interest of the child" is a legal principle found in international treaties such as the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was ratified by Korea in 1991 and lays out that the principle shall cover all decisions affecting the child. The convention states that the "best interest" principle should be the "paramount consideration" in adoptions. It means that the best interest of the child is more important than anything else when determining adoptions, without detailing what the "best interest" is in any given situation.

It's worth noting that the principle has also been misused and given grounds for violations of children's rights in various ways. In its ambiguity, what is in the best interest of a child can be subjective to the determining party and thus it has been used so that adopted children have been prevented from knowing their biological family "in their own interests."

In Korea, the principle is not well known, used or referred to. The Child Welfare Act in the country does not refer to the "best interest" but instead mentions that "the interest of children shall be considered preferentially."

When signing the CRC, Korea said that it did not consider it to be bound by the provisions that would require it to "ensure that the adoption of a child is authorized only by competent authorities who determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures and on the basis of all pertinent and reliable information, that the adoption is permissible in view of the child's status concerning parents, relatives and legal guardians and that, if required, the persons concerned have given their informed consent to the adoption on the basis of such counseling as may be necessary." Instead, private agencies oversaw adoptions for decades with little oversight. Only since 2013 have adoptions gone through family courts and been overseen by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

In 2013, Korea signed The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention), a treaty created to protect international adoptees, but failed to ratify it. The convention holds that adoptions should be in the best interest of the child, and sets out that first and foremost, a child should stay with their own family, and if not possible, domestic adoption should be the next option. Only as a last resort, it states, should a child be sent abroad for adoption. Korea's failure to make this treaty law has left children more vulnerable to harm. However, reports state they aim to finally ratify the treaty by 2025.

Meanwhile, the country's National Assembly was quick to adopt the Protected Birth Act in the beginning of October. This new legislation is meant to protect women and children by allowing women experiencing a financial crisis or dealing with an unwanted pregnancy to give birth anonymously, sealing the birth record and with the intention of giving the child up for adoption. The child has the possibility to petition a court when they turn 18 to unseal the birth record.

However, this law and the way a child's birth is registered without the birth parents is concerningly similar to the previous process where children were made into paper orphans for adoption. The law also does little to support pregnant women and the economic conditions of families in need and also fails to protect children's rights to preserve their identity and relation to their families.

Perhaps the legal mechanisms are not enough to protect adoptees and if so, how can I find solace in the very system and discourse from which my rights were annihilated in the first place? The language of death, as I read poet Kim, is not a fatalistic or pessimistic one. My language, the language of Korea's lost children, is the language that reaches beyond the limits of definite national and legal imaginaries. In that place, beyond the objectivity and positivism of historical and legal narratives, my story challenges the idea that one can simply repair my wounds by invoking rights that I could not fully enjoy from the start. Mine is the language of the feminine, to follow Kim – it is the sound of silence you hear when history is told without my name in it.

Susanne Seong-eun Bergsten is a Korean adoptee who grew up in Sweden. She has a background in journalism and international law and is currently based in San Francisco where she works for an international human rights organization. She has authored several pieces on gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health and rights in Korea. She has also been engaged in voluntary work and advocacy for adoptee rights. Email to contact@hrbb.org for inquiries about the article.