2017, Vol.6, No.2

The Life History of the Elderly and Familial Changes in Seoul and Nagoya: Traces of Formation and Demise of the Modern Family Embedded in Life Histories

PARK, Keong-Suk | 2017, 6(2) | pp.3~47 | number of Cited : 4

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This study examines the characteristics of familial changes and modernity embedded in the life history of the Korean and Japanese elders born between 1920s and 1940s. The elderly born between these periods experienced very rapid social change such as imperialism, political turmoil after liberation, ferocious nation building, wars, diaspora, and rapid economic development. Modern families have developed and transformed in such a vortex of social change. Surveys and interviews were conducted from 2009 to 2001 in Seoul, Korea, and Nagoya, Japan. Several important conceptual changes in the modern family were extracted from the life histories of the Korean and Japanese elders. A mixture of kinship care and modern institutional care, gendered education during childhood, relation with extended and conjugal families, ideas of gender role division, attitudes about inheritance, and family support during adulthood and later life were examined and compared. The survey results combined with interviewees’ recalled memories of family relations highlight the eclectic formation of patriarchal and conjugal families. The ideas of gender role division, attitudes toward child rearing,old age support, and family succession had changed through the course oftheir lives. Nevertheless, patriarchal and conjugal family relations had been enacted and has led to the formation of an overarching ideology of family centeredness within the distinct relations and conflicts between gender and generations, between the authoritarian regime and the resistance of the citizens, and in the collective anxiety about economic developments. This study also emphasized that the eclectic formation of patriarchal and conjugal families has been an important mechanism of de-familial phenomenon in present Japan and Korea. Despite romantic notions about family life and persistent patriarchal influence in social relations and institutions, strict definition of family roles, the increasing gap between expectations about family and real conditions, and the exacerbating conflicts in gender identities suggest that the dominance of the eclectic extension of patriarchal and conjugal families have come to an end.

Where is the Social Economy for community of Japan Going in East Asia?: the Challenges of Japan

Kang Byeong ro | 2017, 6(2) | pp.49~87 | number of Cited : 6

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The Unfolding of the Transnational Adoption Systems of the Three Asian Countries, China, Korea, and Taiwan

Park Jeongjun | 2017, 6(2) | pp.89~118 | number of Cited : 5

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East Asian countries, including South Korea, China, Taiwan are commonly known as “sending countries” for transnational adoption. Many Korean adoptees who had been sent abroad after the Korean War have formed multi-ethnic families where family members do not share common race or culture. The early phase of transnational adoption in Korea was almost similar to being an “exceptional state.” Nonetheless, the placements of the Korean children into foreign families have lasted for more than six decades. China had kicked off its transnational adoption in around the 1990s. Now China has become the principal “sending country,” as how Korea was in the 20th century. The One Child Policy in conjunction with preference for sons are said to be the main reasons why some Chinese parents relinquish their daughters. The transnational adoption in Taiwan is on the increase owing to its weakening economy and lack of social welfare that is designed with the intention of keeping single mothers reinforcing parenthood. Extreme poverty, AIDS pandemic, catastrophic natural disasters and illegal adoption networking are the main reasons for transnational adoption in other “sending countries” in Africa and Latin America, Southeast Asia. In contrast, non-economic factors are the principal reasons of transnational adoption in the East Asian countries. This fact indicates that it is not possible to solve adoption-related problems only by mean of economic development. The East Asian countries face severe aging population issues and the lowest fertility rates as many receiving countries. It is found that these countries try to solve the population crisis by way of helping families from falling apart. Nevertheless, numerous Korean and Taiwanese children, mostly abandoned by single mothers, are brought over from East Asia to be adopted by Western families. Tens of thousands of Chinese girls have been adopted by Western parents. The East Asian countries are boasting economic miracles, the transnational adoption phenomena reveals these countries’ backwardness in social welfare and their dependence on the West. Such social phenomena give rise to collective shame among some East Asians. Transnational adoption has been increasingly criticized in recent years as being unfair to both the adoptees and their birth parents. Adoptees and their birth families, activists make their voices heard recently. This is the very time we should be thinking about the changeover of transnational adoption systems.

The Cultural Contradiction of State Neoliberalism in China

Alvin Y. So , Yin-Wah Chu | 2017, 6(2) | pp.121~142 | number of Cited : 2