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Finding American Nationality for Adoptees III Conference Review and Report (March 2025)

KOWIN Pacific LA, jointly hosted by the Korean American Voters Association (KAGC), March 15, 2025

Sponsored by Chosun Ilbo LA, THE ONE BOAT COALITION, LA Consulate General, The Korea Times, etc. 

Call for institutional solution at Koreatown Conference.

Consul General Kim Young-hwan, Dave Min, Choi Seok-ho, and Rep. Paul Seo also attended and expressed great interest.

The third conference, ‘Finding American Nationality for Adoptees,’ co-hosted by the Korean American Women’s Network (KOWIN) Pacific LA Branch (Chairman Carney Baek) and the Korean American Grassroots Conference (CEO Kim Dong-seok) was successfully held on the 15th at the Banquet Hall on the 5th floor of the Aroma Center in LA Koreatown with about 140 people in attendance. 

This event was sponsored by Chosun Ilbo LA, LA Consulate General, THE ONE BOAT COALITION (CEO Jang Seong-gwan), Overseas Koreans’ Office, Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, World Korean Women’s Foundation, MPAK, The Korea Times, etc. At the pre-conference pre-ceremony performance, Lee Bo-kyung’s gayageum performance received a great response from attendees. The event was hosted in Korean and English by Radio Korea’s Hyunjoo Lee and Irvine City Counselor Melinda Liu Bojagwan and Yvette Kim. 

Although the Korean community is currently conducting an ongoing campaign to encourage the passage of a federal bill that would grant citizenship to the more than 18,000 Korean-born adoptees who do not have U.S. citizenship, the related bills that have been proposed so far have not been enacted into law. As if to reflect this, the conference was conducted with ‘simultaneous interpretation’ in English and Korean. On this day, Chairman Connie Paik, Chairman Hye-sim Lee, Director-General of the US-Western Department Gye-joo Lee, Consul General in LA Kim Young-wan, California Senator Seok-ho Choi, and Congressman Dave Min gave congratulatory remarks, and Congressman Young Kim showed great interest by sending a congratulatory message via video. In particular, the Office of Overseas Koreans created a questionnaire and asked attendees for their opinions. 

Currently, in Korea, People Power Party Rep. Kim Mi-ae is known to be actively helping adoptees, and plans to formally put this issue on the agenda of the Korea-US summit and request the passage of a bill for adoptees who were unable to obtain citizenship due to the lack of relevant laws in the early stages of overseas adoption.

On this day, Kim Dong-seok, representative of the Korean American Grossroots Conference, who gave a presentation on ‘Session 1: Efforts to enact adoptive citizenship legislation and future tasks’, said, “Regardless of the possibility of legislation, the Korean community must step forward,” and added, “We need to lobby federal lawmakers, but the participation rate of Korean Americans is too low.” In addition, Jang Seong-kwan, CEO of ‘THE ONE BOAT COALITION’ (political consultant), also gave an example, saying, “As of the last session, the actual number of cases that were enacted was about 1%, and even before that, the average was less than 3%.” He also said, “As the key is to ensure that Republican and Democratic lawmakers strike a balance when proposing a bill, regions such as LA, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, and Hawaii, where the Korean community is active, must move actively.”

In particular, in Session 2, ‘Introduction to group activities and individual cases for relief of adoptees without citizenship’, Emily Warnecke and Judy Van Arsdale, who were adopted by U.S. citizen parents as children but are still experiencing difficulties due to lack of legislation, gave vivid testimony, and Dr. Amanda Cho vividly conveyed the current situation. 

Meanwhile, the United States began accepting adoptions from overseas in 1958, and in 1983, a law was enacted requiring people to go through the process of acquiring nationality after adopting in the United States. However, since 2001, citizenship has been automatically granted only to overseas adoptees under the age of 18, so improvement is urgently needed.

Sponsors: Chosun Ilbo LA, LA Consulate General, THE ONE BOAT COALITION, Overseas Koreans’ Office, Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, World Korean Women’s Foundation, MPAK, The Korea Times, etc.

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