Leiden University Student Repository

Bagci, Simge (2024)

Framing the Korean Adoptee: Commodifying the Korean Adoptee through Child Portraits and American Rescue Stories: A visual and discourse analysis on the conveyed narratives between child portraits and American rescue stories in promotional materials used in the transnational adoption industry from South Korea to the United States between 1953 until 2024.

Bachelor thesis | Koreastudies (BA)

This thesis focuses on how visual and descriptive promotional materials between 1953 and the present have impacted the commodification of the Korean adoptee. Through a mixed-method approach, 8 promotional materials are being analyzed using a coding system. The analysis results in a set of 27 individual codings, which are cross-examined to find reoccurring patterns in the materials. The results indicate that the promotional materials used the social and economic hardships faced by the Korean adoptee to write a rescue narrative that called the American prospective parents to adoption. The study’s limitation includes the limited access to promotional material and its sensitivity to bias since the results derive from personal interpretation. Recommendations for future research include a bigger data set to analyze and more evidence-based research to back up the personal interpretations.

Korean adoption, commodification, transnational adoption, child images, rescue-narrative.

Author

Bagci, Simge

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

koreastudies

Supervisors

Tilland, B.R.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en