Why South Korea?

One of the questions we've been asked quite a few times is How did you choose Korea?, so I thought I would share a bit (or a lot perhaps) about what drew us to Korea.

First, I want to emphasize that there are many wonderful countries from which to adopt. Korea is in no way the best country for international adoption. It simply fit what we were looking for. We know people who have adopted from other countries, and they had great experiences with their adoption processes.

•  One of the biggest factors the led us to Korea is the relatively short (and predictable) wait time for a child. As we shared a couple of weeks ago, Lifelink is currently estimating a wait of 12 months for referral, and then we'll travel 3-6 months later to pick up our child. That makes a total wait from application to referral of 15-18 months, which is fairly short in the world of international adoption.
• Another major factor for us in choosing Korea is the stability of the program. Korea is the oldest international adoption program in the United States, and the Korean government is very stable. This means we are less likely to have unexpected problems/delays during the adoption process. (Although there are no guarantees in international adoption.)
• Almost all of the children available for adoption in Korea are infants. This works out great for us -- since this will be our first child, we have a strong preference to adopt a child as young as possible. (As a side note, our child will be about 9-12 months old when we bring him home. This is due to the fact that Korean babies must be available for adoption in Korea for five months before they are available for international adoption, then the post-referral paperwork will take another 3-6 months.)
• I think everyone knows that international adoption isn't cheap. However, Korea is one of the less expensive countries from which to adopt. Money wasn't our primary consideration in choosing a country, but it did factor into our decision.
• The fact that an adoption from Korea costs less than from many other countries is largely due to the fact that Korea doesn't require that adoptive parents stay in country for an extended period of time as some other countries do. We will travel to Korea only once for about a week when we pick up our child. Some other countries require multiple trips and/or a several week stay in country. While we are very excited to travel to Korea, we're thankful that we won't need to be away from home for several weeks and that we'll be able to use most of our parental leave to enjoy time with our child at home, instead of spending that time visiting him in an orphanage.
• In researching countries and agencies, we found an agency with an office close to our home and a great program with Korea. With further research (which largely involved reading blogs), we found that clients of Lifelink overall seemed to be very pleased with the agency.

Some of these things carried more weight than others in our decision, but none of them was an absolute requirement for us. We choose Korea because it seemed to be the most in line with the things that are important to us.

Like I said, there are many wonderful adoption programs in other countries as well (including the United States). Korea was just the program that best fit our lives right now.

I plan to do more posts over the upcoming weeks to answer questions about adoption, Korea, and other topics. Future topics include --

• How much does international adoption cost and why is it so expensive?
  
• Why are their children available for adoption in a developed, wealthy nation like South Korea?
• Why are there more boys available than girls?

I have some other ideas in the back of my mind as well. If you have something you're wondering about, leave a comment or email me, and I'll try to answer your question.