Abstract

AbstractThis paper seeks to investigate the influence of Cold War American religiosity on overseas adoption from South Korea from 1953 to 1961. Using primary sources from International Social Service – American Branch records in the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, and secondary sources pertaining to the construction of Cold War American religiosity in 1950s America and the forced prostitution of Korean women by the U.S. and Korean governments, I argue that the Christianizing of overseas adoption from South Korea really worked in antithetical ways as it politicized the orphan and abandoned the birth mother – especially those who were prostituted by the two governments. Thus, America exercised a self-proclaimed manifestation of divine intervention, choosing whom among the destitute would be saved and who would be abandoned.