South Korean writer Eun Seo-ran was happily single and childless until a medical emergency forced her to start a family to care for her. To do this, she chose an unconventional path: she legally adopted her best friend.
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Ms. Eun, 44, lives far from her biological family, a distance that is both geographical and emotional. But she has a very good friend: Lee Eo-rie. The two own a property together, live together, share the bills and take care of each other in the event of illness. All without having a romantic relationship.
They believed they had no way to formalize the arrangement in conservative South Korea, where same-sex marriages and civil unions are not recognized under common law and the traditional family remains the norm.
When she was hospitalized, Eun Seo-ran realized that she needed someone by her side, not only emotionally but also legally. That this person can visit him in the hospital as a family member and, if necessary, organize his funeral.
Then she found a legal solution: adult adoption.
“The family defined by current law is based on sexual union” and the resulting children, Ms Eun tells AFP. But “I think emotional connections are the most important thing.”
“When I am with a person and feel absolute emotional stability and peace when I think about them, I believe that person could be my family,” she adds.
Choose your family
In South Korea, where the birth rate is the lowest in the world and the number of marriages is falling, more and more people are living alone – and will die.
Single-person households now make up 41% of all households, and this share is expected to continue to rise.
“The narrow legal definition of family in South Korea is partly responsible for this situation,” Hyeyoung Woo, a specialist on South Korean families at the American State University of Portland, told AFP.
Even though there are fewer and fewer marriages (just 3.7 per 1,000 people last year, a record), people still need to have relationships and have them legally recognized, says MP Yong Hye-in.
“We need to address the increasing isolation of single-person households by expanding the options available to them,” she told AFP.
Ms Yong has introduced a bill to expand the legal definition of family. But it faced fierce resistance from the conservative and Christian bloc, which fears a first step toward same-sex marriage.
If this law is passed, “it will destroy the family system and cause significant harm to children,” denounced the Korean Association for Church Communication.
Eun Seo-ran, born into a “normal” nuclear family in South Korea, says she grew up unhappy.
Disturbing lightness
“Having witnessed my mother’s unhappy married life, I feared the same fate if I decided to marry,” she says. “I have chosen and created a new family that I currently live in,” where she feels “comfortable.”
She said the process of adopting her friend was disturbingly simple.
Adoption of a child by an unmarried person is not prohibited by law in South Korea. However, it requires extensive research and is rarely approved by the courts.
But in Ms. Eun’s case, the only conditions were that she had to be older than Ms. Lee, that the latter was not her biological daughter, and that her parents agreed to this. After a single form, the adoption was approved within 24 hours.
The process was so rushed that Ms Eun admits she is depressed when she thinks of all those fighting for recognition of their non-traditional unions in the country.
“A family is a bond through which people, regardless of gender and age, trust and count on each other,” she says, hoping for a change in the law one day.