Adopting from South Korea

Here is the second installment of guest posts on my blog. I would like to thank Amy, from the blog A Quiet Heart, for doing a guest post on the decision to adopt from South Korea. Amy, thanks so much for taking the time to write this. :-D

Hello to all of Leah's readers!! I'm so excited to tell you a little about our adoption decision. We have spent the last year and a half contemplating adoption. It's always been something we thought we would like to do and after journeying through infertility since 2005 we finally (in October) just took a step of faith and decided to go ahead with it. We are thrilled to be in the beginning stages of adopting from South Korea.

One of the first questions we've heard from everyone who hears our news is: Why Korea? Well, we researched a lot of different countries and Korea just had a lot of qualities that we liked and felt like a good fit for us. The main reason was definitely that the majority of the children are in foster homes and not orphanages. We love the idea that our child will have already experienced a loving home and family. We feel this will make a difference in our child's adjustment to us and his/her development.

Secondly, Korea has a very good reputation in the international adoption world and is known for its consistency over the years. It also has a relatively shorter wait time than some countries. Another aspect we liked was that the travel is only a one-time trip of 4-7 days. You also have the choice to have your child escorted to the U.S., but we really want to take the trip to be united with our child, meet his/her foster family, and see Korea. We have chosen to adopt a special needs child and Korea seems to have excellent medical care and will give us a detailed medical history of our child.

Just like Emily said in her post about Ethiopia, I have always visualized us adopting an Asian child. I really don't know why but whenever we would talk about it I just somehow knew that our child would be Asian. I think adoption has been in our hearts even longer than either of us realized. It's been a huge step (and still is!) but we have no doubt that we are doing exactly what we should and that this is God's perfect plan for us!