Child abandonment is one of the best-kept secrets of South Korea, the world’s tenth largest economy. To avoid the risk of finding a newborn dead from cold, a pastor in Seoul has devised an astonishing device: a “baby box” which allows him to be kept safe while preserving the anonymity of the mother, if she wish. Since the beginning of the year, his “baby box” has collected around thirty infants.
In a street in Seoul, a brick wall bears a surprising device: a baby box. Mothers who cannot keep their child come, often at nightfall, to lay him on the small mattress placed in a kind of secure niche, kept at a constant temperature. On the other side of the wall is a refuge where the newborns will spend a week. S‘they have not been declared, they will then be transferred to an orphanage… under police escort.
When a mother deposits her infant, thanks to a motion sensor installed next to the box, an alarm is triggered inside the building. An employee of the Babybox center then comes to pick up the baby, while another sets off on the mother’s footsteps, to try to obtain her contact details. And explain to her that she has the right to support and help from the government if she declares the child… Women are not always convinced. Because in South Korea, being a single mother is considered a shame, while contraception is difficult to access and abortion was still criminalized two years ago… Here, the legislation does not provide for childbirth under X and punishes child abandonment. An insoluble equation for Korean women.
In fifteen years, the shelter would have welcomed 2,000 infants
The last occupant of this “baby box” was dropped off by her mother who came from a remote area of Seoul, and did not want to leave any information about her. At the time of this shoot, the center was home to three infants, all of whom arrived that way. A baby would be deposited in this box every three days, on average, since the creation in 2007 of this refuge for abandoned children, unique in the country. In fifteen years, he would have taken in 2,000 infants. Its creator, Lee Jong-rak, is an evangelical pastor. After several times finding newborn babies abandoned in a parking lot, in a park or in a telephone booth, he wanted “be sure never to find an infant frozen to death”.
Next to their baby, young mothers sometimes leave a letter. Over the years, the pastor has compiled dozens of them. They are often written by teenagers who have given birth alone, sometimes in public toilets. “I don’t let you go because I hate you, or because I don’t like you, but because I’m a bad mother, unable to give you enough love, writes one of them. I will never try to find you. Grow up without thinking of me, with someone better than me.” This letter, and sometimes a few presents left in the “baby box”, will remain memories of the child’s biological mother.
Excerpt from “In the land of abandoned children”, a broadcast report in “Special Envoy” on June 1, 2023.
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