[Paytonsmom]

We have been talking primarily about China thus far, but thought I'd pop around and see what peoples experiences were like from other countries. I've seen several mentions of no longer getting new referrals from Korea? Are they not doing international adoption at the moment?

If they are, is it possible to adopt an older (2-3yo) girl from korea? I've seen what looks like mostly infants being adopted. Our dd will be 5 in Oct so we'd like to have a little sister for her, a few years younger. From sig lines it looks like the process is much quicker than in China, or maybe it's just a few lucky people? Appreciate any advice.

[mmcool]

From what I've heard, Korea is working to encourage more domestic adoption. They are gradually reducing the number of children who are adopted internationally. We have not yet received the travel call about our daughter, but so far, it has been 6 months since our initial visit with our SW. We received our referral 2.5 months ago. We had been told a travel of Nov/Dec at the referral, so we will have to wait and see what happens.

I do not know how it would go to adopt an older child since ours is 9 months old right now.

Good luck!

Melissa

[dmrjcr]

I believe any older child would have to go through the Waiting Child program. An agency may be able to help you further with that.

[mdaisyq]

I have heard that Korea prefers to not place children 3 and older for international adoption. I have heard that the reasoning is that once a child has learned to understand and speak Korean, they should not be placed in a non-Korean speaking home.

It is very rare to see children in the 2-3 age range available for adoption from Korea - they would only be listed as a waiting child. Our agency recently had a boy aged 4 on their waiting children list and I was stunned.

There are a number of waiting children from China in this age group and many of them have minor special needs. However, because of the lengthening wait times for a referral of a NSN children from China, many families are now looking to adopt waiting children and there have been a number of occassions where "competition" has arisen between families wishing to adopt young girls with minor special needs, though this has mostly occurred with girls aged 1-2.

Good luck with your decision.