Journey Unites Engineer's Adopted

Children With Korean Homeland

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (12/21/98) -- Wayne Sloan, a project engineer in The Aerospace Corporation's Satellite Control and Spacelift Range Division, his wife, Terree, and their four adopted Korean children have recently returned from a week in South Korea where they were guests of the Korean government's first lady, Lee Hee Ho.

It was their second meeting with the first lady. The first was at a luncheon last year at the Beverly Wilshire, where Lee met with some 40 Americans who had adopted Korean children.

"It has became a cause for Mrs. Lee to show her own people how Americans have adopted Korean children and become happy family units," said Sloan. "It was and is her goal to have her people step up to their responsibilities when it comes to orphaned children.

Family Oriented Culture

"The Korean culture is tremendously family oriented," he continued. "Several generations may live together in the same home. They look toward their own family unit; they do not seek outsiders." That includes orphans. Sloan said that children from Korean mothers and American servicemen are shunned and abandoned.

At the luncheon last year a small Korean boy who walked with mechanical prostheses for legs approached Lee's table and said he would like to visit her country. Although unsure of how she would arrange for the trip, she promised him a visit.

A Promise Kept

Through the generosity of Asian airlines, hotels, and Korean corporations, 11 Korean-American families traveled to South Korea at the end of November and met the first lady in South Korea's "Blue House" for lunch. They were immersed in the culture and customs of South Korea, visiting universities, going to shopping markets, eating traditional Korean food.

Through it all the Sloans received intense media coverage. The first lady was determined to let South Koreans know about the warmth with which others had embraced Korea's children.

The Sloans adopted their first two children, Karen and Julie, at ages 4 and 6 in 1985. The girls had been abandoned at a Korean orphanage. The next two, Michael, 4, and David, 3, were adopted in 1987. The children had been dropped off, left in the street in front of a store.

Terree had raised four children in a previous marriage, and Wayne had never had children. Because the Sloans were in their early forties they were on the bottom of the list to adopt Caucasian children, and adoption agencies in Los Angeles would not allow them to adopt children of another race.

The Sloans, ready for a family, went elsewhere. Terree remembered an agency in Oregon from her college days, the Holt International Children's Organization, which had an office in Lakewood. The Sloans proceeded with the adoption process.

"Most folks don't want to adopt two at a time," said Sloan. "However, we were willing to take both girls. They didn't speak English, and we didn't speak Korean. It was the same with the boys.

Typical Teens

"But it's all worked out. All four are typical American teenagers. Karen is a freshman at El Camino

Community College, and the rest of them are in school at Palos Verdes High."

The Sloan's trip was extended four days by the first lady. They contacted a Korean friend and toured South Korea with him and his family. The Korean children, not knowing a word of English, and the Sloan children, not knowing Korean, toured and shopped together, communicating as only children can.

"We had a wonderful time," said Sloan. "We were treated with respect and admiration. Every place we went in South Korea, it was the same. It was the trip of a lifetime."