On January 22, 2020, GWIKS held a Soh Jaipil Lecture Series with Dr. Sunhye Kim, Assistant Research Professor of International Affairs and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Korean Studies at GW, on “‘Baby Miles’”: Reproductive Rights, Labor, and Ethics in the Transnational Korean Reproductive Technology Industry.” Moderated by Professor Jisoo M. Kim, Director of the Institute for Korean Studies at GW, Dr.Kim started her lecture by introducing the term ‘baby miles,’ which means the total miles that over which a baby is given birth during the journey in Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Industry. Referring to ‘food miles,’ distance food is transported from the time of its making until it reaches the consumer, the term ‘baby miles’ was originated in 1978 when the test-tube baby was given birth, she explained. For example, she showed how it took 64,728 miles between South Korea and Ukraine to have a baby from the initial stage of recruiting a gestational surrogate to the final stage of picking up a baby. She then presented a few examples of markets in the ART industry, including the sperm market, gestational surrogacy market, egg market, and medical tourism agencies.
Dr. Kim went on to describe research methods of her multi-sited ethnographic project to examine the transnational circuits of the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry in South Korea to demonstrate how the concepts of reproductive rights and labor have been contested, negotiated, and reconstructed by various actors—including infertile couples, gamete donors, gestational surrogates, state agents, and medical professionals—across national boundaries. She showed the history of reproductive technology in Korea and how reproductive technology was considered as moral concerns of human cloning, rather than social problems. It was only after 2005 that South Korea changed from anti-natalist policy pro-natalist policy as the delayed marriage became the social problem, and viewed infertility issue as a family issue rather than an individual woman’s fault and ART as a hope technology rather than dangerous technology.
In addition, Dr. Kim emphasized that the reasons why Korean intended parents choose to have a baby through the ART are not only because of the cost and regulation, but also the confidentiality. She then discussed the preference of Korean intended parents who prefer Korean donors to donors from other East Asian countries, to ones from Southeast Asian countries and to ones from the western countries, based on her interviews with an intended mother, a broker, and an IVF doctor.
Lastly, Dr. Kim moved on to the discussion of reproductive labor. She suggested that a surrogate is a reproductive labor as a gestational carrier and an intended mother is a reproductive labor as an eggs producer because they have to work closely in the process. Also, she talked about the division of paid mothers, gestational surrogates, and unpaid mothers, intended mothers, and introduced the ‘local baby’ movement which bans on transnational surrogacy for foreigners.
