A.S.I.A vs Pearl S. Buck....any opinions for Korean adoptions

I see your post was in January. Have you had any luck? We are doing the same - except we have just begun. We live in Virginia Beach and want to adopt Korean. I am struggling with finding out the different requirements for the different agencies and different states.

hi there!! we have officially started with the process in Feb. The biggest choice we had was the agency to pick. We decided to go with A.S.I.A. because a friend of ours had a friend that adopted twice from them and had a good experience. We also like the idea that they are based in Washington. And the agency has an escort that brings the child to Washington Dulles Airport. Once you decide on the agency and meet with the coordinator, then you have to fill in a big ole pile of paperwork, send a application to INS for permission to bring the child into the US and send your packet of paperwork back to your coordinator. This includes financial papers, references, birth certificates, an autobiography written by each of you, pictures, driver records, basically your whole life story stuffed into a little yellow envelope. She then sends it to a social worker in your area that they work with and then go get to go through your home study. Thats where we are at now, we just met with our social worker, who was really nice. The interview was informal and basically shes trying to get an idea of what kind of people we are. Next is the individual interviews where she interviews us separately and then checks out our house to make sure we have all the requirements like fire extinguishers and detectors, etc. Then with the INS we have to get fingerprinted, which will be easy for you because its out in Norfolk. And send in another form with the homestudy. After all that is done, then the waiting starts. Once we get our referral then it takes a couple of months for the paperwork to be finalized over in Korea and then the baby comes over. The friends of our friend, said they had started the process in Jan. with each one they adopted and by the following July/August they were meeting their baby. The only thing that we were told by the coordinator is that we need to call often and check on the status of our paperwork and make sure they received the packages and all that. I guess they have issues with the mail service. Probably because they work out of a back side of a church and things can get mixed up. Who knows! Anywho, we wish you lots of luck!! Email me if any questions on anything! Dot :)

Hi again, I forgot about the requirements... Korean adoption seems to have the strictest rules on adoption, From what we found out, neither of you can be no older than 44. Only one divorce each. They did ask if we were within our weight range for our height, I guess they (Korea) won't except your application if you are more than 30% overweight, which actually is quite abit. They won't let you pick the sex anymore, you use to be able to pick if you have other children in the house, but now they told us that it is whichever is available. You can put a preference down, but it may not be what is referred. I guess it has become more prominent for boys to be available than girls. It has something to do with the birth registry that Korea has when the baby is born. A girl baby can be adopted by a Korean family and placed on their registry and when she gets married she is then moved over to the husband's family registry. But a boy can't be added to a family registry because something about the pure bloodline. We were very surprised about that. I can't think of any other requirements now, if you call the agency and talk with Ginny, that is our coordinator she'll send you a packet full of information and the requirements are listed in that. Wish you luck!! Hope this was helpful :) dot

Hi I'm from Virginia Beach too. We are adopting from the Philippines. Our agency is Catholic Charities of Baltimore