Return of the Sibaji?:Rethinking the Issue of Surrogacy in Contemporary South Korea

Return of the Sibaji?:Rethinking the Issue of Surrogacy in Contemporary South Korea

This paper explores the ways in which surrogacy in South Korea, by contrast to sibaji, is legitimized as a technological remedy to medical conditions and how it has expanded geographically and conceptually in the transnationalizing world. Recently, many anthropological studies on surrogacy have inquired into the ways in which the concept of “nature” and “motherhood” are negotiated in the “artificial” process of assisted reproduction, mainly in the cases of IVF surrogacy. Yet, the South Korean history of surrogacy illustrates what has given rise to natural surrogacy is actually the practice of IVF surrogacy. It was the technology of IVF used for gestational surrogacy that managed to categorically separate the modern practices of surrogacy from sibaji, its dangerously close Other. But, seen in the contemporary transnationalizing world of South Korea, sibaji, rather than quietly disappearing from the stage, seems to constantly remind us of our proximity to it, and of the permeability of the technological barriers conceptually separating IVF surrogacy from natural surrogacy.

This paper explores the ways in which surrogacy in South Korea, by contrast to sibaji, is legitimized as a technological remedy to medical conditions and how it has expanded geographically and conceptually in the transnationalizing world. Recently, many anthropological studies on surrogacy have inquired into the ways in which the concept of “nature” and “motherhood” are negotiated in the “artificial” process of assisted reproduction, mainly in the cases of IVF surrogacy. Yet, the South Korean history of surrogacy illustrates what has given rise to natural surrogacy is actually the practice of IVF surrogacy. It was the technology of IVF used for gestational surrogacy that managed to categorically separate the modern practices of surrogacy from sibaji, its dangerously close Other. But, seen in the contemporary transnationalizing world of South Korea, sibaji, rather than quietly disappearing from the stage, seems to constantly remind us of our proximity to it, and of the permeability of the technological barriers conceptually separating IVF surrogacy from natural surrogacy.