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HONG KONG - A DUTCH diplomat and his wife have given up a seven-year-old Korean girl they had adopted when she was just four months old.
They said they had failed to integrate her into their family, consulate officials in Hong Kong said yesterday.
The couple, whose names were not released, made the move in the last few months, seven years after they adopted her when the diplomat was working in South Korea, a South Korean consulate spokesman said.
'They now have their own children. They decided it was difficult to raise her because of cultural shock. They said she's not willing to eat their food. That's one of the reasons. It's a strange reason,' said the spokesman, who did not want to be named.
'She was raised from a very early age. It's a very uncommon case. It's a difficult situation for us to understand.'
The diplomat told the Sunday Morning Post that the adoption had gone wrong and that his family was trying 'hard to deal with it'. His wife was seeking therapy following the decision to give up the child, reported the Post.
'It's just a very terrible trauma that everyone's experiencing,' he was quoted as saying by the newspaper. 'I don't have anything to say to the public. It is something we have to live with.'
He declined to say whether the family was in touch with the child, who is now in foster care with an expatriate family, said the Post.
Yesterday, South Korea's JoongAng Daily said the diplomat's wife thought she was infertile when the couple adopted the Korean girl in 2000, but she gave birth to two children after moving to Hong Kong.
The girl, whom JoongAng identified as Jade, can speak English and Cantonese, but not Korean.
The South Korean consulate had been flooded with offers of help, the Post said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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