As adoptees, many of us have had to create our own joy. We have to work at joy because it doesn’t come naturally to us. We are too busy worrying about fitting in or where we came from or even who we are. When asked what brings me joy, it’s changed throughout the years. As we grow, so do our needs and wants. When I was younger, I thought having a boyfriend would bring me joy. All I wanted was a boy to fall madly in love with me. I’d wish upon a star every night: Wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight…the wish was always a boyfriend. And then, I got one. And surprise, that which can bring great joy can also bring great sadness. When I was young, I took ballet lessons. I felt free on the dance floor and expressed my emotions through movement. I was good at it. I didn’t have to think; I could just be. In college, I taught ballroom dancing as a side gig. When I turned 18, we went to a club called The Industry in Pontiac, Michigan. I spent hours dancing at that club, drinking flaming Blue Ferraris, watching the flame disappear as it was sucked up my straw. Then, turning to help my girl, Virgie, when she instructed, “Hold my braids,” as she sipped the drink of fire. As an adult, I try to dance, but who has the time or the money? Adult ballet classes are expensive. I’d love to go to the club, but I’m nervous I’ll end up on someone’s TikTok with the #MOMDANCE. And, to be honest, I don’t want to dance to current music. I want to dance to the music of the '80s and '90s. I want to be transported through time and space to when I ate whatever I wanted and didn’t worry about my pre-diabetes and high blood pressure. But, this dancing queen now comes with strings attached. When I was younger, nothing excited me more than succeeding. I was always ready for a competition. Be it a spelling bee or a trivia contest, I would study to win. Just like Ricki Bobby said, “If you’re not first, you’re last.” I possessed a desire to prove that I could do something great, that I was worthy of praise. Outward recognition was important to me and built what little self-esteem I had. I didn’t ask for the role of people pleaser, but I wore it well. I was always chasing happiness, always trying to get to the greener grass on the other side. Happiness was elusive. It would materialize in front of me for a hot second and just when I thought I had achieved it, it would fade away slowly, like Homer Simpson into the bushes. It wasn’t until I was older, I realized I was constantly trying to make myself happy with outward possessions like food, money, and external approvals. These things never filled the hole I felt inside. An old episode of "Oprah" had a guest speaker, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach from his talk show on TLC called "Shalom in the Home." He shared how one can never find peace until they learn to fill the hole in their soul from the inside. External material possessions will temporarily fill the hole, but it won’t last. The hole returns and the person feels empty again. Only by finding inner peace can one fill the void permanently. I think everyone has a hole in their soul. Everyone has loss and feelings of insecurity. For the adoptee, we have our own baggage and our own hole carved out by abandonment, isolation, and feelings of inadequacy. Growing up not looking like anyone in your family can create a feeling of loneliness and isolation—that idea that you can feel alone in a crowded room. Some adoptees have trouble accepting that they were abandoned, while some find their birth family but are denied a relationship, being abandoned twice. We spend years trying to fill the empty hole from the outside. It’s been a long road to get to this point in my life where I don’t feel the dull ache of yearning and uneasiness. I find joy in my relationship with my husband. Our marriage hasn’t been perfect, but I’m proud of where we’ve been and where we are now. I feel loved and accepted for who I am and feel lucky to have a partner in life. I love to dance and still find moments at live concerts to dance in the aisles and feel the joy of my youth surrounded by people my age, doing the exact same thing. And while I’m still a bit competitive, I’ve learned the value of supporting others and experiencing joy through success as a team. I don’t have to be the best, nor do I see it as a realistic goal. I am fine with my imperfect self and do the best that I can with what I’ve got. There are still those moments I stumble, moments I don’t think I’m being a very good sister, or mother, or wife. But I’ve learned to give myself a little grace. Adoption isn’t the perfect answer to someone’s infertility or failing marriage, in fact we come with more questions than we do answers. We are not a quick fix to a couple’s issues. We have our own issues to battle through. But, finding joy is possible through thoughtful introspection and years of therapy. I can continue to fill the hole in my soul from the inside.

What are you willing to do for love? Roma is stunned by Marshall’s death, and he is out for revenge. Juliette will not spill any secrets in order to protect the people she cares about most. A new monster now threatens the city and Roma and Juliette must again team up to try and save Shanghai. I had really enjoyed Chloe Gong’s retelling of Romeo and Juliet in "These Violent Delights" and was very excited to see how she would continue their story in "Our Violent Ends." This book did not disappoint. I actually enjoyed it more than the first because the characters were well-established and we could jump right into the drama and action. I didn’t pick this up immediately after finishing its predecessor, but as I reflected on both, I found "Our Violent Ends" to have more adventure throughout. This was a fast-paced book that kept me turning the pages. There was a lot to follow, and I did have to re-read some parts to take mental notes of everything going on ensuring I didn’t get lost in the story. I went into "Our Violent Ends" reminding myself that I think this duology is more sci-fi than fantasy. Knowing that made it more enjoyable. Even with monsters and traitors, I was more invested in Roma and Juliette and how they would end up saving Shanghai. The sci-fi elements added suspense and a common enemy, but it wasn’t my main focus for this book. While Roma and Juliette are still fiercely independent characters, we finally get to have some romance! I was wondering how their relationship would develop since this was such a unique and creative retelling. I was pleasantly surprised with their relationship development and felt there was enough tension and build-up to make their love story satisfactory. Like with "Our Violent Delights," I was very impressed with this book. As an extension of a retelling, I had no expectations for where the story would go. I loved how Gong remained true to the Romeo and Juliet plot while making the characters more complex and relatable. Overall, this was a fantastic end to a thrilling story. It offered representation in classical literature that I hadn’t had before and showed how with a little imagination, characters could have many more layers of depth to them than previously written.

Angela Wu is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Empowerment Coach who is passionate about de-stigmatizing mental health in the AAPI community as well as helping women of color reclaim and raise their voices in order to embody their empowered authentic selves! In her therapy practice, she helps individuals find healing from trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, as well as navigate acculturation and intergenerational issues, difficult life transitions, and relationship issues. Her approach to therapy is strength-based and anti-oppression. In her coaching practice, she helps Asian women break barriers that keep them feeling stuck, find and strengthen their voices, and reclaim their empowered selves in order to take up space and combat the harmful narratives that subjugate Asian women. She has developed a group coaching program called “Take Up Space” to help individuals unpack their Asian experience in order to better align with their cultural identities. She also provides speaking engagements and leads training to spread awareness around AAPI mental health issues. Angela Wu was a former high school teacher (Teach for America 2012 Corps member) and taught in Title 1 high schools in Miami and San Francisco. She received her Master’s of Science in Education and Social Change from the University of Miami. It was through witnessing her students struggle with toxic stress and racial trauma caused by structural inequities that led her to pursue a degree in counseling at Fuller Theological Seminary School of Psychology. Her passion for working with culturally diverse and underserved communities with various mental health needs led her to work at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health Agency. With the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, she has seen the need to be a resource for the Asian community. This led her to start her own therapy and coaching practice. As a 1.5 generation Taiwanese immigrant, Wu has experienced first-hand the challenges that come with acculturation stress—racial trauma, burdens of being the cultural broker, code-switching, navigating between two worlds but belonging in neither, the model minority myth, imposter syndrome, intergenerational trauma, immigration issues, identity formation, internalized racism, etc. As an Asian American woman, she has experienced and fought against the fetishization of Asian women and combatted the expectation that Asian women are to “be seen and not heard.” By raising her voice to educate on issues that minorities face, Wu advocates for myself, her community, and marginalized groups. In her own journey of healing, she was able to reclaim parts of herself that had been lost, rejected, and stolen. She has challenged barriers that held her hostage, and Wu has used her voice to find liberation. She has learned to unlearn dysfunctional familial patterns and has broken generational cycles. She is able to occupy a liminal space, an intentional space of belonging and of not fully belonging, in order to be someone who connects to all of humanity. Wu believes that deep suffering can lead to profound healing if encountered with the right tools, space, and people. Her own experience of liberation and healing motivates her to help others find that for themselves! You can find Angela here: Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn

Reposted from Ildaro.com Introduction: As someone who became a migrant through intercountry adoption, Kristin Pak has a unique perspective into the dominant American culture and its prejudices against migrants. As someone who has re-migrated back to Korea sans the privilege native language fluency, she is also a part of the migrant community in Korea. Continuing work that started in New York, she is attuned to the struggles of migrants and advocates and organizes for more human rights in Korea as she did in the U.S. In 2005 a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin introduced a bill that would make assisting “illegal” immigrants a crime. The introduction of the bill triggered massive demonstrations and determination in the immigrant communities in the U.S. to declare our right to dignity and basic human rights. We also came together to fight against the blatant xenophobia and racism that the bill enshrined. That year I was working at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in Manhattan, telling visitors about the Jewish, Italian, Irish, and German families who had immigrated to what was a vibrant Chinatown in the mid 2000s. The museum also offered tours of the neighborhood where we pointed out the Fujianese streets in contrast with the Cantonese and Vietnamese businesses that were more common. Another stop on the walking tour was the Chino-Latino bodega, because right around the museum was where the Puerto Rican Loisaida and Chinatown met the dwindling Little Italy. As museum educators, we talked about New York City being the most densely populated square miles in the world during the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the guides were also immigrants from Colombia, China, Cuba, Jamaica, and me, the Korean. I was active in an organization called young Korean American Network then. Simultaneously I volunteered for Also-Known-As which is a post-adoption services organization. Also-Known-As’s constituency included families who had adopted children from China, Korea, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, and other countries, but our adult members were nearly all Korean. The two organizations often collaborated and yKAN usually had a representative proportion of people involved who were adopted from Korea, in addition to the more typical members who had immigrated with their families, or were born to immigrants. yKAN is also how I joined a poongmulpae (Korean drumming group) at New York University. In 2003, we celebrated Seollal (Korean New Year) by hiring a drummer who played sulchanggo and spun a sangmo. 2003 was also the year of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The winter before the invasion there were massive demonstrations against the war in Washington, D.C. I went down to the National Mall and watched a poongmulpae marching in the freezing cold, and I loved the loud metallic music. When I saw the drummer playing later that winter, I asked him where I could learn to play. He directed me to NYU and I joined them in February. The drummer showed up again at the annual concert where the group, NYURI, plays outdoors in Washington Square Park. He played the modeum buk, and later during dwitpuri I found out he was an international student from Korea, who had been involved in the student movement in the 1980s. By January of the following year we were married. I also started to disengage from yKAN and Also-Known-As. The organizations had started to feel too out of line with my politics. The Korean American community is overwhelmingly Christian and very conservative. I found that I prefered to surround myself instead with more “radical” peace activists, community organizations, and left-leaning Koreans who critiqued the capitalist American Dream. Some brought their activist culture with them from Korea, and critiqued the capitalism that the white-collar professionals of yKAN and Also-Known-As adored and embodied. That also set me apart from most of the active AKA members, who were overwhelmingly adopted into upper- and middle-class families. I had been adopted by a factory worker and a retail store clerk, neither of whom went to college. We lived in a poor city where about 75 percent of the kids in my schools were on federal school meal programs. Unlike most of the people I met who were adopted from Korea in subsequent years (and excluding the New Yorkers, of course) my city was not majority white. I just did not relate to their experiences of growing up in white suburbia. My neighborhood was white, but English was only dominant as the lingua franca. Walking from my house to my best friends’ houses, I heard Polish, Canadian French, Albanian, Italian, and Portuguese. The walk took about ten minutes, tops. In other parts of the city there were parishes that said mass in Puerto Rican Spanish and Lebanese and there was a sizable Jamaican community as well. All the immigrants were attracted to the city in Connecticut by the brass factories that gave it its nickname, the Brass City. In September, the first day of school brought back classmates who had been sent back to their parents’ countries to stay with their grandparents over the summer vacation. Their identities were firmly rooted in the Caribbean and Europe. A few students, who didn’t go back, were from Vietnam. I talked with them in the cafeteria as we waited on line for French bread pizza (Friday in such a Catholic city meant a meatless option was still served long after Vatican II). There weren’t many students from Asia in my school, just a few Vietnamese kids, some Filipinos, and as far as I knew, four Koreans. I sometimes hung out with the boy whose Korean mom got really excited when she met me, but generally only had short lunchroom talks with the Vietnamese girls. One of them and I became acquainted and got me a job working at the factory alongside several non-English speaking workers and suddenly my Spanish and Portuguese (I took Portuguese all four years in high school) got a lot better. Where, in high school, a lot of racial tension meant that the white, Black, and Latin students self-segregated, in the factory we had no choice but to work side by side on the line. I went to university for a few years in Washington, D.C. until my adoptive father died. During those years, I found out about a B.A./M.A. program in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). If I took five classes while I was an undergraduate, I would need just a few more after graduation to get a master’s degree. In the meantime, I would earn a TESOL certificate. The Tenement Museum piloted a program for English language learners to discuss their lives as immigrants in the historically immigrant neighborhood. Although I had been trained in English teaching methods, identified strongly as an immigrant, as I discussed this with a co-worker, she told me about an opening at the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens teaching an accent reduction class to priests at the Office of Migration. Still nominally Catholic then, I became a favorite teacher for the priests from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. I used this experience on my resume to apply for another job that a different co-worker told me about at Forest Hills Community House in Queens. I began teaching in Jackson Heights in 2006. During the interview with the director, I told them that I knew that my native English language skills were a privilege that I wanted to use to fight against the anti-immigrant sentiment which was sweeping the country. They liked this rhetoric, I think, because I got the job. I started teaching as an hourly employee and met a strange student from Mexico. He came into class one day very happy because after years of trying, he finally got a green card. Then, he went back to Mexico. I would learn that about half of the students in the program were unauthorized immigrants. Most were visa overstays, like most unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., but a large number had crossed by land from various countries to get into the U.S. (One memorable exception was the marine merchant from Burma who jumped ship.) As Jackson Heights is the most linguistically and generally diverse district in the world, where about 180 different languages are spoken, a large gay Latino community shares the area with Nepalese, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and Sikhs, I was just one among tens of thousands of immigrants in Jackson Heights. I learned about the rules and practices of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as we frequently had “Know Your Rights” workshops for the students. Our in-house paralegal would answer our questions about applying for various visas and waivers, and even helped my friend, who was also adopted from Korea, to bring her fiancé from the Philippines to the U.S. after they met while she worked in the Peace Corps. We also had an Action Group that the teachers and students could join political efforts like marching against the SECURE Communities program from DHS/ICE, which would report the immigration status of anyone arrested by the NYPD. Many of my students would join the Action Group, and I became the teacher liaison. We fought for fair housing, language access at the public hospitals, and funding for English language programs in the state and city budgets. By this time, the DREAM Act and DACA was political news. I learned that Koreans were in the top ten of the applicants seeking to become DACAmented. Also making news was the story of some people who had been deported, or otherwise compelled, to live in Korea after being sent to the U.S. to be adopted. Then, I heard about a Korean citizen, who was sent to the U.S. to be adopted, who had been arrested several times. His English was still punctuated with Korean turns of phrases because he left Korea as a pre-teen and never totally nativized his English. He was facing removal from the U.S. because although he was a legal permanent resident, a status which normally doesn’t expire, he was deportable due to the draconian 1996 Clinton-era IIRIRA Act. I offered background to others who were testifying at hearings as experts about the immigration system history and current practices which I had heard about from the thousands of students I had had at Queens Community House and the Catholic Migration Office. Russell’s verdict ended well, with deferred action. Basically that means that he has an order of removal, but it is suspended due to his lawyer’s arguments that it would be inhumane to send him back to Korea. I was promoted to Assistant Director of the Adult Education English Language program and was going to be sent to train to be a Bureau of Immigrant Affairs certified legal representative, but I decided to move to Korea instead. The war against immigrants had taken its toll. The program lost two-thirds of its funding; it was clearly time to go. I knew that as an overseas Korean, a dongpo, I would be eligible for the F4 visa. I eventually was hired at a university in Daejeon. I decided to move to Korea, and  I would soon find myself in my students’ position—a functionally illiterate adult living without the dominant language skills, unaware of my rights or the laws of the country where I would live. (to be continued) Cover image: New York, NY 2007

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the 30th in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children they had sent away through adoption would return as adults with questions about their true identity and origins. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. — E.D. In early summer of 2021, I sat with The Korea Times' digital content editor. We had met on the terrace of a small cafe in Seoul to discuss starting a new column series. That warm and sunny day stands out because it was the first moment this series’ journey began. Since 2017, a few like-minded individuals and I have been devising different ways to bring greater public attention to the need for fundamental changes in the laws and policies related to child protection and adoptees’ access to origins. Despite our attempts, we fell short of achieving a meaningful impact on Korean society. These memories lingered in my mind as I spoke with the editor. Although a number of adoptees’ accounts had been published over the years, I felt that the missing element was a common thread weaving these individuals’ narratives together. While each adoptee delivered a captivating story, they shared one collective experience—being sent away by a system designed and maintained by Korea for seven decades. I wanted to give space to adoptees to talk about their experiences but to also incorporate broader discussions, a dialogue, on the underpinning laws and policies that affect these experiences. And most importantly, I wanted to frame adoptees’ grievances for what they truly represented—human rights violations. This task was anything but easy, especially considering that in this country, adoption-related issues are dismissed as part of the past. Even some of the most renowned leaders of civil society groups scoffed, “If this is really a human rights issue as you’re insisting, then where are all of these 200,000 rights-holders? Why are they invisible and their voices silent?” I eventually came to realize that I was going in circles, not just by doing the same thing over and over again, but also treading water dealing with social networks so closely knit that they have evolved into their own isolated world. In there is a tightly guarded circle of international law experts and scholars. Then there is the social circle where only the Korean language prevails, and anything spoken in another language is disregarded. There’s also the small circle of those who believe that they know what is best for adoptees and act upon such beliefs. This observation isn’t entirely a criticism because, like anyone, I feel safe and comfortable in these circles. But as long as I remain satisfied in that comfort zone, then I’ll remain there without ever reaching beyond those borders. Korean society never thought that adoptees, whom it sent away decades ago, would ever return and start posing serious questions about their true identity and origins. This society never imagined that they’d want more than just a “homeland tour” or “cultural experiences.” It’s for these reasons that Korea remains ill-equipped and ill-prepared to engage adoptees in a dialogue. Consequently, I’m confronted with a sense of urgency to build solidarity and alliances with adoptees, those stakeholders with a direct interest, to collaborate on initiating changes in this country, but the speed and impact in which we may undertake this effort is tempered by our geographical distances. Most adoptees live outside of Korea and do not hold citizenship, so they remain an invisible group unable to partake in meaningful change for themselves. Therefore, I started this series by trying to reach that audience by delivering the facts and conveying the matter in a language that they can understand. We need to dismantle the status quo in which so much information critical to informing adoptees about their rights remains in a language inaccessible for most of them. For far too long, those laws that have directly impacted adoptees have been passed without their knowledge or input due to a lack of translation into languages other than Korean. Therefore, publishing articles in The Korea Times presented the most appropriate means to facilitate participation with the inclusion of guest adoptee writers and to disseminate rights-related information to adoptees overseas. I initially recruited some guest writers, but as the series progressed, adoptees from around the world volunteered their own stories. The only criterion I had was that the right to origins underpins the content. As I read the submissions, I noticed that despite the different perspectives and arguments, the right to origins as a universal human right resonated throughout the articles. To date, this series consists of 30 articles: half were written by me and the other half by guest writers, 12 of them being adoptees and one, Seo-vin, being the child of an adoptee couple. Seo-vin’s article was particularly compelling and ranked as the top story of the site. Some adoptees had mentioned that they hadn’t given much thought to any identity crisis that their own children may endure. Ultimately, the aim of “Dialogues With Adoptees” is to illustrate the relevancy of adoption-related issues and remind society that these matters extend beyond just adoptees. The historical causes that sent thousands of children away rippled across society and reverberated through time. Today, as the country prioritizes raising the fertility rate to cope with the lowest birthrate in the world, one must ask whether this problem is solely a fertility factor or a human rights issue. For more than half a century, this country has regarded the lives of certain children as numbers that it could objectify and commodify. Because the ghosts of the past continue to haunt us today, we should not cease our journey for reform for this generation and the next one to come. I welcome everyone to share their support and solidarity by revisiting this series on the Dialogues With Adoptees, a separate section that The Korea Times developed. This move represents the first time that a Korean media outlet, whether in English or Korean, has dedicated space to this issue, and I look forward to expanding it with the next series in the near future. This is the final reposted article of Dr. Kyung-eun Lee’s first season of articles from The Korea Times series “Dialogues With Adoptees.” While we were not able to repost all of the articles written by professionals and adoptees that were part of this series, we hope that you will go back and read them yourselves. Having an ally like Dr. Lee in the adoptee sphere within Korea is not only important, but validating for the thousands of Korean adoptees sent overseas since the Korean War. It has been an honor and privilege to repost these articles and we hope to share more of Dr. Lee’s work in the future. Cover photo: gettyimagesbank)

“I think, maybe, we should talk about starting a family,” my husband said one day, as we sat on the back porch of a winery north of our home. Just a few days prior, we had received news of the passing of Aunt Nancy, a woman with an outsized personality, big laugh, and gravelly voice. She was our favorite of his extended family, and, personally, the only one who never made me feel like a Korean Jewish interloper in a white Christian family. Her death was unexpected, one at odds with her age, the kind that accelerates the normal steady crumble of childhood invincibility, our own mortality becoming prematurely salient. It is in this context that my husband and I sat, sipping our favorite red, pondering the question that could change our lives. When I was a child, I played a lot by myself. My adoptive sister, six years older, left me behind as soon as she became a teenager. I often crept into her room and took an artifact of our time together, a doll named Becca. My aunt made the doll for my sister as a gift to commemorate my adoption from Korea. Recalling that doll now, I remember her porcelain-colored face, black yarn hair, and true blue eyes, a seemingly impossible representation of a Korean child. Then again, memory is funny and it would be as likely that my aunt would make a Korean doll with blue eyes as my mind would conjure that image, a reflection of how I saw myself in my Jewish family. In any case, Becca joined Kira, a floppy doll with peach skin and very pink hair, and a more plausible Korean baby named Jae, as my children. In every situation the dolls would start out as friends, but then Kira would start excluding Becca and stuffing Jae in the closet. The white doll was the last one left standing every time, the play ending with her superiority, and, me, the mother, helpless even in her own imagination. “You want to start a family?” I asked, pouring myself another glass. My husband and I never spoke about having a family before marrying. We just kind of left it open, like a window cracked on the first nice day of spring, remembering it occasionally as we walked by but never bothering to close it. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, and with Aunt Nancy…I just realized our kids will never get to know her. How will she be remembered?” My mind reels back to my ninth grade history teacher, Mr. Torrence. One day, at the start of class, we found him sitting on his desk with a framed picture of his father and a CD player. He told us about his dad, a soldier who lost his life in the Vietnam War, an example of the real costs of war. Then he played his father’s favorite song, Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” As Louis’s voice warbled with rich, joyful truths, my teacher wept in front of a room full of high school freshmen. When the song ended, he looked up at us, eyes red, tears reflecting the fluorescent lights of the classroom, and walked out. I had never seen a man cry before that day. The vulnerability he showed demonstrated a type of self-assuredness that inspired me. It burrowed beneath the armor I had wrapped around myself, seeding the possibility of living an awesomely authentic life, something I had never considered before. In the years after, I thought of Mr. Torrence often. I thought about how he demonstrated how to endure loss honestly and without shame. I thought about how he inspired me to pursue teaching in college, but also inspired me to abandon the idea, the bar he set out of my reach at the time. I thought about him, now, as he breezed through the window we had left open. “How will she be remembered?” I echoed, remembering Mr. Torrence’s fluorescent tears. “By the generations that follow,” I concluded. Parenthood is complicated for adoptees, severed from our first family; and for international adoptees, our first language and first country. We are handed an entirely new life like a gift, but when unwrapped, we realize it is more like a witness protection program alias where our birthrights are smothered under expectations of gratitude and silence. Becoming a parent would require the deconstruction of the immersive theater production called my life, risking my emotional safety to travel backwards, back to my adoptive family, to Korea, and to my birth family. It would require vulnerability and bravery, two things I had avoided until this moment. But then, overtaken by the soul-stirring sunlit vineyard and the unexpected wave of urgency to live after Aunt Nancy’s death, I said, “Yes, let’s do it.” Immediately, I felt like I had pushed a button that catapulted me into the hands of the future, byway of the past, a circuitous explosion of a route that I am still riding now. As I think about the path we have taken, four times across the world to Korea to adopt our sons, and one time across town to birth our daughter during a pandemic, I smile. I smile at the fact that I have three kids, much like those dolls, two Korean sons and one biracial daughter who, though she does not have pink hair, looks a lot like her white father, life imitating play. I smile at my dreams of being a teacher as I pack away the homeschool books we used this morning. I am a teacher after all. I smile about the cracked window that now is flung wide open, with all its beauty, pain, and unpredictability. Out of loss erupted hope.

Christine Ha is a powerhouse of creativity and resilience. She was the first-ever blind contestant and winner of Gordon Ramsey’s amateur cooking show MasterChef, defeating over 30,000 home cooks to win the title of MasterChef, a $250,000 cash prize, and a cookbook deal ("Recipes from My Kitchen"). Ha also holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Business of Administration from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to those accomplishments, she has also served as the culinary envoy for the American Embassy as part of the cultural diplomacy program in several countries, spoken on disability advocacy at the United Nations, given Tedx Talks, opened two successful restaurants, and much more. The deeper you get to know Ha, the more you realize that, even without sight, there’s nothing she can’t do. Tell us a bit about your story. I am best known for being the visually impaired cook that won MasterChef Season 3 in the U.S. I’m also a New York Times best-selling cookbook author and owner of two restaurants in Houston: The Blind Goat and Xin Chào. What was your childhood like? I’m California-born, Texas-raised. I grew up an only child. My parents were Vietnamese refugees. Was cooking always one of your passions? No. I started cooking when I was in college, mainly because I had to learn to live independently. It wasn’t until I began teaching myself to cook that I realized I enjoyed it a lot. It was just a hobby, though, until I competed on MasterChef, which opened many opportunities for me in the culinary world afterward. What challenges did you face as a second-generation Asian American, and how did you work through them? I felt the burden of straddling two different cultures growing up. Like many who grew up like me, I wasn’t American enough at school and not Vietnamese enough at home. Eventually, I realized that I didn’t have to identify as one or the other, but that I could be both. And being both is beautiful. When you found out you had neuromyelitis optica (NMO) at 20, how did you feel? What helped you transform what many perceive as a limitation into one of your biggest strengths? I felt lonely and isolated as it was—and still is—a rare disease. I didn’t know anyone losing their vision nor who had NMO at the time. I decided to educate myself as much as possible about the disease and become my own best advocate for my healthcare. Once I found a treatment plan that stabilized my health, I learned to adapt to what was my new normal of being visually impaired, and having to understand my condition, and recognizing the onset of symptoms, and knowing what to do when that happens. How do you navigate a kitchen and cooking without sight? I have to be extremely organized, but that goes for any kitchen and cook, whether sighted or not. I have a few adaptive tools in my kitchen, like raised bump dot stickers that help mark my stovetop and appliances with tactile markers, but otherwise, my kitchen operates like most others. What are your favorite foods to cook and eat? I love cooking and eating everything. I always enjoy trying new things. A comfort food that I do love to eat is fried rice. I like that it uses up leftover ingredients, can be cooked in one pan (wok), and is eaten out of a bowl with one spoon. That is the quintessential comfort food. What and/or who has been the most essential support as you’ve built your business and brand? Why? My partner in life and business, John. He brings certain strengths to our businesses, like branding, technology, and marketing. We complement each other well because we bring different things to the table, but most importantly, we respect each other’s opinions and trust that even though we may not always see eye to eye, we both want the very best for our companies and share the same long-term vision and goals. What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? Why? Creating two restaurants, building a team, and seeing them grow and be successful. What goals do you have for the future? Continue to work on the restaurants, start new ones, write another cookbook, finish my memoir, and finish the documentary film I’ve been working on for the past three years. What advice would you give to others receiving a life-altering diagnosis like yours? Know that it’s normal to go through the grief process, but at some point, understand that life will continue on. You must find a supportive community, whether that means family, friends, other patients, a healthcare team, or all of the aforementioned. When you have a good support network and the right, positive attitude, you can and will be able to achieve great things. Find out more about Christine and what she’s currently up to: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @theblindcook YouTube: ChristineHaTube Website Cover photo: Julie Soefer

Reposted from The Korea Times This is the 29th article of the series. It is time to turn our attention to the least discussed, but the most powerful and decisive actors involved in the flow of children for inter-country adoption—the receiving countries. — E.D. The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), an intergovernmental organization facilitating cross-border cooperation in private legal matters, has been collecting the statistics of children adopted transnationally from the immigration authorities of 23 receiving countries, mainly in Western Europe, North America and Australia. In the case of Korea, the main receiving countries (in the order of the largest number of children received) consist of the United States, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, and Luxembourg. Historically, this group of receiving countries has remained stable while the number of sending countries expanded from 20 in the early 1980s to more than 80 in the ensuing decade. The expansion of global adoption coincided with geographical shifts in major sending regions, which included Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Although the HCCH collects data from receiving countries, greater attention is dedicated to the statistics provided by the sending countries. The disproportionate scrutiny given to the latter group is understandable in light of the established narrative that many adoption-related problems rest with the sending countries. However, these countries evade responsibility in international forums by deflecting the blame onto “single mothers” or parents “too poor to raise their children.” They cite data, most of which comes from private adoption agencies, to attribute responsibility to an unseen marginalized group while simultaneously evoking emotive images of young unwed mothers. While an overwhelming majority of adopted children came from single mothers, this had not always been the case. Instead, governments found an ideal scapegoat and unloaded an undue amount of culpability onto certain groups of parents, thereby promoting a deficit perspective that individualized structural problems. Instead of addressing systematic failures that compel family separation, failings were placed squarely on the shoulders of parents for their lack of resources, marriage, or some other socially constructed standard. Even in high-level meetings, foreign delegates engaged in the same stale discussions that targeted “young unwed mothers” as the source of inter-country adoption. Why is the role of receiving countries important? Claiming that one party represents the impetus for transnational adoption obscures a constellation of factors and the elaborate network of actors involved. We must bear in mind that the receiving countries forged the rules to move children across national borders, then legitimized the procedures by erecting a complex bureaucracy of paperwork and administration. Moreover, we must also remember that while adoption is about a change in family relations, inter-country adoption constitutes a set of immigration procedures that sends a child from the global south to the more affluent global north. Normally, in cases where a child must be sent alone for immigration, the conditions, criteria and scrutiny must meet a certain threshold for safety. But in the case of inter-country adoption, this form of immigration was characterized by procedures and standards so loose that it bordered on negligence. Eventually, bad practices and poor oversight culminated in a series of inter-country adoption scandals in the 1980s and 1990s and impelled governments to argue that they hadn’t been engaged in baby buying and selling. Consequently, those countries involved in inter-country adoption set regulatory measures to prevent further tragedies. The most significant development was the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption, established in 1993 at the HCCH. Although most of the sending countries were not members of HCCH, they were invited to sign and ratify the convention, as excluding them would diminish the effectiveness and the purpose of this legal instrument. As one of the main sending countries, Korea was invited to the drafting meeting of the convention and eventually became a signatory. However, although nearly 100 states have become contracting parties, Korea has done little in this regard. Despite the scale and influence of the country’s inter-country adoption program, Korea still cannot commit itself to the obligations of the convention, which guarantee the safety, welfare and rights of children in procedures and matters related to such adoption. Rethinking the principle of shared responsibility of sending and receiving countries A pillar of the convention is the shared responsibility of both the sending and receiving countries, and the drafters attempted to operationalize this by delegating specific duties to designated competent authorities and setting out safeguards. After nearly 30 years of operation, the fundamental flaws of this approach have emerged. Where irreconcilable discrepancies exist between family law, child protection systems, and child adoption programs, questions about achieving mutual responsibility remain unanswered. Moreover, in welfare policy, the size of the national budget plays a critical role, but the scope of the convention never extends to such matters. Adoptees are citizens of receiving countries In 2020, while leading a workshop on how to make changes to rectify the current situation and realize adoptees’ right to access their identity and origins, I proposed, “Use your nationalities and move your governments’ to put pressure on the Korean government to make the necessary changes.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I instantly felt the atmosphere of the room cool. Some of the adoptee participants seemed to feel uncomfortable, perhaps even slightly unsettled, by my suggestion. Until now, the discussion on inter-country adoption has focused on the issues of sending countries—their poverty, unwillingness, incapability, and incapacity to protect their own children. And for these same reasons, they have managed to elude blame and responsibility. In the course of this series, the guest writers and I have tried to illustrate that the dominant narrative of adoption—a portrayal that paints sending countries as saving their children through adoption—is an inaccurate and incomplete picture, but we must remember that adoption entails the mutual responsibility of both countries. This also means that the receiving countries should act to protect and realize the rights of their own nationals to know their true identity. Because after all, adoptees are the citizens of receiving countries. Click here to read the 22nd article of this series, "Rewriting my adoption story truthfully" by Kate Powers. Cover photo: This picture was taken right before Korea officially signed the convention on May 24, 2013, Chin Young, then-minister of health and welfare, visited the Hague to sign the document with a promise to ratify it within five years. However, as of today, nearly a decade later, the Korean government has yet to fulfill its promise.

Time Time flies by In the blink of an eye How should I spend my day So many things that I could do But in my bed i just lay Being productive would surely do I bet you’d agree too Oh to do something different today But in my bed I just lay A poem for you Dear reader please listen close I appreciate you the most I can’t put it into words My heart soars with the birds Sharing my art with you So thank you dear friend My love I do send And my heart it fills with joy Knowing you took the time to read Something you didn’t need So I thank you once again Lauren is a regular contributor for The Universal Asian. To learn more about her, check out her Contributor’s Page here.

I was adopted into a small farming community with one blinking stop light. For all my life, I was surrounded by people who did not look like me. Once Facebook became a thing, I joined a lot of Korean adoptee groups. It filled the need I had inside to belong somewhere, to fit in. My feed was filled with families who looked like mine, white parents, Asian kids. It was a great way to meet others who have similar experiences being Korean and adopted. I follow issues such as the Adoptee Citizen Act. I learned how to start a bio-family search. So many relevant topics are discussed and shared in these groups. They can be extremely informative, but they can also become drama-filled, turning slightly Real Housewife-ish. But overall, the camaraderie is nice, and the conversation is cathartic. Recently Jia Sun Lee, author of "Everyone Was Falling," posted a very thought provoking article titled “What White Men Say in our Absence” by Elaine Hsieh Chou in one of the Facebook groups. The essay begins with a disclaimer that it contains graphic descriptions of murder, sexual violence, and racist language. With an intro like this, I can already gather the nature of what white men say in our (the Asian-American female) absence. She starts by recounting an incident on the bus when she was teaching ESL in Taipei. Two white men were discussing dating Taiwanese women very candidly as they assumed no one around them could understand English. Before I even read the details, I knew what this conversation was all about. How could I not? I’ve spent a lifetime hearing about/being a part of Asian female stereotypes. The article was not shocking or surprising. The author laments not standing up for herself and other Asian women and exposing these men for their offensive conversation. Even eight years later she was still troubled by the experience, troubled that she didn’t face her oppressors and tell them off. How many times had I been in that same position? Not the exact details, but a situation where I wish I had said my mind, told someone off, or even reacted at all. I remember the time after a bar night I was standing in line at Taco Bell and some guy thought he could grab my tit. I was visibly pissed, but I didn’t do anything. I stood there. Got my Mexican Pizza and brushed it off. I remember the time a woman, co-worker of my high school boyfriend, had asked him how I could use tampons…since my vagina was slanted. I remember guys hitting on me with the line, “I’ve never been with an Asian woman before.” By the grace of God, I was never a victim of a sexual crime or sexual violence. But, it’s not hard to point to countless examples of Asian women being attacked, violated, and killed throughout time. I experienced enough looks, comments and situations to be wary of certain men. To this day, I will tell my husband if I get a strange vibe off a guy when we are at social events and let him know when I don’t want him to leave my side. Doing an online search in areas like Reddit, one can spiral down a rabbit hole of disgusting content regarding Asian women’s “sexual-ness” and the unending stereotypes of the submissive Asian female. Online anonymity is a double-edged sword that allows people to speak their minds, but then say horribly offensive things they’d never say out loud. After reading article after article online, Chou stated, “I wanted these men identified. I wanted their thoughts broadcasted above their heads. Because how can I move through the world knowing that the men who think these thoughts are real? They’re subway riders, salesmen, police officers, teachers, bosses, friends. They’re someone’s father. They’re someone’s husband. They’re someone’s lover.” I get this. There’s no way of knowing who the “bad” men are. You must rely on your instincts and have faith that most people are good people. You hope. As a 49-year-old woman, this knowledge disgusts me. The fact that my ethnically ambiguous daughter must navigate this world frightens me. Just the other day her Uber driver asked her if she had Chinese blood in her family. I’d love for this to be an innocent question, but because of such offensive and violent stereotypes, innocuous statements like this scare me. Yet, at the same time I’m scared for young Asian women, I also realize there is a benefit to these outdated tropes. When I was a young woman, I know there was a side of this disgusting obsession that was beneficial to me. There is a power dynamic between white men and Asian women where the Asian woman wields a certain power that she may not have experienced in her young life. She has that “pussy power” that gets men to buy her drinks, gifts, and to give her attention. To a young confident girl, this means nothing. To young girls who are never looked at in high school, who lack attention, who lack confidence…this can be exhilarating. Chou recounts a time in her life she dated an older white male who showed her a box of photos of his past conquests…all Asian. Instead of being repulsed and seeing the red flags flying in her face, she became, “…dreamy, even wistful. I wanted my photo in that box. I wanted him to choose me.” So as f****d up as that thought process is, having the power to be chosen, to be special is not lost on me. Another fabulous writer Chou quotes is Jenny Zhang from her article “Far Away From Me: I was never the girl in the Weezer song.” In her essay, she discusses the song by Weezer, “Across the Sea,” and how it affected her. She noted, “My only choices, I thought, were to be invisible and ugly or to be exoticized into worthiness.” Sometimes it’s better to be wanted for the wrong reasons, then to never be wanted at all. At this stage in my life this sounds ridiculous. But, I try to put myself back into that melodramatic, starry-eyed teenager mindset and realize logic and reason are not something we all have, they sometimes must develop. The need to feel wanted and belong may overpower the desire to think logically. Even now, I sit in a place of comfort and safety I was not afforded at age 23. I believe this younger generation will do better. They demand to be seen and occupy space much better than we ever did. Their identities are validated more in film and theater and their stories are being told. But these hopeful thoughts are soon forgotten if I read the headlines in the news. It’s so easy to find Asian women being targeted, attacked, and killed. As women, we exist with caution. As hyper-sexualized Asian women, we exist with extreme caution, fear, and realize we bear the burden of our own safety. Chou ends her article finally stating what she wanted to say to the two white men on the train: “Be careful what you say. I’m listening. And I’m not going anywhere.” And this gives me hope.

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the 25th in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children it had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. — E.D. “Vincenzo,” a Korean TV drama starring Song Joong-ki, centers on the story of a Korean adoptee who becomes a mob lawyer after being raised by an Italian mafia family. Despite being adopted to Italy at a very young age and spending most of his life there, he arrives in Incheon International Airport speaking perfect Korean and manages to integrate seamlessly into Korean society without experiencing any culture shock, awkward social exchanges, or misunderstandings. The main character’s adoption experience enables the drama not only to create a background that would have otherwise been impossible, but it also sets up a typical emotional plot device related to adoptees: a reunion with the birth mother. The implausibility of this plot was not lost on one Korean-American journalist who asked to interview me about the fantastical portrayals of adoptees in K-dramas. Having been raised using Korean in her family, she said that she still struggled to speak Korean fluently, and this experience led her to question why Korean entertainment writers and consumers failed to question improbable stories, such as that of “Vincenzo.” She added that Koreans seem to presume that language is engraved in Korean people’s DNA, regardless of their social upbringing. I have also had to ask myself this, “Do we Koreans truly believe in such fantasies, or are we desperately averting our eyes and covering our ears to the truth?” Dramas such as “Vincenzo” are less about accurate adoptee representation in Korean society and more about catering to society’s indulgence in romanticized adoption myths. In fact, the depictions of adoptees in Korean films and dramas have become so stereotyped that they border on constituting tropes. In most of these stories, the adoptee is sent to the United States, which serves as a symbol of wealthy western countries, at a very young age. Eventually, the adoptee returns to Korea and encounters some form of adversity. But owing to the adoptee’s enormous wealth or some extraordinary ability, he or she prevails. While there are variations to this plot, with some films having the adoptee rescue his or her birth family or even the nation itself, the overall plot remains the same. The 2009 Korean hit “Gukgadaepyo” or “Take Off” in English (although the direct translation of the original Korean title would be “A Member of the National Team”), is an example of this stereotypical Korean adoption fantasy. In this film, Korea’s winter sports team lacks enough skiers to participate in the Winter Olympic Games, especially in sporting events such as the ski jump. Like a deus ex machina, an American adoptee appears to save the team and enhance the international prestige of the country. The ending scene shows everyone celebrating under the Korean national flag. Sometimes film mirrors reality. In 2018, Korea hosted the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, and several intercountry adoptees restored their Korean nationality to participate as members of the Korean national team. Seizing on this occasion, the minister of health and welfare designated some of them as promotional ambassadors of the search for origins. Ironically, this ministry was the same one that has kept adoption in the private realm, while permitting private agencies to receive fees from overseas adoptive parents under the guise of child protection. Despite publicly supporting adoptees’ search for origins, the ministry failed to carry out any meaningful changes that would secure adoptees’ rights to accessing their true identity and origins. While one may ask how we can interpret the state’s demonstration of shameless ignorance and lack of accountability. Indeed, this country has a long history of committing such acts. Korea’s media has played a decisive role in reinforcing this adoption myth by continuously reproducing the discourse and further embedding it in social consciousness. Heavily dramatized stories about adoptees, whether in the form of dramas, documentaries, or news reports, capture the public’s interest, yet this attention wanes as easily as it aroused. What is left is a superficial understanding of the true history of adoption in this country. This adoption myth functions as a source of entertainment for the public, and these stories remain sufficiently shallow to avoid any critical reflection that could bring on a collective sense of shame or blame. Screenwriters and producers will continue using these types of stories as long as they serve as effective vehicles to reap financial gain. Consequently, the reproduction of the adoptee myth in Korean entertainment silences the voices of adoptees. Instead of representing the complexity of their experiences, adoptees’ lives are reduced to cliches. This treatment is not only deplorable for adoptees, but in the context of human rights discourse, it functions as a form of objectification: adoptees are no longer subjects with their own voices but caricatures for movie plots. They exist in the public eye because people find entertainment in the emotional drama surrounding adoptee characters, but this interest fails to extend to the very real injustices inflicted on actual adoptees. While we may level criticism against writers, producers, and reporters for perpetuating stereotypes, we must ask ourselves whether these people are the manufacturers of these misrepresentations or if they are merely reproducing what they have already learned. South Korea has been sending its children overseas for the past seven decades. Its laws and system, which have been designed to facilitate this process, are a testament to its long history of adoption. Thus, when injustice becomes the norm, one can violate another’s human rights without realizing it. By portraying the adoptee as the savior and including an element of the birth family reunion on screen, Korean dramas and movies distort and manipulate the truth of adoptees’ lives to assuage the collective guilt society feels for what it has done to its most vulnerable members. Unfortunately, most adoptees reside outside of Korea and may not realize that Korean entertainment companies continually appropriate adoptee stories to satisfy their viewers. As long as this practice prevails, the adoption myth will remain the predominant adoption narrative in Korean society’s consciousness. Click here to read the 21st article of this series, "Imagining equality between Koreans and overseas adoptees" by Han Boon-Young. Cover photo: Vincenzo, not a typical Korean adoptee — Courtesy of tvN

I loved my shirt With three pockets of color Gym shoes Blue shorts And black hair That flopped over My gold-rimmed glasses I was ready for lessons Who wants to play tennis? I’ve got plenty of time to spare. But imagine my surprise When I saw my reflection Already hitting some balls on the court That’s weird Is she me Who is she And why is she wearing My outfit? Why does she have the Same haircut? And the gold glasses What’s up? Is this a joke or I’m nuts? I figured it must Be just a coincidence That the one Asian girl that shows up Basically looks like my twin It made me uneasy A little bit queasy So I stayed clear away Of the girl who seemed to be mocking me Cause I thought there was just one of me But maybe the universe made copies. The following week I arrived for lessons Bracing myself Feeling leery Would ‘ya look at that I was horrified to see That girl again She was wearing an eerily similar red t-shirt And yellow shorts just like me! What’s going on? I say in my head Who told her what I was going to wear? This is so creepy Should I go back to bed Am I sleepy? I rub my eyes But she’s still there Practicing serving balls She hits so high in the air And listening to the teacher Just like me Who relishes being so good. But there’s more I hear the teacher call her Wilomena Which is odd Because my name is Wendy How many names start like these two Both using the same letter double-u? This girl reminds me of me She looks an awful lot like me too So I finally asked her Are you Chinese? And she says yes I was amused And got more curious. But when I asked her Do you have a big family? Go to banquets in Chinatown Serving big, nine-course meals Eat loquats, char siu, and ginger steamed fish Sesame balls with sweet lotus paste Winter melon soup Or steamed, sticky rice, wrapped in leaves? She said No. I asked Do you give gold peaches to your grandparents When they turn seventy or eighty Belong to a family association Or say gong hay fat choy for the new year? She also flatly said No. She said no And I was disappointed Cause I thought we could relate Maybe be friends after all But how could it be That we were both Chinese? When nothing I said was familiar. That girl invited me over to her house And when I entered She gave me new slippers to wear And slipped her blue velvet ones on So we wouldn’t scuff The intricate, handcrafted floors. Her mother called on the phone through the speaker It didn’t sound like Chinese Even though she said it was too It sounded completely different. This girl Wilomena Offered me something out of a plastic container Something dried, red, and spicy Her chopsticks poked pieces into her mouth She said it was her favorite And gave me the Chinese name for it Which I had never heard of in my whole life. Wilomena told me that They didn’t have any extended family here Just her nuclear family Just Mom Dad and brother Her grandparents didn’t approve of the marriage So her parents ran away to America. Sometimes it felt lonely Being different at school Coming home To the echoes in the house She explained. Here With these drippy, cold trees Barren outside under overcast skies Sheltered we sat on a hard, slippery staircase Polished so clean Vented heat on our faces We talked about mean Mr. Smolten Classmates and math class Funny kids and the one with his seat by the window We looked at each other And let out a giggle So cute was this boy Liam So. We nibbled on Sara Lee pound cake Which we found in the commercial-sized freezer Thawed fast in those new microwaves She showed me shelves of long, red, dried peppers And containers holding yellow and white, strings of dried noodles Lined up aplenty in the bright, walk-in pantry. Noodles more noodles There sure were a lot of noodles So many kinds Long live the noodles! Noodles for long life!! We shouted at the same time And burst into laughter Our eyes shining smiles As we shared Our dreams of flying And magical powers Hushes of wishes And warm, misty visions Of what we wanted to be Hopes for a beautiful crystalline future A secret of immortality. Dancing on otherworld timelines Recollections of real-world lifelines Tied by halos of memories Me and my old-time, childhood friend Wilomena and me Reuniting to play some tennis. Cover photo: Pexels

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the 23rd in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children it had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. — E.D. The Netflix documentary “Wonder Boy” chronicles the journey of Olivier Rousteing, a transracially adopted French designer, to uncover his true identity. Born under France’s anonymous birth registration system, Rousteing visits with the French child protection authorities who provided him with his adoption file, which offers limited information on his birth parents. He learns of their racial identity, their nationality before coming to France, and everything else except that which set him on his journey: their names and address. According to the “sous X” registration system, a system unique to France, mothers may hide their identity by writing an X on the child’s birth certificate. Consequently, the baby falls under the protection of the state and becomes adoptable. Without the parents’ consent, the birth parents’ identities remain anonymous indefinitely. In Rousteing’s case, the French authorities offered to trace the birth parents and ask them if they would agree to disclose their identities. Despite this attempt, the birth parents declined. Anonymous birth systems exist elsewhere, such as in the United States. While state governments issue birth certificates, some states will seal the original birth certificate if a person is adopted. Once the court finalizes the adoption, a new or “amended” certificate, which bears the new name and information of the adoptee, is issued. The secrecy surrounding birth records has led adopted people to demand access to their information and prompted them to initiate efforts to reform the relevant legislation. They argue that current laws unreasonably favor the personal decision of one party, such as the birth parents, without weighing the interests of both parties. Furthermore, they contend that information vital to a person’s identity cannot be regarded as secret, and that any decision to curtail access is beyond the matters of privacy and personal choice. Whatever may come from these legislative efforts, the government owns the original birth records, so providing access is primarily a matter of deciding whether to open the records. However, Korea’s case isn’t as simple as opening records. As explained in previous articles, intercountry adoption from Korea started with government bureaus establishing an orphan registry and issuing orphan certificates. The true identity of the person, including their familial relations, was erased to complete the process of fraudulently declaring him or her an “orphan found abandoned” for the purpose of intercountry adoption. Therefore, if an adoptee seeks information about their true identity, the official document issued by the Korean government is void and useless. This “orphan” registry system has frustrated and angered many adoptees, leading them to adoption agencies. Under the assumption that their true documents rest in the agencies’ “unofficial” and “private” file rooms, adoptees have developed a diverse range of strategies to extract as much information as possible from the staff. Some of the tactics have included persistently visiting the agency or begging, pleading and even bribing them by donation. One must ask, if the government fails to maintain records of a person’s true identity via his or her official birth certificate, then how can one expect a private agency to do better? Based on my observations, in cases of adoptees’ birth family searches, the trustworthiness of the adoption agencies’ records is highly suspect. After undergoing DNA testing, some adoptees have come to discover that they were not actually related to their supposed birth families despite the agency’s claims arguing otherwise. In other cases, the agencies deliberately delayed notifying the adoptees of their test results or attempted to conceal the results. In light of these circumstances, one must consider the integrity of those records inside the adoption agencies. Do they bear truthful information about adoptees? How many of the files were either destroyed or stolen? Were the contents forged or misrepresented or even switched for business purposes? Who can guarantee the reliability and veracity of the records? Consequently, many adoptees have found that DNA matching companies are the last resort and the most reliable means to search for one’s biological family. In North America and Europe, multiple DNA testing and matching firms provide services for biological family tracing. People can provide their DNA samples to these firms, and their results will be checked within the company’s database to determine whether there are any matches. These efforts have resulted in adoptees from across the world recounting many fascinating stories of finding their birth parents, siblings and relatives. While DNA testing has provided a breakthrough in the search for origins, the fact that adoptees must resort to such measures reflects the defects of Korea’s birth registration system. Historically, under the feudal Joseon Dynasty, people belonged to clans rather than a country and were registered according to their kinship ties. The head of the clan ruled over family members, deciding their fate. As long as an individual belonged to a family, he or she was protected, and any act of disownment was like a death sentence. Children were not seen as individuals but rather as possessions of the family, and they were expected to act for the preservation and prosperity of their clan. Despite the passing of time, the vestiges of this paternalism remain in Korea’s current registration system; they are evident in current legislation, which still largely depends on the decisions (or obligations) of the parent(s) to register a child. On account of this, it is not uncommon to see news reports about cases of people discovering that they have never been registered, or instances of individuals (including unborn babies) being listed on multiple registries. In other words, birth registration failures extend beyond cases of intercountry adoptees, which reveals the pervasiveness of the flaws in Korea’s birth registration system. The prevalence of secret births has been ingrained enough in Korean society to prompt many K-dramas to employ adoption as a plot device frequently. In these stories, the main character discovers that he or she has a birth family and then attempts to restore their relationship. Despite the frequency with which these stories appear in the media, dramas, and even in academic research, people rarely ever question why so many stories about false birth documents exist or why the state has not been held accountable. Fundamentally, these problems prevail due to this country’s failure to ensure accurate universal birth registration. While Korea’s development into a highly modernized democracy continues to be touted, the fact remains that this country fails to perform an essential function that any developed nation should fulfill: ensuring the accurate legal proof of identity for each and every child immediately after birth. Click here to read the 20th article of this series, The problems we face while helping adoptees’ search for families by Kim Yu-kyeong. Cover photo: gettyimagesbank

Yalian Li is a filmmaker currently located in Los Angeles. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at Baylor University when she was 19 years old. She has also just graduated from USC Cinematic Arts recently. During her years at USC, she was awarded the James Bridges and Jack Larson scholarship, the Fox Fellowship Endowment, and the Irving Lerner Endowment Fund—three of the most prestigious scholarships for students at USC. Her films have been selected for more than 30 international film festivals. She has also served as an assistant director for the movie "The Day We Lit up the Sky," which scored over 20 million at the box office in China in 2021. Furthermore, her short film "Mantis Club" is currently on the film circuit. It was in the official selection in Annapolis Film Festival and RiverRun International Film Festival. The film also screened at Hanesbrands Theater in North Carolina on April 23rd. "Mantis Club" is all about gender. The story of "Mantis Club" is set in a gender-flipped world. The log line is “In a world where females devour males during sex, Zack, a 17-year-old virgin is asked on his first date.” The idea first struck Li after seeing a documentary back in 2017 during a road trip. She was in a crowded train station watching a documentary about praying mantises, and was particularly captivated by the sequence about female mantises devouring males after sex. She wondered, “What if women ate men after sex? How would that affect our society?” “Women eating males” is a metaphor. The film is a dark comedy that functions as social commentary. She hopes the story simultaneously serves as an open window for the audiences to rethink the patriarchal and heteronormative elements we experience today. What is gender, and how does gender divide power? Is it based on our society, our history, or our biology? As a storyteller, Li is very passionate about making films about women’s empowerment and the Asian community in the United States. She is currently developing a story about an Asian boy who’s trying to be the flute-playing leader of a local orchestra after he immigrated to the States.

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the 18th in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children it had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. — E.D. I’m often asked by Western diplomats, “I know Korea had a problem with that issue in the past but is it still relevant these days?” Korean civil society and human rights groups have demonstrated a similar depth of understanding, “Wasn’t that the legacy of the military dictatorship? With democratization, hasn’t that already changed?” Rather than addressing the fundamental flaws and injustices of the legal system and legislation, these problems have been swept under the rug to be forgotten or ignored. Korea’s political landscape has changed since 1992 and now resembles a “democratic” presidential system. This progress has been complemented by economic growth that has elevated the level of social and cultural development of the country. Unlike in many other countries, a 1987 revision of the Constitution banned consecutive or multiple executive terms, limiting the president to a single five-year term. Critics have expressed frustration over the short term limits that encourage presidents to prioritize short-term gains to secure their legacies. However, considering the times in which the revision was passed, the primary aim of the term limit was to prevent the re-emergence of prolonged dictatorial rule, which remained fresh in the minds of the people. The democratization of Korea did not mark the end of tyranny but rather ushered in a new stage of struggle for human rights. We only need to look at world history to see that democratization does not guarantee an actual “democracy.” Moreover, “democracy” does not automatically equate to the protection of human rights. After the series of regimes led by military leaders ended in 1992, Korea has had six civilian presidents, and among them, former President Kim Dae-Jung (1998–2002) may be the most well remembered by adoptees. Over the years, he has come to symbolize and embody the democratic movement to such an extent that he’s been compared to Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Similar to Mandela, throughout the military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, Kim suffered torture, imprisonment and a death sentence. Despite enduring such oppression, he survived to oversee the democratization of the country in his 70s and led efforts towards peace with North Korea, which eventually earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. While the death penalty remains legal in the country, Korea maintains an “abolitionist in practice” position, which can be traced to Kim. Throughout his administration, he never approved an execution, and his successors have maintained this tradition to this day. Some presidential candidates have campaigned on resuming executions, and opinion polls reveal that a majority of Koreans approve of the death penalty. However, despite 60 inmates currently sitting on death row, their sentences have never been carried out. This lack of death penalty enforcement illustrates how Korean society tends to respond to human rights issues. Although laws and the official system remain unchanged, Korea pretends to abide by those universal norms endorsed by the U.N. However, this stance does not represent a genuine gesture to honor life but rather reflects the means by which politicians and policymakers hide behind opinion polls and evade what should be their responsibility, to initiate dramatic reforms. Ironically, such a strategy seems implicitly endorsed by the international community, which has conveniently overlooked Korea’s legal death penalty provisions. Instead of condemning the country, like other countries that impose the death penalty, the global community seems to overlook Korea’s lack of legislative reforms in this area. We must bear this paradoxical situation in mind when understanding Kim’s action toward transnational adoption. While this story has never been officially recorded, I heard from a former Korean ambassador to a certain European country that Kim had visited that country before becoming president. During a meeting in which he gave a speech, an adoptee stood up and asked why Korea sent away their children like commodities. Kim began to cry with the young adoptee and immediately apologized, saying that he hopes that the adoptee thrives despite what Korea had done to this person and all other adoptees. Once Kim became president, he invited a group of Korean adoptees to the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, to issue an official apology, and promised that the government would provide support for birth families and birth family search programs. Although he pledged many policy reforms, the actual implementation of those promises fell to the same government bodies and private agencies that had a history of maintaining the practice of exporting children. In the end, adoption remained a private decision without public intervention or child protection measures. The policy tools his administration provided for reform were little different than those exploited by the previous authoritarian governments, in which they aimed to control the number of child exports. In other words, while the policies’ titles changed, the reality remained the same. Consequently, from 1990 to 2010, the number of children sent abroad hovered first in the 2000s, and then the 1000s, annually. Throughout those two decades, basic national systems and measures for child protection, such as mandatory universal birth registration, intervention, and limitations over parental rights and court-appointed guardianship, failed to develop properly. Instead, private adoption agencies continued to expand, which gave them greater leverage in dealing with the government. Perhaps more significantly, along with the president’s policy, promoting the stories of so-called “successful” adoptees obscured the systematic injustices and harm done to the children through the process of intercountry adoption. Whether Kim had good intentions and sympathy toward adoptees is not in question. However, human rights issues are not matters of charity, and such issues demand a rights-based approach. As it has been said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but protecting people’s human rights requires fundamental reforms in the laws, policies and systems of a country. Mere charity and benevolent rhetoric without any commitment to confront uncomfortable truths only disguise human rights violations and delay the achievement of justice. Click here to read the 19th article of this series, "What does Korean law say about adoptees’ right to information disclosure" by Kang Te-ri. Image: In this Feb. 25, 1998 file photo, President Kim Dae-jung, right, puts his hand on his heart during his inauguration ceremony. Kim tried to reform Korea’s overseas adoption system. Despite policy changes, however, the reality remained much the same. — Korea Times