The four words that send a chill up adoptees' spines—or at least mine. I should clarify that I am of “Asian” descent, adopted into a white family and brought up in the U.K. Looking different to my sisters who were born to my adoptive parents led to many similar types of questions, which will be covered in future articles. But, back to the questioner who presumably thinks the dreaded question is to break the ice. They probably innocently think they’re being polite and showing interest in another human, but little do they know that they’re about to accuse me of lying and question the identity of someone they have just met. I mean, we all know—because we all do it—that within seconds they’ve already put me in a box and are just wishing to get confirmation. Unfortunately for them, the lid to Pandora’s box is about to be lifted... We know differently. We know where this line of question is going to lead. We know what the next question is going to be, even if they don’t yet! We know the depth of the question and why the reflex to those four words will lead me to fire back: “Mind your own FUCKING BUSINESS YOU NOSY TWAT (NT)!” However, it seems that social norms say this is an unacceptable first retort. So, then, the inanely familiar game begins, depending on the time of day and one’s current mood, or the phase of the cosmos, determines on which path we go forth. Here’s a selection of possible scenarios, though we know (and have experienced) that there are many more…. Scenario 1: The Dumb-Arse-Non-Believer Questioner NT: Hey, where are you from? Me: The U.K. NT: No, I mean, where are you really from? Me: I was born in the U.K. NT: But, I mean your heritage? (Hinting that they’ve cleverly noticed the higher tone of melanin in my skin) Me: I was actually adopted as a baby to white parents. NT: Ahhhh, so do you know your heritage? Me: My mother was from [country] and gave me up for adoption as a baby. NT: Ohhhh, that’s so interesting… This now leads to either:  1. Have you ever met her?—Mind your own business!  2. Ahhh, so you’re [stated country]!—No, I’m British, I told you. 3. That’s so interesting. I’ve always wanted to go to [any country similar to stated country], what’s it like?—AAARRRGGGHHHH, FUCK OFF! Scenario 2: The Sucker Story: A made-up story I use to amuse myself, usually when I’m going into my second or third “fuck-off” of the day) NT: W.Y.F? Me: The U.K. NT:  N.I.M.W.Y.R.F? Me: I’m not sure, I was adopted at birth.  NT: And, you don’t know your heritage? Well, you look kind of dark-skinned, so you’re probably [insert country here—relevant or not]. (Thanks for that, as if I didn’t notice/know already) Me: Well, I was found in a basket on a church door step. NT: Awwww...that’s really sad (head slightly tilted in mock sympathy). But, at least you were adopted/saved/rescued. Do you know anything about your parents? Me: I have some newspaper clippings. NT: OMG! Really? That’s so sad, not knowing where you’re really from. Me: FUCK OFF! Scenario 3: Full Moon Version NT: W.Y.F? Me: FUCK OFF, YOU FUCKING NOSY TWAT! Scenario 4: The Believer  NT: W.Y.F? Me: The U.K. NT: Ahhh, where in the U.K.? (There we go… Take my word for it, if we say we’re from Timbuktu, we probably are!!) I’ve wrestled with this for many years. Why does it create, at minimum, 1000 emotions ranging from rage or embarrassment to bewilderment (and many others in between) and why is my answer to their question still not believed? We all feel the need to find a box to put people in; however, only when these NT questioners have received the answer they’re after, do they feel comfortable to continue a no longer wanted conversation. I think most of us (adoptees, especially) are the same. However, if I ask the question to most people, and the reply is “America,” for example, guess what? I believe them. I don’t question whether their great, great, even greater grandparents came over on the Mayflower and declare that really, therefore, they are actually European and should be treated as such. If I give a response other than the one they want or that doesn’t fit their pre-designed box, why am I the one who feels uncomfortable? I don’t want to have to go into my adoption story, or my history, with a stranger. It’s personal. After all, it’s my story. Why should I have to bear the weight of unburdening someone else’s need to put me in the right box?

Question: How is identity defined? Answer: Differently for each one of us? Or, the same. Who am I? What am I? Am I British? British-Asian? Asian-British? What box should I fill out? My family—my parents and my sisters—are white. Am I meant to know which ethnicity box to tick? I end up ticking “Other.” The questioner may think this is an act of social rebellion. It really is that I don’t know the answer. Other Growing up, I was just Monty Pye: climbing trees, making tree houses, and swimming in the rivers with my friends. As a young adult, a casual conversation I’d had, led to an apparently huge concern. As I didn’t know the answer to the above questions, the next day I was called to the college counselor to discuss this. To be fair, I think she was wise enough to realize that I didn’t think much about most things in life, and that this wasn’t some deep-seated angst, and was more about a young man not being aware of shit! However, as I’ve grown older, this has caused an inner debate more than once. Other people seem to know who/what they are. They have a definite sense of themselves as African American, Asian-American, Korean-British, British-Chinese etc. This doesn’t mean I feel insecure (anymore) as a question about who I am, but it’s more of a chip on my shoulder. Since I don’t know the answer, when asked I flippantly reply, “I’m white middle-class British.” As this really is what I feel. I was brought up as this, I understand the culture of the white U.K. middle class. I don’t know what a British-Asian is meant to feel; I wasn’t brought up with this culture. If someone talks with a U.K. accent, and acts and reacts as a British white person would in a situation, then isn’t this an identity? Why should this not be me? Why should I be told that I am not? “But Monty, you don’t look British.” So, the cycle continues. What or who I define myself as, should this not be how I’m addressed by others? I purposefully ensure I talk with a strong “proper” British accent. This is part of the opening dance in letting people compute that: “Ahhhh… he sounds British.” Why do we feel the need to have an identity? Is it for ourselves? Is it for others? Why do some have an identity crisis and others don’t? As I don’t know the answers, do I ignore this and carry on with the white British middle class routine? Or, should I seek out what others think that I should be? Please do comment and let me know that I’m not alone with these musings…

Reposted from More Than Yellow As a child, I remember looking in the mirror, staring at my body, and thinking to myself, “Why couldn’t my legs be longer? Why are my hips so wide? Why is my nose so wide? Why couldn’t I have been born with double eyelids or perfect skin?” I was so used to the beauty standards that my culture has written and deemed as perfect. I have always struggled with my image and weight as a woman, but also as an Asian American. I was trying to balance this idea of beauty by having a slender body, fair porcelain skin, sleek jet black hair, and dainty features which were considered ideal to my family and Asian standards. But I also wanted to fit in and be accepted by my Caucasian friends and classmates, so I would tan my skin (despite my family’s resistance), add blonde streaks and tease my hair, and try to present myself as close as possible to the “popular” girls at my predominantly white schools. Colorism has always run deep within the Asian society. Darker, tanned skin is associated with the lower working class, while fairer, porcelain skin is seen as ideal, and belonging to a higher class and wealth bracket. Unfortunately many people belonging to naturally fair skin groups (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, etc.) would look down upon those of naturally darker skin (Vietnamese, Philippinx, Cambodians, etc.) though skin color does not and should not determine one’s status or life experiences. This false narrative of beauty we’ve been led on to believe has lured us to buy skin whitening creams with a perfectly fair Chinese or Korean model on the box, and continually question our own beauty. As an American, I was also drawn to what was considered perfect through their lens. I was always jealous of the girls with blonde flowing locks and bright blue eyes, while I was left with my dark hair and small features. Growing up in the Midwest, I did not have many faces I could relate to and there wasn’t a lot of representation in Hollywood at this time. I couldn’t appreciate my Chinese heritage, and tried to whitewash myself as much as I could, so that I could be fully accepted by my peers. I was so distracted by the perception of others that I never took the time to admire how truly beautiful I was. After years of struggling with my idea of beauty, I am coming to terms that no matter what society, my family, or our culture says, I am beautiful and so are you. Beauty comes in all forms; all shapes, sizes, colors, and perfect imperfections. Stop obsessing over these beauty standards and comparing yourself to others. It’s easier said than done, but it is possible to completely fall in love with yourself and be comfortable in your own skin. Start by thanking your body instead of criticizing it. Write down the features or parts you love, and learn to embrace the ones that you do not. Speak to yourself like you would to a friend that was feeling insecure about their flaws. You are beautiful as you are, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. #WeAreMoreThanYellow

Reposted from A-Doc I’ve killed nearly every house plant I’ve ever tried to raise. Though I come from a lineage of farmers on my mother’s side, I was an urban dweller who knew little about tending to plants. For women of my Korean grandmother’s generation, gardening and foraging for wild edibles were a part of their daily lives. But I grew up in the American suburbs of manicured lawns and trimmed hedges. I rarely touched the soil. I bought vegetables from stores in plastic bags—the ones that will probably take 2,000 years to disintegrate. During the COVID-19 shutdown in South Korea, the second country to get hit with a critical mass of cases, I reflected on how I have been living so disconnected from nature as I watched the skies clear. I was a part of the problem. And surely, this virus was a call-to-action from Mother Earth. In Busan, the second largest city in Korea, where I currently live, I see women picking wild plants in the mountains—something my grandmother used to do. I am reminded how my current lifestyle, which usually involves being plugged into a phone or a laptop, is so far removed from my agrarian epigenetic roots. Ironically, it was my grandmother whose sacrifices brought my parents to the U.S. in the 1960s and later, my family to a life in the upper middle class suburbs of Miami. For her, having material possessions and driving cars were marks of success. Living close to the earth—raising vegetables and picking herbs— in her lifetime was the definition of poverty. In many ways, COVID-19 was showing us how much we have to lose if we are not mindful of what we take from nature without caring for it. I felt pressed to learn how to keep a plant alive and reconnect with nature. Putting flesh to trees and soil activates certain biomarkers in the body, I learned. The microbes in soil boost your immune system. I walked barefoot in the grasses of Geumnyeongsan. I even hugged a tree. I found myself germinating the seeds of a persimmon, a common Korean fruit. My family used to have a persimmon tree in the yard of my childhood home in Seoul and I remember my 60-something great grandmother climbing it. So after three weeks when my seeds triumphantly sprouted green leaves, I immediately thought of her. This pandemic is nature’s way of telling humans that we are out of sync with nature and that each of us at a spiritual level must commit to living more harmoniously with nature. I believe we as humans, particularly those of us who live in First World countries, have a moral obligation to reflect upon and to address how our individual behaviors are affecting planetary issues, like global warming, the widespread extinction of animal species, and the chemical pollution of the oceans. This pandemic carved out the time for us to reflect and change. When one person on one part of the globe gets infected with a virus, that infection changes the world. Can we reverse that? If one person in the world commits to changing their individual behavior, can that commitment change the entire world? We are all connected, whether you want to believe it or not. Pearl J. Park is an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Busan, South Korea. In particular, she is passionate about telling the untold stories of the disempowered. Her interest is in harnessing the power of film to highlight important civil and human rights issues. Her first feature documentary was among the first to portray the experience of mental illness from an Asian American perspective. Currently, she is working on a short film about her great uncle, a former activist and political prisoner Noh Wontae, who participated in pivotal student protests during a dictatorship in the 1960s, which then paved the way for the democratization of Korea. She is a member of the New Jersey State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and is a former adjunct instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) in New York City. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pearljpark/

Reposted from A-Doc At home in Los Angeles under quarantine, I find myself craving the comfort of the classic Sichuan dishes my mom cooked growing up, like pock-marked woman tofu (mapo tofu). The only problem is, I hate cooking, and the thought of doing it everyday for the foreseeable future fills me with an inexplicable rage. My mom is a great cook. She has a gift for balancing natural flavor with the fragrant chilies and peppercorn of my birthplace, Chongqing, China. She didn’t go to college and worked since she was in her late teens. After we immigrated to Canada, she worked as a cashier for the iconic Canadian donut shop, Tim Hortons. On top of her full-time job outside the home, she cooked for her family every single day of her life. After long shifts on her feet, my mom would come home and make dinner. Still wearing her uniform and smelling like donut grease, she’d walk into our kitchen, put on an apron and get to work—again. While my mom cooked, I was lost in my books, my only goal to excel in school. An artist hustling to make a name for himself, my dad would be locked in his garage studio, painting. Our absence from the kitchen enraged my mom, though she never voiced it directly. All I remember is her profound anger, even as I relished her delicious food. My dad’s studio was humble yet sacred. My mom’s kitchen was a resentful place that was never her own. She was always beholden to others’ well-being, swallowing her words in a society where your worth is only valid if you claim it out loud. Over the years, her cooking came to represent a devil’s bargain to be a second class citizen. Now, seeking the comfort of her dishes but unable to cook them myself, I’m faced with a hard truth: in my quest to succeed as a creative person, I’ve devalued my own mother and upheld the patriarchy. As if cooking her dishes is atonement, I look up a recipe online for mapo tofu. I push myself to focus on the moment, the tactile sensation of a pinch of peppercorn, the sting in my nostrils. A scattering of garlic later, the wok is speaking to me. My intuition takes over. I share some pictures of my Sichuan dishes on our family WeChat thread. My mom replies, “你终于晓得啷个过日子了/ You finally know how to live.” Why I (Yu Gu) wrote the piece: In strange ways, this pandemic has both exacerbated my generational traumas as well as created space to confront them. I hope this story of my family can contribute to a larger collective Asian American consciousness that is resilient and unafraid to reconsider harmful values. YU GU is a multinational filmmaker and visual artist whose award-winning films explore the clash between individuals and systems of power. Her latest feature documentary, "A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem," world-premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival in competition. Variety hailed the film as, “Defiant...a tale of injustice that should speak to many.” Following screenings at over 15 film festivals, two jury awards and a college impact tour across the United States, the film will be broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens and released digitally in January 2021. Yu co-directed the feature documentary, "Who is Arthur Chu?" (Slamdance 2017, Hot Docs 2017, CAAMfest 2017 Centerpiece). Praised as “Raw, unfiltered and poignant” by Indiewire, the documentary won two festival grand jury awards and was broadcast on World Channel in 2018. She is directing "Interior Migrations," an experimental project documenting the memories of migrant workers in Canada. The first 3-channel short documentary from this project premiered at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s "Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood" exhibit and participated in "The Public – Land and Body," a site-specific installation in Toronto. Yu’s work is supported by the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Tribeca Film Institute, Points North Institute, Hedgebrook, and California Humanities. She was a directing fellow with Firelight Media and Film Independent and was awarded Best Emerging Filmmaker at the 2019 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Yu received her MFA in film production from the University of Southern California and a BA from the University of British Columbia. She is a lecturer at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film & Media Arts and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Yu is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Film Fatales and the Asian American Documentary Network.

Reposted from A-Doc The day the pandemic became mainstream, we also got a new vocabulary. Phrases like “social distancing,” “non-essential businesses,” “flatten the curve,” “pandemic unemployment assistance” all filled our virtual town halls. But the one that hit our house of four post-grad Asian-Americans hardest was “shelter-in-place.” As Los Angeles’ entertainment industry shuttered overnight, our household’s collective income disappeared. How could we shelter-in-place if we didn’t know if we could even stay in our home? As content creators without massive safety nets, what could we do? Like many other twenty year old freelancers without therapists, we turned to Instagram for emotional support and found out that we weren’t alone. Unión de Vecinos, a chapter of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, was broadcasting live, doing a socially-distanced demonstration at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights right down the street. Tenants have unions? We threw a case of bottled water in the car and joined the demonstration. Soon enough we were signed up on the newsletter, group text, and sat in on the next online meeting. By the next week, I was scouring the internet about the city’s eviction moratorium, sitting in on Zoom calls being translated from Spanish to English, joining several committees under the #FoodNotRent campaign, motivating neighbors to keep their rent money to demand rent forgiveness, and prepared our own letter to our landlord. As a household, we were emboldened to join the fight for housing justice in our own backyard. We recognized that others’ needs for affordable housing and services are much more dire than our own. Boyle Heights’ predominantly Latinx community has been fighting this fight for generations. Our household’s alliance with our neighborhood reminds me of the United Farm Workers in the 1960s and the interracial coalition between Filipinos and Mexican laborers in Delano. This struggle is interracial, long term, and worth fighting for. When we do our biweekly outreaches, flyering, and banner drops, we honor those ancestors. It feels strange to say that I’ve never felt more at home than when we could lose our own. We know we are not alone. Organizations like CCED (Chinatown Community for Equitable Development), KTownForAll, and tenants union chapters in South Central, VyBe (Vermont y Beverly), and Hollywood allowed us to get to know Los Angeles in the most important way: people fighting for the places they love and where they deserve to feel safe. My household was on rent strike for months this year. I don’t think that the conversation of housing insecurity is talked about nearly as much as it should be. I wrote this story because opportunities to learn and uplift our communities don’t have obvious borders, and it’s difficult to be aware of these things if you don’t feel safe or supported. Going through what I did and writing this piece was a statement to myself that my community is my home, and it’s worth fighting for. Justin Ricafort is a Filipino-American writer, filmmaker, and game designer whose work bridges community, advocacy, and modern myth making. Justin graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a Film/Media major and an Ethnic Studies minor in 2018. During college, he was a Programming Intern at Pacific Arts Movement’s San Diego Asian Film Festival and was promoted to Guest Services Assistant Coordinator. After college, Justin worked as a Production Assistant on a variety of film, television, and media productions including Disneyland’s inaugural Galaxy’s Edge launch, the Amazon web series Bulge Bracket, and several independent features in post-production. Justin is also an avid game designer, actively exploring the indie game space and lead designing "The Everyone Shares One Butt Game" board game which was nominated for IndieCade’s 2020 Virtual Anywhere and Everywhere Festival. He is also a contributing film, games, and culture writer at From the Intercom, a website covering a variety of Anglo-Asian media. In 2019, Justin was selected as part of Visual Communications’ 2020 Armed with a Camera Fellowship as one of ten Asian-American fellows set to write and direct their own short film projects.

Reposted from Banana Writers In 1966, I was born in Auckland, New Zealand (NZ). My mother had come to NZ to give birth and have the baby adopted before returning to her country of residence. My parents who had already adopted a Chinese toddler from a HK orphanage sent to NZ in 1963, received a phone call from the Catholic Society: "We’ve got another one here—will you take her?" And so it happened. I was 10 days old, with a "head the size of an orange." Mum and Dad were at an age when they really should have been taking it easy—yet here was child number 10. I am now 48 years old. I am 100% ethnic Chinese. I had always assumed I was part something else, as my face does not look entirely "Chinese." I have been asked if I am a local in countries right through Southeast Asia, the subcontinent and even in Egypt. Weird. I came to Australia in 2003 after living in the U.K. I had looked for my mother before leaving NZ in 1988, but I could not gain access to my records being under 21 and was discouraged from trying further. My adoptive mother: Mum ("adoptive" is so negative) suggested I write to the woman who administered the adoption process many years later (while I was in the U.K.), so I did. The woman was elderly, very kind and sweet but utterly discouraging, unhelpful and just wrong about trying to trace my birth mother. Whether it was her own beliefs or those of the church I cannot say. I do believe she felt she was acting in the best interests of everyone at heart. But if I heeded those letters, I would not have found my mother. She said that no good would come of me trying to trace my birth mother. For whatever reason my mother gave me up, those wounds should not be reopened and cause distress to both parties. She had made assumptions that my mother had come from an impoverished background or may have been a sex worker who had little choice about her child. With that came the likelihood of illiteracy and also the difficulty of trying to trace someone possibly living in a country with poor records. I understand the sentiment behind letting "sleeping dogs lie." However, I didn’t want to leave it there—I was lucky enough to be born in a country where record keeping was accurate. The fact that my mother made a journey from another country all those years ago to give birth was also not lost on me. I just felt I had a decent chance of getting some sort of closure. In 2004, I wrote again to the registry of births deaths and marriages in NZ. Within a week I had a name and a phone number of a relative. I called the number the same night I received the letter and was redirected to my birth mother’s number by the elderly woman on the other end of the phone—who had no idea who I was! By then, I had figured that no one in the family might have known about me—after all, my mother was sent away to hide the birth. I also realised that if she had a family (likely to be Chinese), then the last thing she would want is to have an adult daughter she gave up long ago, making her presence felt. I called. A woman answered. I stammered. I asked for the name I was given in the letter, she replied that it was she. I stammered again. Suddenly I blurted out: “I think I am your daughter” (yeh, real smooth Gab). There was a long silence. A million thoughts raced through my head—but most of all: “Oh sh*t, now I’ve done it—she’s going to hang up and I’ve ruined it all.” Finally she spoke: “What do you want?” Dear readers, all I can say was that I got lucky. I could sense the fear on the other end of the phone: fear of discovery, but there was much emotion too. Who knows what had happened to her in 1965-6 to make a journey by herself to a faraway place in a time when she needed her own mother and family most? I was quick to reassure her that I wanted nothing but to get to know her without upsetting her life. So, we started corresponding by letter and bit by bit over several weeks I pieced together our story. It was grim. Trying to square this away with my "white and righteous" logic, I was outraged and angry but I know that the world is a different place to what it was in 1965. One day, a few months later, I met her. I don’t think I am alone when I say that as a child I had an imaginary "real" mother: she was beautiful, she had a name of my invention and she was the person I wanted to meet in the entire world. When I think back on it now, the name, the looks and features I had picked out for her—well, they were all English and white! Thinking back, the mental image I’d built of my birth mother disintegrated as soon as we started communicating. We spoke a few times by telephone, shared some photographs and emails so I revised my impression of her very quickly—but to what I cannot say. On the day I met her, I was so nervous. I was about to meet a complete stranger who had occupied my thoughts almost daily for as long as I could remember. Here was my dream: to meet my mother, to look at another face and see my own. I’d rehearsed how I was going to behave, how I would sound, and what I would say to her. I wanted to show her and tell her so much. None of this actually happened! I saw her from across the street. I ran over to her, we tentatively said "hello" and I burst into an uncontrollable fit of tears (yup, real smooth episode #2), then in between gulps, apologised profusely for the scene. I don’t know why I did that. I can only think that I had built this day up in my head for so long and I had been so certain about every little detail—yet nothing was how I imagined. I didn’t know what to say or it all came out in a rush. I sat with my eyes glued to this person: “Who was she?” My mother looked like any other Chinese woman of a certain age I have ever brushed past in a grocery store or on the street. I had nothing in common with her yet in other ways—everything I had was hers. And yes, I am ashamed to confess that there was a moment of panic when it sunk in to my banana brain: “Oh. My. God. You are CHINESE!” We ate some bad food at a bad Chinese cafe and talked, shared our stories, laughed—and found we laughed at the same things. And so our relationship began. What I learnt from this experience: 1) I learnt empathy. My experience pales in comparison to hers and the resulting pain and sorrow she has carried in secret for all those years. My mother always thought I would hate her for giving me up. How could I do that after everything she went through? I know full well that if I had stayed with her, life would be very different for us both. She would never be able to marry and have the family she has. I would have very little or no education, few options and life would be grim. 2) My mother is my mother, my family is my family. My mother gave me life but my family is my family as I believe they made me who I am. I learnt my artistic temperament and life view from my adoptive mother: my mum. The way I cook, the way I make beds or don’t clean the house was taught to me by my adoptive mother: Mum. Her approach to life is the one I followed. My bro who gifted me his bike when he outgrew it (I promptly crashed it into a parked car); the bro who helped me with my maths homework (heck—being Chinese I was supposed to be GOOD at maths), the sisters who handmade so many of my clothes, the sister who instilled a love of reading and who influences my book lists to this day, my 23 nieces and nephews who I am nurturing relationships with as adults—they’re my family, these are my values. This is my culture. I have stories of Great Uncle Albert at Gallipoli and I have stories of Dad handing out bananas to enthralled kids on a train while on shore leave in Britain during WWII. I remember playing ladies with Mum when she went to afternoon tea with her friends: crossed ankles, the smell of soap and perfume, good china and cake. These are the stories I have in my memory—not ones of water buffalo, rice fields or tropical market places. It is [sic] 10 years since I first made contact. Things are progressing very slowly and close friends have expressed surprise at the way I have handled the situation, given my usual "Sledgehammer between the eyes" approach to most things in life. Forty-nine years of hurt cannot be undone quickly. There are other people in the mix to consider and at this moment in time we are working on our relationship long distance and enjoying the ride. How much of our adult persona is nurture vs. nature? I believe some things are hereditary. For example, my parents sent me to art school because they heard my mother was artistic. My mother did paint in the traditional Chinese style I found out later, but did not have any formal training. I went to art school in NZ, in the '80s. The training was very much the "European school" style, and my tutors were surprised to see me throwing classic Chinese pottery shapes on a wheel though I was not familiar with this at the time. I also cook the best fried rice of anyone I know—I really am not sure where that came from as I swear to this day that the only rice we had at our table was rice pudding. 3) Let go of the anger. Sure, growing up in white NZ in the '60s, '70s, and '80s was no picnic. I still feel a stab of absolute rage when I hear a: “F*** off back to your own country” or a racial slur which is depressingly common even today. But if I think back without the black-coloured spectacles: well, other ethnic kids, overweight kids, tall kids or disadvantaged kids—they got hell in other ways. And I got out of it pretty well—my life has definitely not been a sad one. I’m still learning to control the rage but once that process started, all this positive creativity started to flow. 4) Change my own thinking. I make a joke sometimes about meeting my mother for the first time and looking through pictures of her family and just thinking in my head: “Oh. My. Good. God…you are ASIAN!” I am working on reining in my own assumptions and prejudices to accept people as they are—though I find myself asking people: “Where are you from?”—the exact same question that drove me into a rage for years. 5) Appreciate the chance I was given at life. Today, I am working towards becoming a professional artist and the relationship I am building with my mother has been instrumental. My work is full of joy. It is my little way of contributing to the world as well as honouring my parents and the woman who gave me life. For someone who really shouldn’t be here and was a product of horrible circumstance I did pretty well. If I can bring a little happiness through my art then I’m doing my job. Oh yes, my birth mother and I both have the same wacky sense of humour and great legs, but we still argue over who is taller! Thanks for reading! Connect with Gabby: Website Instagram Facebook Pinterest

Reposted from Medium DEAR…? To be honest, after the Atlanta shootings, I thought about writing this letter to the shooter, to our allies, or someone else? I struggled with whom this letter could be addressed to. In the shooting’s aftermath, hearing from many Asian sisters, who are friends, collaborators and quite frankly like blood sisters to me, I realized whom this letter really needed to be addressed to. Working WITH badass womxn all over the globe, whom I consider to be like blood sisters too, I thought this letter could be addressed to them and all sisters affected by six of our own Asian sisters being taken from us. SPEAK INWARDS -> OUTWARDS Believe me, it hasn’t always been easy for me to speak my truth. In fact, I spent most of my 38 years on this planet telling people what they wanted to hear. I got so darn good at it, it replaced my own true voice. It wasn’t until I published my first book, "WITH vs AT: Two Prepositions That Changed My Life," and my brother-in-law said to a family member, “It’s nice to see Kyla finally speaking her truth,” that I realized how much of my own voice had been silenced by my inner people pleaser. We’ve all got some inner critic, inner people pleaser, inner something who says, “Who are you to speak out?” But when we speak inwards WITH these inner voices, speaking outwards becomes just a little bit easier. PUT YOURSELF ON THE COVER I was pretty purposeful about putting a picture of myself on the cover of my first book. And not just any picture: a picture of me without make-up, one that reflected my personality, one that showed my double chin (something I’ve always been super self-conscious about, but this was a first step in accepting it). Moreover, on a macro level, I didn’t see a whole bunch of authors in the personal development industry who looked like me. It was time to change all that. YOU DESERVE TO BE ON “STAGE” After my TED@Seoul rehearsal went south, and like really south, I ended up crying on the streets of Gangnam in broad daylight. I called my good friend and Asian sister, MK, who said (and I will never forget her words), “You deserve to be on that stage. You were chosen for a reason. You have something important to say.” You will be happy to hear, MK certainly was, that I took her words to heart. And whenever I’m terrified of getting up on “stage” in front of a lot of people who don’t look like me or being the only one on “stage” who looks like me, I recall her words. Whether it’s a “stage” you’re facing or life, I think we could all save a little space for MK’s words in our hearts. TRANSCEND FEAR FOR THE SISTERHOOD We humans are hardwired to be paralyzed by fear. It’s a safety mechanism to “protect” us. But what if it isn’t about us? Bear with me for a second. When you transcend fear, self-doubt, or anything scary, you show others what is possible for THEM. This is based on a term in psychology: SELF-TRANSCENDENCE. Here’s an example. When I was about to release my first book out into the world, I was paralyzed by fear: What if no one reads it? What if people judge me? What if people make fun of me? The what-ifs fell on me like a stack of bricks burying me beneath them. Fast Forward. Right before one of my biggest in-person workshops ever (think 400 people), a young Korean woman came up to me clutching my book close to her heart and said, “I just wanted to say, I’ve never quite seen a book like this that talks about Korea or someone who looks like you on the cover.” Drop the self-transcendence mic. I SEE YOU. I HEAR YOU. I SUPPORT YOU. Sister, you’re not alone. You never have been. There’s an entire sisterhood out there who wants you to write to them. There’s an entire sisterhood out there who can’t wait to see you speak inwards so they can hear you speak outwards WITH them. Their hearts are beating a little faster when they see you on the cover of a book, a magazine, on TV, or on a “stage.” And they’re inspired over and over again when they see you, hear you, support you transcending fear to speak your truth, because they can see what’s possible for them in you, dear sister. I am part of that sisterhood and so are you. I love you, sister. Love, Kyla, your fellow Asian sister (Dedicated to Daoyou Feng, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, and Xiaojie Tan.) Cover photo credit: Canva

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the 11th in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Among the first wave of transracial adoptees from Korea to the United States, Alice Stephens shares her journey to the truth of the origin of her life. Her story enlightens us to the fact that adoptees’ lives are closely intertwined with the political turmoil of Korean’s modern history beyond our imagination. Born in 1967 to a Korean mother and an American soldier father, I was one of the first generation of inter-country adoptees. Indeed, inter-country adoption began because of mixed-race children like me. We were considered as [sic] a blight upon the bloodline, unworthy of being Korean. According to the system of census taking that existed then, in order to be entered into the family registry, the child had to be fathered by a Korean man. Those of us with foreign fathers were unable to be registered; and therefore, ineligible for essential government services, such as education and medical care. From the beginning, the bureaucracy conspired to erase us from existence. Ironically, women like my mother were crucial to Korea’s struggling economy, bringing in desperately needed U.S. dollars. Though prostitution was ostensibly illegal, the government not only tolerated but abetted it. U.S. military and Korean local and national government officials coordinated efforts to regulate prostitution and monitor sex workers for sexually transmitted diseases. Both countries saw the sex trade as vital to keeping the massive contingent of U.S. troops in the country, their presence essential to the national economy. But the government’s profit-taking of these women’s bodies did not stop there. When the women had babies, another business opportunity presented itself. Americans, like Henry Holt and Pearl S. Buck, offered to take these unwanted children away. It turned out that white couples in wealthy nations would pay money for them. But how to make the export of children morally palatable, both for the sending and receiving nations? By reframing the narrative from that of poverty, prostitution, and military colonialism into one of rescue and redemption. By extirpating the past, doctoring documents, and rebranding the children as orphans. With this influx of Oriental orphans, adoption in the Global North went from shameful secret to inspirational story of the human capacity to love even across racial lines (the vast majority of inter-country adoptions have been into white families). I was part of that changing narrative when my adoption story was featured in a national magazine under the headline “Instead of Their Own: The heartwarming story of one young couple’s ingenious answer to the population explosion.” But, I was not an orphan. I had a mother, and a father, too, who had returned to America three months before I was born. My mother sent him my baby photos, but she must have known it was futile because shortly after I was born, she relinquished me to Korean Social Services, Inc. (KSS). For the first 51 years of my life, all that I knew of my origins was to be found in my KSS, case study. A mere three pages, this sacred text revealed my Korean name, description (eyes are Caucasian shaped), and date and location of birth; as well as was my mother’s name, physical description, city of birth, brief biography (ran away from abusive school teacher husband), and her summary of my birth father (“SP/4 in the U.S. Army…sturdy built…common law husband”). His nationality is noted as “Caucasian-American.” It wasn’t until I received the results of a DNA kit in 2018 that I began to question the details of the KSS case study. Turns out, my birth father was not Caucasian but Mexican American. I was simultaneously thrilled to discover Native American and Latino roots and devastated to know that part of my heritage has been taken from me forever. The following year, I visited KSS and was shocked to discover that my mother’s name was an alias, the Korean equivalent of Jane Doe. I knew then I could believe none of the information in the study, not my Korean name (the first name distinctive for being monosyllabic), not my birth date (suspiciously, the same date the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed), not the location of my birth. The more closely I inspected my adoption documents, the more discrepancies I noticed. The date of my relinquishment varies from document to document. My birth place is described as Uijeongbu, Seoul and Andong. My health document is a single piece of paper with no medical statistics. Most damning of all, though, is the state-issued “orphan hojuk,” falsely declaring my parents as unknown. My mother was known. She relinquished me. At KSS, I saw a document bearing her fingerprint in the same vermilion ink used for official seals. Decades after the first children were adopted out, the Korean court system is being forced to confront the many legal issues that have arisen due to dubious adoption practices. The country is forced to accept back adoptees who have been deported from their home countries because their adoptive parents neglected to naturalize them. Last year, when I inquired at the Korean Consulate in Washington, D.C., about regaining Korean citizenship, I was told that the first step in applying for Korean citizenship was to renounce my Korean citizenship. From the accumulating evidence of my own search, as well as anecdotes from other adoptees, it’s clear that Korean adoption policies were made on an ad hoc basis, driven by private adoption agencies, with mixed-race babies like me the test cases for an industry that would eventually flourish to include full-blooded Koreans born to married couples. Because of the opacity of the adoption system, we will never know how many babies died in the care of orphanages, how many children were relinquished without the agreement of their parents, or even how many children were sent away for adoption. Unlike Korea’s other major exports, adoptees are human beings. Cars, phones, and refrigerators do not wonder about their origins, but human beings have a deep, innate need to know from whence they come. The narrative of adoption is being rewritten once again as adoptees return to Korea to search for family, culture and identity in ever increasing numbers. We are demanding answers, reform, legal equality, and our basic human right to know our origins. There are now three generations of us. We will not stop coming back. By declaring us orphans, the Korean government sought to erase us from their national history. By searching for our roots, we are taking the truth back. Alice Stephens was adopted by an American couple in 1968. She is the author of the novel, “Famous Adopted People,” essayist, editor of Bloom, and writes book reviews for the Washington Independent Review of Books. A follow-up about her novel is also available this month. Cover photo: Courtesy of Alice Stephens.

Reposted from Tiger Lily Stories I was raised with the understanding that I was lucky to have parents who loved me enough to let me go. To allow me the opportunity for a better life. It was preferable to think in terms of what I had gained rather than what I had lost. But loss implicates something that I had recognized as mine. I once had a dream that was almost like a memory. I was sitting on a metal staircase outside of a grey building, the tips of my fingers smudged with black rust. It was cold yet I was only wearing a pale pink shirt with a faded daisy right in the middle. This girl that was me, and yet not me, was 2 years old and alone. The grey building was my orphanage. The surrounding area was blurred, almost as if that building existed outside of any city, any country, any sense of reality. In the years of telling my adoptive parents about this “memory,” I would recall how there was a part of me that knew they were coming. Though I sat unattended on those stairs and unconnected to anyone in China, there was a certainty in me that my state of solitude was only temporary. That I would soon belong somewhere. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized I was not remembering, but dreaming. Internalizing and reproducing what my parents would come to tell me over the years. That I was always meant to be found by them. That I was always meant to be a part of this family. I was born in the Hunan Province of China in 1997. The year of the Fire Ox. Seventeen years after the One Child Policy was first introduced by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Wrapped in a blanket outside of a post office with only Youlan, February 11, 1997 written on a piece of paper. At 3 months old, those few characters were my only possession. One strong breath of wind and my sole piece of identity could have easily peeled away, the paper holding the history of my life in a few thin strokes travelling without me. This is the story that was told to me about how my life began. I still do not know if it is true. China’s One Child Policy was an attempt at reducing population growth. A chain reaction from years of population control, one catalyst being Mao Zedong’s initial encouragement to increase China’s populace in the '60s. More people meant a stronger country. This ideology led to propaganda that denounced contraceptives and the population grew at an unsupportable rate. The economy and living standards were threatened and reverse actions took effect. Forced sterilization. Fines. Abortion. Women had no more say in the way their country handled their bodies than a flower petal has in the direction the wind blows it. I remember learning about China’s history from its dynasties to Mao’s Cultural Revolution in high school. Big events. China’s strong leaders and notable laws written in bold in my textbooks. I never thought about it on a microscopic scale. Never considered how these events would lead to the policy that ultimately determined the beginning of my life. We weren’t tested on the mothers who were taken from their homes and forced to abort their children. Never considered the cultural preference for boys and the subsequent acts of infanticide and abandonement when families had one girl too many. Never understood the hand that supposedly wrote my name. As much as my adoptive parents wanted to fill me with love, I couldn’t shake the belief that I started my life unwanted. Perhaps not unwanted in the personal sense of being uncared for or unloved. I will never know if I was given up because of a preference for a brother, because of poverty, because I was too sick. But I believed I was unwanted in some way and at times it used to make me feel quite alone. I was raised with the understanding that I was lucky to have parents who loved me enough to let me go. To allow me the opportunity for a better life. It was preferable to think in terms of what I had gained rather than what I had lost. But loss implicates something that I had recognized as mine. From the very beginning, I cannot even claim if the city I was found in is the city I am from. I cannot claim if my name was truly my name. If I had one living parent or two. A brother. A sister. Growing up, I didn’t know about the politics in China or the reasons why my birth parents could leave no information for me. All I knew was that I had been left with nothing but a name and a birth date. I recently learned that the story my parents were given about how I was found could have been a lie. In the early '90s, China began allowing international adoption and so there were more people eligible to adopt. There were people who initially wanted to help abandoned children that became traffickers, bringing them to orphanages for a price. Some families that violated the One Child Policy and hid their children were fined and government officials would abduct the child. When people from other countries came to China, the orphanages would often fabricate how the children were found. They would say, "she was found in a box at a park. A school. A police station." And so, the time before I was brought to my orphanage was as blank as a watered down stone. The little information my family was given about me was perhaps no information at all. When I was younger, sometimes not knowing didn’t concern me. I didn’t think of myself in terms of being Chinese or even American. I was just a girl learning fractions, going on playdates, and living with my family. Yet every time someone pointed out a small difference between my parents and me, I felt a tangible divide. It is easy to forget there is any difference at all until it is noticed by others. One summer when I was six years old, my camp counselor asked me if I was Asian. I knew I was Chinese, but I had never heard of this blanket term. It did not occur to me that if I was from China, I could also be considered to be part of a larger racial category. I did not associate with being labeled as anything, so I told him I wasn’t. When I was six, my camp counselor asked if I was Asian / I said no and could not understand why he started laughing / Wanting to appear grown up, as if I too was in on the joke, I laughed with him / Each hiccup a breath closer to this word I did not recognize / He ruffled his hand through my hair, the way my dad would to our neighbor’s dog / you’re Asian / I asked him how he knew and / because your face looks Asian / His chest swelled / melon sized / when he said this, as if proud / For the rest of that summer I told people / I’m Asian / before I said my own name. When I was in kindergarten, my teacher told my mom how much I looked like her. Even then I knew how ridiculous that sounded as my mom is an Irish American redhead and I am anything but. It was almost as if she was trying to compensate for any difference by asserting we were the same. On the opposite end, there were those who assumed no correlation. In middle school, I worked at an equestrian camp with a friend who had red hair and freckled skin, akin to my mom. Once when my mom was picking us up, a counselor nudged my friend and told her her mom was here to get her. Notably confused, we looked around and saw my mom waving at us from her car. It was an understandable mistake and amused us at the time, but I always remembered the quick assumption. I felt a twinge of isolation in the way she had paired us in her head, how she cut off the possibility that I was in fact my mother’s daughter. In my freshman year of high school, I had made friends with two girls from China. When I transitioned from a day student to a boarding student, I started to spend more time with them. They tried to include me with their group of friends, but in some ways I would feel like an intruder when I was with them. My friends would constantly have to remind the group to speak English when I was around and I could tell it was a source of annoyance for some of them. I couldn’t relate to the way they were raised, the food they preferred, or even the language spoken. Eventually I phased myself out of the group and lost touch with the two girls I had befriended. I felt ashamed that I had not taken Chinese classes when I was younger when my parents offered to enroll me, that I didn’t take more interest in Chinese culture, that I always stayed in my bubble of American friends. I convinced myself that I wasn’t “Asian” enough to connect with the Chinese students at my school and so I joined my friends in viewing them as inherently “other.” It wasn’t until I was older that I started to reflect on my own internalized racism. I never believed my friends were maliciously racist or actively excluded the Asian students at my school. It was just “normal” that the Asian kids usually socialized with the other Asian kids. Some of my peers referred to the boys’ dorm where most of the Asian students lived as “Chinatown.” We would joke about how they would always have bulk packs of ramen stacked in their rooms or how I was so bad at math unlike the other Chinese students. I didn’t understand that these stereotypes, as “harmless” as they seemed, were a form of microaggressive racism. It never meant much to me because I didn’t necessarily identify with the things we joked about. It was easier to convince myself that I didn’t belong with that group of Chinese girls if I disassociated with everything that might have connected me to them. If I told myself that their culture, their history, their lives were not relevant to mine and my group of friends. With virtually no connection to my culture or definite information about where I came from, I transitioned from resenting my biological parents to feeling nothing towards them. They were as abstract a concept to me as a distant relative who passed before I was born. Any curiosity I had about my parents or what it meant to be Chinese disappeared throughout high school and most of college. Replaced by worries about drama between friends, how I would do on my next test, where I should go to school, and finding a part time job. Up until I was about 20, I hardly knew myself or what my real interests were, never mind having the capacity to truly understand or reflect on my adoption or the history that led to it. I had no desire to learn and was not mature enough to introspect on the components of my life that made me me. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much I’ve grown (not physically unfortunately, I’m still the same 5' 0" I was in seventh grade) and will continue to grow. My interests have expanded; I still love to write, but I find fulfillment in anything that will allow me to be creative or evolve. Photography. Shooting and editing videos. Fashion. Sewing. Learning. Without school, I must now take the initiative to educate myself in other ways. Reading. Watching documentaries. Going to poetry slams or listening to panel discussions. And with this growth, I’ve had to return to the beginning. To where I was born. To where I spent the first few years of my life where I was nobody’s daughter. I still struggle to find my place within the “transracial adoptee” and “Asian American” identities. It would be easy to resent my adoptive parents for not providing me with Asian role models or trying to actively immerse me in un-whitewashed aspects of Chinese culture when I was growing up, but I just didn’t want to explore my Chinese identity. For a long time, I rejected anything that would associate me with being “typically” Asian. My face already made me different enough and equated me with negative microaggressions I wanted to distance myself from. I didn’t think there was room for me to be both Asian and American. It seemed to me that identifying with one would conflict with the other. As I try to become more involved in Asian communities and connect with other adoptees, I’m starting to learn that one can be both. Natalie Pappas graduated from The New School in 2019 with a degree in Literary Studies and is currently living in New York City. She was adopted from the Hunan Province of China when she was 2 years old and continues to explore her adoptee and Asian American identity. She’s passionate about fashion, photography, and writing and hopes to pursue these interests in her creative and professional work.

Reposted from Pauline Park’s blog I was born in Korea in 1960 but left the country of my birth seven and a half months later, only "returning" for the first time over half a century later in the summer of 2015. At the time of my birth, Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world and had only begun its recovery from the devastation of the Korean War that ended in 1953; but the country I returned to at the age of 54 was the eleventh largest economy in the world, with large parts of its capital unrecognizable to those who knew it before the startling industrialization that transformed the southern half of the peninsula in the 1970s and 1980s. My adoptive parents were told that my birth mother died giving birth to my brother and me and that our birth father died before we were born. It was not until 1994, when I was reading a history of Korea, that the thought occurred to me that my birth father might have been among the thousands who died in a massive popular uprising led by students and workers in April 1960 that ousted Syngman Rhee (the dictator/president-for-life installed by the United States) from power and ushered in the short-lived Second Republic, so perhaps I was born to make revolution… The Republic of Korea’s brief experience of democracy ended abruptly when Park Chung-hee came to power in a military coup in May 1961. Of course, as an infant in an orphanage in Seoul, I was completely unaware of the tumultuous political drama that was the backdrop for my birth in 1960 and adoption in 1961, only a few weeks after Park Chung-hee’s coup d’état. In Korea, familial blood lines are of paramount importance and orphans rarely have the opportunities for advancement that those raised in families do. And as difficult as it still is to be openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered in contemporary South Korea, in the 1960s and 1970s, it would have been all the more difficult to be LGBT/queer; the prospects for a queer Korean growing up in an orphanage in Seoul in that area would have been dim indeed. For that reason and for many others, the flight in 1961 from Seoul to Tokyo on Northwest "Orient" Airlines and then onto Anchorage before landing at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago was the most consequential of my life; but it was only the first of many migrations—some across national borders, some state lines, and others across boundaries of sexuality, gender, religion and spirituality; that long trip from Korea in 1961 would begin a long process of self-discovery as well as exploration of the wider world. It is extremely unlikely that I would have survived infancy in that orphanage in Seoul, but had I lived, instead of growing up in a Korean orphanage, my brother and I grew up with a tall and balding Norwegian American father and a stout and devoutly Lutheran German American mother and her mother, who lived in the house until my senior year in high school. My parents were already well into middle age when they adopted my brother and me: my mother was born in 1916 and my father was born in 1912; my grandmother—as significant a figure in my childhood as my father—was born in 1888 and had grown up working the family farm in northern Wisconsin with her father after her mother’s untimely death. I had known no "homeland" other than the United States, but to strangers, I was a foreigner because I was Asian. Though I had never learned to speak Korean and had never lived in Korea since my adoption at the age of eight months, my Asian features defined my status as the "other," the foreigner, the outsider. When we went out in public, the striking physical differences between my adoptive parents and my brother and me made it impossible for others not to notice and our parents were constantly asked, “Whose children are they?” But that was life in an all-white neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee in the 1960s and 1970s; in fact, my brother and I were the only non-white children in our elementary school. Every December 7th, my brother and I were verbally harassed by the white kids at school. This happened more than twenty years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. "Chink" and "Jap" were hurled at us, and it made me feel ambivalent about my adoptive country. Because of this, I had a hard time thinking of myself as American; but without any opportunity to learn Korean and with none of the infrastructure of Korean culture camps like those now available to young Korean adoptees, I had no direct way of connecting to my birth culture, though I tried to do so through books; but there were none in our house on Korea—beyond encyclopedias with brief entries—and only one in the local branch library in our neighborhood; it was not until many years later that I would find books on Korea written for adults with much information about the country of my birth. My childhood was a relatively happy one but security abruptly turned to insecurity when our father died just before my brother and I turned 13, plunging the family into financial insecurity as well as mourning; and the inevitable emotional insecurity that most adolescents feel when puberty hits was multiplied exponentially in its effect by the sudden surge of masculinizing hormones which forced me to confront not only the increasingly obvious maleness of my body but the heavy imposition of the sex/gender binary on me. My first encounter with the sex/gender binary actually came on my very first day of school when I went off to kindergarten and came home to ask my mother if she would buy me a pair of stretch pants with stirrups that many of the girls were wearing. “But those are for girls,” she exclaimed, surprised at the request; it was at that moment that I realized that there were apparently two kinds of people in the world and that I had been assigned to the category "boy" without even being consulted. Nonetheless, however gendered I was in grade school, junior high and then high school enormously intensified the oppression of the gender assignment. And puberty brought the realization that I was attracted to other male bodies. In junior high and high school, English class and orchestra and chamber orchestra provided refuge from the generally oppressive school environment, gym class above all. My brother and I were placed in the advance placement classes, and we had some of the best teachers in our public schools because of that. My high school English teacher Miss Riley was the teacher I remember with the most fondness; in her class, we read English and American literature from William Shakespeare to Richard Brinsley Sheridan to Henry David Thoreau and it opened up a whole new world to me. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” inspired the Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—both of them lifelong sources of inspiration for me. In “Walden,” Thoreau wrote, “The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now…” That passage became a kind of literary and philosophical North Star for me, all the more so as I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in which I was raised, especially after the synod (the largest conservative Lutheran sub-denomination in the United States) was taken over by its fundamentalist wing around the time of my confirmation. I had never known any other home other than the house I grew up in, but just before turning 18, I left that house, never again to live there. Including the orphanage in Seoul from which I was adopted and the house in Milwaukee, I have lived in 25 different places in 13 different cities (Seoul, Milwaukee, Madison, London, Chicago, Champaign-Urbana, Berlin, Regensburg, Brussels, Paris, Lake Forest, and New York—Staten Island and then Queens) in six different countries (Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, and France) on three different continents (Asia, North America, and Europe). With each move came a subtle shift in my understanding of home and homeland. Milwaukee, my childhood home, was a working-class city of beer, bratwurst and bowling with a small town feel, despite its one and a half million residents. For the first three years of my adulthood, Madison would be home. Madison, the "Berkeley of the Midwest" and the center of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era, had a small but growing gay community when I first arrived in 1978. The Gay Center in the basement of a church on campus would be the site of my first coming out, as a gay male in my first semester at the University of Wisconsin. London represented the next shift in venue and identity and during my two years there, I first went out publicly dressed as a woman; it was the most liberating experience of my life. For the first time in my life, I was presenting myself as I saw myself to be. Despite my nervousness and to my surprise, I encountered few problems. At the same time that I was exploring my gender identity in public for the first time, my two years in London provided the opportunity to reconsider my national identity. I moved to Chicago in October 1983 and entered a career in public relations, but helping large corporations enhance their public image did not give me a sense of fulfillment, and so I decided to go back to graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When I finished my dissertation in December 1993, I discovered Foucault while taking a graduate seminar in political theory. Reading the work of this radical gay French theorist helped me rethink my lifelong identity complex. I had labored for years under the feeling that I was a "fake Korean," unable to live up to the expectations of others. In light of my reading of Foucault and other theorists, I came to understand that the pursuit of—or flight from—"Korean-ness" was doomed to failure from the start, since there was no "essence" of "Korean-ness" to pursue. I came to see myself as having a distinct identity as a Korean adoptee, neither ethnically Korean in the way that Koreans or recent Korean immigrants were nor even Korean American in the way that U.S.-born, English-speaking Korean Americans were. I have come to understand that I am not a "fake Korean" but rather a real Korean adoptee; above all, I am the real "me." And I no longer feel any need to apologize for my personal history or for a lack of Korean language proficiency. I can now locate "homeland" in a way that does not diminish my own sense of wholeness or authenticity. Becoming involved with the growing community of adult Korean adoptees has also been helpful in coming to terms with my identity as a transracial intercountry adoptee. Just as I came to reject the self-imposed label of "fake Korean" in favor of an accepting myself as Korean adoptee, I also came to understand transgender as distinct form of gender identity that challenged the sex/gender binary of "man/woman." I would eventually come to call myself a "male-bodied woman," a concept radical even within the transgender community, because I reject the assumption that the presence or absence of the penis determines my gender or gender identity. Addressing multiple oppressions has been challenging, of course; but being nested in multiple communities has also enabled me to engage in intersectional analysis not only through academic discourse and writing but also through lived experience and through a process of thinking through what it means to be an openly transgendered woman of Korean birth and American adoption in daily life. Ironically enough, being a member of multiple marginal communities has helped me see the striking parallels as well as the significant differences between oppression based on race, ethnicity and national origin on the one hand and sexual orientation and gender identity and expression on the other. At the same time, I have seen the pitfalls of projecting one’s own identity and experiences onto others as is so common in both the transgender community and the Korean adoptee community; to be an effective activist and advocate, it is important to be able to understand one’s own lived experience and speak from it while at the same time understanding and articulating the diversity of identity and experience in the marginalized communities of which one is a member. In fact, my move to Queens, New York in 1997 corresponded with the end of my academic career and the beginning of my activism and advocacy work in New York as well as my coming out as an openly transgendered woman. In January 1997, I worked with other Queens activists to co-found Queens Pride House, a small LGBT community center in the borough. In February 1997, I joined with other queer Koreans to co-found Iban/Queer Koreans of New York. And in June 1998, I worked with other transgender activists to co-found the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA). I now see myself as a transgendered Asian-American woman with a distinct identity as a Korean adoptee. I have gone from growing up in an all-white neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee to living up in Jackson Heights, which one demographer determined to be the most demographically diverse spot on earth; I am now truly at home living at the epicenter of global migration. While I am not a conventional "immigrant," having come to the United States as an infant, I have in an important sense experienced multiple migrations across race, sexuality and gender as well as across multiple national boundaries and linguistic communities. And I am still inspired by the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau, nowhere more so than by the great New England Transcendentalist’s conclusion to “Walden”: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings…” I have abjured a cabin passage below and have instead gone before the mast upon the deck of the world; I can now see the moonlight amid the mountains. Pauline Park is the chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) and president of the board of directors of Queens Pride House. She led the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002 and participated in the first US LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine in 2012. Park has written and spoken widely on issues of race and nationality as well as LGBT identity.

Reposted from The Korea Times This is the 13th article in an adoption series. Some adoptees have echoed the previous article’s question, “What is the real reason this country cannot protect its own children?” To elaborate on this inquiry requires that the series broach another question: Is this country incapable of offering such protection, or is it resisting efforts to do so and refusing to take responsibility? Shifting away from the individual experiences of adoptees and beginning to address the state’s accountability is an important step in moving forward to rectify the “right of origin” for adoptees. — E.D. If, as the dominant narrative claims, transnational adoption is about rescuing war orphans, then the surge in inter-country adoption in the 1960s unravels such assertions. So let us drop the pretext of war orphans as an impetus. What about “economic” or “social” orphans? Then we must ask how poor is poor enough to warrant casting children from their own country on a massive scale with such persistence. As this series explored earlier, the immigration laws of the receiving countries spurred the trend of adopting foreign babies by employing an array of weak regulations that facilitated inter-country adoptions. Concurrently, Korea (later followed by other sending countries) responded by initiating corresponding measures to move children abroad. The “pulling” effect from the receiving countries’ legislation, coupled with the favorable “pushing” effect from Korea’s laws and inter-country adoption system, explains the reason for the sharp increase in the graph. Moreover, relevant global statistics and evidence reveal that transnational adoption stemmed from deliberate policy decisions of political leaders rather than from the consequences of external factors. This phenomenon is evident in the development of the Korean transnational adoption program that originated in the aftermath of the Korean War (1950-53). Although the government barely functioned enough to perform even the most basic tasks, it still managed to institute a program that targeted mixed-race children to send abroad for adoption. It began by issuing a presidential emergency order to permit transnational adoption, then established a government affiliated agency specifically dedicated to fulfilling the aims of this order. Mixed-race children fathered by foreign soldiers of the allied forces were tracked down, and their families solicited to place the children for overseas adoption. Unlike what many may assume, the majority of these children were living with their families not residing in orphanages. From 1955 to 1966, the number of children sent away reached 5,000, which attests to the priority this order occupied on the country’s policy agenda. The period of 1961-1979 served as a particularly crucial period for the systemization and entrenchment of inter-country adoption in Korea. During these two decades, the government enacted a legal framework exclusive to such adoptions, instituted specialized agencies to facilitate and perform adoptions, and devised a revenue scheme. It was not coincidental that the government took these measures after Korea’s first military coup d’etat in 1961. Legislative measure In 1961, General Park Chung-hee led a successful coup and founded a provisional body called the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, which he led as the chairman. The council wielded overarching power over the legislative, administrative and judicial bodies of Korea. While unconstitutional and autocratic, it enacted many of the fundamental laws that remain to this day. Until that point, most of the modern legal system remained underdeveloped and fragmented under Korea’s first government, which began in 1948. This council passed many basic laws without any parliamentary discussions or democratic procedures. The Orphan Adoption Special Procedure Act is a notable example. The Act derives neither from Korea’s traditional laws nor from any other country’s legislation. Instead, it was a product designed with primary economic aims. This intention is evident with the government mentioning that “sending orphans overseas is killing two birds with one stone since it brings 130 dollars per person [which was also the per capita income of that time] and saves welfare costs on the housing of orphans at the same time” (1965 National Assembly minutes). In other words, Korea’s inter-country adoption policy had a dual purpose—to simultaneously generate revenue while relieving the national budget of child welfare expenses. Infrastructure building With these aims in mind, the government introduced the necessary statutes and infrastructure to systematize the placement of children for overseas adoption. It authorized four agencies to carry out these tasks. Each of them signed deals with partner agencies in the receiving countries. This configuration set a clear division of labor with the agencies in the receiving countries overseeing duties related to prospective adoptive parents while the agencies in Korea managed those tasks related to adoptable babies. To ensure they had sufficient capacity, the Korean agencies secured control of a wide variety of childcare options, including orphanages, foster homes, and in-house facilities. Ironically, these arrangements would prove to be a major obstacle for the Korean government when it attempted to redirect its policy direction decades later. The provision of alternative forms of care for newborn babies has historically been concentrated under the control of the adoption agencies. Thus, the country never developed any substantial policies or programs to protect its own children by competent authorities. Consequently, the basic infrastructure of protecting and caring for babies remains in the hands of private bodies. Revenue scheme of private adoption agencies Though the adoption agencies proclaim themselves as child welfare organizations, the business of inter-country adoption is not connected to the public welfare system. Instead, it relies solely on the fees received from foreign adoptive parents. From the very beginning, this scheme was guaranteed by the laws and regulations on orphan adoption. To this day, it remains to be seen whether any competent authority of the Korean government has ever undertaken a comprehensive audit into the finances of the inter-country adoption business of any of the agencies. Essentially, the 1960s marks the dawn of the worldwide spread of global orphan adoption. During this early era, eleven countries (the U.S., France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and Italy) received nearly 60,000 Korean children. While the number of sending countries was less than 20, Korea constituted 50% to 70% of the total number of transnational adoptions. Returning to the original question posed in this article, what is the real reason for the current situation? The lack of capacity or the resistance to take responsibility? I would suggest both. These two factors reinforced each other as history developed, and as we shall see, this series will continue to examine other historical events to learn lessons and devise better solutions for the future. Cover photo: gettyimagesbank

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the seventh in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children they 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. From early 2000, Korea witnessed the permanent return of children it had once sent to the U.S. for adoption. Unlike adoptees visiting on motherland tours, these individuals had been deported by the U.S. after committing petty crimes. Despite having grown up in the U.S., they had never acquired American citizenship and therefore were regarded as foreign criminals since their Korean nationality remained intact. These cases have had tragic consequences. In 2011, Philip Clay, born Kim Sang-pil in the 1970s, suffered such a fate. Like the other deportees, his adoption was never finalized, and he failed to acquire U.S. citizenship. After a long struggle to adjust to Korea, he committed suicide in 2017. While Clay had Korean citizenship, his adoption should have guaranteed him U.S. nationality. Adoption is meant to serve as a permanent and secure solution for children deprived of parental care, and becoming a national of the receiving country represents a fundamental basis for achieving such security. While notions of nationality had once been regarded as the rights of a country to secure resources for conscription, mobilization, and taxation, they eventually shifted after World War II. With the development of human rights norms under the United Nations, states had a duty to protect the rights of their citizens; thus, the right to nationality entitles a person to rights. In other words, citizenship represents the right to have rights. When children are born, they must be registered immediately after birth and acquire the nationality of a country so that they may be treated as people before the law and receive equal protection. The failure of some Korean adoptees to obtain the citizenship of their receiving country raises a fundamental question—what happens to the nationality of children when they are adopted to other countries? Transnational adoption illustrates the phenomenon of middle-class parents from the Global North adopting babies from the Global South. It involves an immigration procedure solely for the adoptee. By severing the child’s ties with the birth family, with the country of origin, and with the original nationality, the immigration procedures of the receiving country permit that child to enter for the purpose of becoming a citizen. The significance of acquiring the receiving country’s nationality is further reinforced in international legal frameworks on adoption and child protection. As the safety and welfare of a child remain most vulnerable to harm while crossing national borders, the receiving country bears the responsibility for protection of that child. The European Convention on the Adoption of Children, established in 1967, explicitly prescribes that “[if] the adopted child does not have […] the same nationality as the adopter […], the [country] of which the adopter(s) are nationals shall facilitate the acquisition of its nationality by the child.” Accordingly, transnational adoption procedures call for the child to obtain the citizenship of the receiving country. Failing to do so at the time of adoption leaves the child exposed to harm and instability. One of the worst consequences of this is deportation to the state of origin, as was Philip Clay’s case. Under the U.S. federal system, state courts deal with adoption decree matters while the federal government has authority over immigration and naturalization procedures. Due to these separated systems, acquisition of citizenship was not automatic upon the finalization of the adoption. It was possible for children entering the U.S. for adoption by U.S. citizens to have either one or both of these procedures uncompleted. One may ask, “What happens to the child’s South Korean nationality?” Children adopted from South Korea crossed the border with Korean nationality while bearing a Korean passport. Until the child acquired the nationality of the receiving country, that child maintained Korean nationality. International legal frameworks do not require that transnational adoption cancels the person’s original nationality. Some countries permit dual nationality, and matters of citizenship vary across countries. However, in the adoption arrangements between the U.S. and Korea, priority should have been placed on ensuring that the child acquired the nationality of the receiving country as this is a basic safeguard for adoptees. In addition to the separate systems handling naturalization and adoption matters in the U.S., South Korea’s Nationality Act adds a further complication. It prohibits dual citizenship, except in special cases. The voluntary acquisition of another country’s citizenship by a Korean citizen automatically cancels that person’s Korean nationality. This legal measure has been applied since the beginning of Korea’s transnational adoption program. Korean law imposed a duty on adoption agencies to report to the Ministry of Justice the child’s acquisition of the adoptive country’s nationality. Once the ministry receives this notice, it publishes the name of the child in the official gazette to ensure the automatic cancellation of that child’s nationality. Despite having such procedures to verify whether a child has become a citizen of the adoptive country, there remains a lack of evidence that those involved—the government, adoption agencies, and public organizations—whether in South Korea or in the U.S., gave due attention to monitoring and confirming the naturalization of adopted children. As of 2018, it’s been reported that the acquisition of American citizenship for over 18,000 people adopted by families in the U.S. cannot be verified. This negligence testifies to six decades of illicit and unethical adoption practices between Korea and the U.S. Transnational adoption should not be considered an act of charity determined by private organizations. It has a lifelong impact on the human rights of adoptees, as well as their families. When such rights are violated at the earliest stages of people’s lives, the impact reverberates throughout the rest of their lives. Click here to read the sixth article of this series, "How falsified adoption papers make it even more difficult to search for my origin" by Rebecca Kimmel. Cover photo: gettyimagesbank

Reposted from The Korea Times This is the 12th article in an adoption series. So far, this series has covered the right to origin of adoptees from Korea. The second phase of the series will discuss the historical development of the politics surrounding inter-country adoption with an aim to move beyond those sad stories of the past often depicted in the media. Instead, the next set of articles will illustrate how the system of inter-country adoption that led to such stories remains to this day and continues to govern the politics of adoption. — E.D. History is the sum of the choices that we, as a nation, have made thus far. This graph shows the number of children who were born in this country but left shortly after birth (more than 90 percent were under the age of 1) to become the sons and daughters of families in Western countries. Each dot on the graph represents human beings cast out of the protection of this nation. While more than 80 countries throughout the world have sent their children overseas for adoption, Korea’s experience remains noteworthy. It began as the birthplace of inter-country “orphan” adoption in 1953 and has persisted in engaging in the practice. This nearly seven decade–long history of exporting children is not found anywhere else in the world and has led people both inside and outside the country to ask, “Why can’t this country stop this practice despite its economic achievements and progress?” The most frequent reply is that Korean inter-country adoption is a product of the Korean War and the stigmatization of unwed mothers. However, when we look at the graph, the period in which Korea sent the most children abroad was not in the aftermath of the Korean War, but during a time of prosperity when it recorded two-digit annual economic growth. This leaves the excuse of discrimination against unwed mothers, which allows Korea to hide behind vulnerable women while simultaneously using society’s disapproval as justification for sending children away. Instead of confronting such intolerance, blame continues to be cast on these mothers as the “shame of the family and the nation.” Taking a closer look at the graph, the small boxes containing different years capture major regime changes throughout Korean history, while the shaded areas from 1960 to 1993 depict periods of military authoritarian regimes. The unshaded section after democratization in 1993 represents the current system in which presidents serve five-year terms. A noticeable pattern in the shaded areas is that the curve dramatically shifts while making smaller incremental changes in the '90s. One may surmise from this trend that the graph reveals that the dictators were the villains of adoption politics; however, the truth is that every leader has participated in the systematic movement of children for inter-country adoption by making choices based on their interests. In other words, each turn of the curve represents a political decision based on each regimes’ economic interests rather than a determination of special protection for children. Research by British scholar Peter Selman helps provide an objective understanding. His work has demonstrated that in 2003, the global number of inter-country adoptions peaked. At the time, Korea ranked fourth in the top five states of origin, alongside China, Russia and Guatemala, with an adoption rate of 7.9 per 10,000 head of population under the age of 5. Additionally, when examining Korea’s per 1,000 live births, we can find that babies at a rate of 4.1 were sent out of the country. While these figures may not have drawn much attention within Korea, the country’s practices have been conspicuous enough to attract international scholars’ scrutiny. Turning our attention to the U.S. State Department’s annual inter-country adoption statistics, we can see that in 2016, families in the U.S. adopted 5,372 children from 91 countries. Among those countries, only 12 sent more than 100 children to the U.S. Six of these countries have ratified the Hague Inter-country Adoption Convention, which provides a minimum set of international standards for the safety and protection of children. Of the six that haven’t ratified it, Korea ranked third in terms of inter-country adoptions, having sent 260 children to the U.S. that year. Scholars tend to attribute poverty and high birthrates as prominent factors in whether a country chooses to practice inter-country adoption. However, closer examination of the actual data does not support such claims. Major sending countries are not as poor as often portrayed. South Korea is perhaps the most evident example with a GDP that rivals some of the European receiving countries. In terms of birthrate, the rates of the top five sending countries do not exceed those of the top five receiving countries. In particular, Korea continues to record the world’s lowest birthrate. Today, matters surrounding inter-country adoption extend beyond the practices of sending children abroad and underpin core issues around the safety and protection of all children born in this country. Moreover, the threats and vulnerability that force families to give up their children to private agencies also harm the soil of society in which we raise our children. Therefore, it is time to begin asking the right question: What is the real reason this country cannot protect its own children? The heart of the answer lies within our own history, and we must confront this to reconcile our present and future for the coming generations. Accordingly, this series aims to explore the past with adoptees and readers. The former may find the truth in this journey to explore their origins, while the latter may gain a better understanding of this global phenomenon of inter-country adoption that spans across 100 countries. Click here to read the tenth article of this series, "I’ve been searching since I was lost" by Christine Pennell. Cover photo: gettyimagesbank

Reposted from The Korea Times This article is the ninth 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 scale and persistence with which Korea has historically exported its children remain unmatched by any other country in the world to this day. Over nearly seven decades, this country has sent away over 200,000 children. One major means that enabled such a large-scale phenomenon was the use of “proxy adoption.” “Proxy” is a general term that refers to the authority a person can grant to another party to execute legal activities on his or her behalf. While such a delegation of power serves a valuable function, its use should not be so limitless that it extends to the adoption of children. Instead, adoption must constitute careful legal processes that establish ties between the adoptive parents and the child, while protecting the best interests of that child. However, proxy adoptions have historically undermined such interests and violated children’s rights. When transnational adoption first emerged after World War II, American military personnel began returning to the U.S. with war orphans they had adopted while stationed in Europe. To leave with the child, the prospective adoptive parent first filed for and completed the adoption according to the court and legislation of that child’s country. Once in the U.S., the parents then re-adopted the child according to the relevant state court. As the U.S. military withdrew from Europe, this movement of European children to the U.S. decreased. The second wave of child migration emerged after the Korean War in 1953. At that time, Harry Holt devised a novel means of quickly transferring Korean children to American families. He referred to this method as “proxy adoption,” and argued that Americans willing to accept Korean orphans lacked the time and resources to visit Korea for adoption. Therefore, he acted as their proxy to bring those children to the U.S. U.S. legislation in the 1950s, specifically the Refugee Relief Act, temporarily granted the immigration of Korean War (1950-53) orphans via proxy adoption. While representing an unprecedented measure to facilitate adoption for U.S. citizens, it also created a serious loophole that threatened the safety of children. This danger did not escape the attention of U.S. social welfare professionals, who criticized Holt’s adoption practices as unprofessional and reckless. With the removal of the term “proxy adoption” from U.S. law, many scholars assumed that the practice had ceased. On the contrary, proxy adoptions were embedded and further reinforced by Korean law. Rather than serving as a temporary emergency measure to rescue war orphans, this practice became a permanent and recognized means of transferring Korean children overseas for adoption. In 1961, Korea enacted a new law to establish a specialized procedure for orphan adoption. One of the provisions provided that foreign nationals who sought to adopt Korean orphans could employ an agency to act as a representative for the adoption procedure in Korea. Since South Korean law did not prescribe any judicial or public procedure for child adoption, the first time foreign national adoptive parents met their child was at the local airport in the receiving country. The proxy adoptions performed by specialized agencies, which had been contracted out in Korea and in the receiving countries, benefitted both the adoptive parents abroad and the agencies. This arrangement allowed adoptive parents to avoid lengthy trips to Korea while dealing with only a few intermediaries that could handle all aspects of the adoption. These agencies did everything from locating a baby for adoption to handling the emigration and immigration procedures of both countries, to dealing with state court processes. As transnational adoption remained outside of Korea’s public child welfare system and operated as a private business, agencies wielded immense control, which enabled them to process such a large number of children for adoption. In the case of adoptions to the United States, the practice of proxy adoptions connects directly with the IR-4 visa of U.S. immigration law. Since a proxy adoption does not require adoptive parents to visit the state of origin, the child crosses national borders without having established family ties with the adoptive parents. The IR-4 visa stops short of granting citizenship and only guarantees the child’s entry into the U.S., his or her custody by the prospective adoptive parents, and permanent resident status. In other words, the IR-4 visa process means that the actual adoption procedure begins after the child arrives in the U.S. Once the child has become a member of the American family by the relevant state court’s decree, then that child may proceed to the naturalization process for U.S. citizenship. Whether these procedures are in actuality completed has relied entirely on the ‘goodwill’ of adoptive parents, rather than on any duty imposed by a public authority. Until 2012, nearly all Korean children were adopted to the U.S. through the IR-4 visa program, and thus, the acquisition of citizenship for more than 18,000 adoptees cannot be verified. While this situation does not mean they all lack citizenship, it does represent the vulnerability that adoptees have been exposed to through unethical practices. Adoptees’ vulnerability is evident in the cases of adoptees deported from the U.S. While some of them had their adoptions finalized, and for whatever reasons, never acquired nationality, others never had their adoption completed, let alone gained citizenship. The 2000 Child Citizenship Act (CCA) in the U.S. has been touted as a solution that grants automatic citizenship to transnationally adopted Americans. However, it does not apply to those who were over the age of 18 on Feb. 27, 2001, and consequently, falls short of helping those adopted during the ’70s and early ’80s, which accounts for the majority of Korean adoptees. The CCA also stipulates that family ties between the parents and the child must be established before the child enters the U.S. Before the introduction of court adoption orders in Korea in 2012, satisfying this requirement hadn’t been possible for Korean children, which is why Korean children received the IR-4 visa. To remedy the age limit of the CCA, a new bill, the Adoption Citizenship Act (ACA), is being pursued in the U.S. Congress. However, even if the ACA can amend any loopholes related to age limits, the inherent flaw and legacy of the IR-4 visa program remain unresolved. Click here to read the eighth article of this series, "The truth about our ‘abandonment’ and reclaiming our Korean identity" by Kara Bos. Cover photo: gettyimagesbank