1. How old were you when you first realized you were adopted?

My adoptive family has always been very open about the topic of adoption. Growing up in a
multiracial family, it was obvious that I wasnt a biological child of my adoptive parents, so my
understanding of being adopted started from a very early age.
2. How important was your Korean heritage to you growing up?
My Korean heritage was not actually very important to me as a child and adolescent. I grew up in a
very conservative, religious, and homogenous community, so most of my efforts went toward trying to
fit in as best I could with my blonde-haired, blue-eyed classmates. In grade school, my Koreanness
was a unique novelty on multicultural day, but not something I embodied on a daily basis.
3. How did your family address your heritage, if at all?
Growing up in rural Michigan, there was very little access to Korean or Korean American resources
available. My parents had brought back a few cultural souvenirs from Korea when they adopted me,
but these were objects like a hand-carved lantern or a colorful silk hanbokbeautiful objects, but
impractical in terms of fostering any notion of a Korean American identity in daily life. My adoption
agency used to hold an annual international picnic, where Id get to taste a few bites of Korean food
and see other families with internationally adopted children. The summer I graduated from high
school, my entire family went on a tour of Korea through my adoption agency with other Korean
adoptee families, which was really the first time I was exposed to more than a few token aspects of
Korean culture.
4. Were you treated differently at all by your peers growing up? If so, how did you react?
Growing up in a very Christian community, which prided itself on its Christian morals, there were few
times when I faced blatant hostile racism. However, this did not eliminate miroaggressions and racial
assumptions. There were a lot of references to the model minority and my being a good student
attributed to the fact that I was Asian. I also got a lot of American benevolence/exceptionalism: You
should be grateful that your adoptive parents rescued you. Arent you glad youre in America, where
you have freedom? There was also the colorblind rhetoric that refused to acknowledge that my
navigation of the world as an Asian was any different from how my white classmates did. Rather than
recognizing my Asianness, I was dismissed for being overly sensitive in social situations. It wasnt
until I had taken Asian American studies and ethnic studies classes in graduate school that I gained
the frameworks and language to understand that these were also forms of racism. Before that, such
interactions made me uncomfortable, but I didnt have the tools to articulate why and how it made me
uncomfortable.
5. What were some of the challenges about growing up as a Korean-American adoptee?
I struggled with feelings of inferiority growing up. Although my parents were explicit that I was loved
unconditionally, and I had as much place in the family as my other siblings, I still secretly feared that if
I wasnt good enough, I would be sent away. I spent most of my childhood trying to be the model
child and perfect student, trying to prove (to myself? to my family and community?) that adopting me
wasnt a mistake. I also struggled a lot with issues of identity and belonging. I have dealt with lifelong
depression and anxiety that the inherent uncertainty, loss, and trauma of adoption contributes to.
6. How did your sense of culture and identity change as you grew older?

My identity as a Korean American and Korean adoptee didnt really coalesce until I became an Asian
American studies graduate student at SFSU. That was really the first time that I was able to
contextualize my personal experiences within notions of race, marginalization, and intersectionality.
To be honest, my decision to go into Asian American studies was motivated by a personal desire to
understand more about my own identity than it was about wanting to be engaged in community
organizing or social justice. However, when I realized that identity and community go hand-in-hand in
Asian American studies, I fully embraced it. These days, I most often identify as a Korean adoptee
first and then as a Korean American or Asian American.
7. What is one thing you would have done differently growing up?
I think I would have tried to allow myself to enjoy being a child more. I was always so preoccupied
with trying to be good, being grown-up and responsible, that I never permitted myself the experiences
of just being carefree and mischievous every once in a while.
8. Why did you decide to reach out to your birth parents?
I think I always wanted to try and find my birthmother someday, but I actually made a conscientious
decision to wait to find her until I was in an emotionally stable place in my life. As Ive said, Ive
struggled a lot with depression, and its sometimes easy to fantasize that finding your birthfamily will
magically solve all your problems and fill all the voids in your life, which is an unfair expectation to lay
on yourself or your birthfamily. I started my birth search at a point in my life when I was able to
recognize that I, personally, had worth as an individual. I could also contribute something meaningful
to my birthfamily through reunion. I also was strong enough to recognize that my search wouldnt
inherently change who I am. Reuniting would be wonderful. Not reuniting would be disappointing.
But neither of those outcomes would intrinsically change my identity or my self-worth.
9. How do you think reconnecting with your blood relatives has changed you?
Its been fascinating to observe the nature vs. nurture phenomena in connecting with my birthfamily.
While seeing physical/genetic resemblance has been a revelation for me, so has the ways in which
personality quirks seem to run in the family as well. My half-sister, who is just 14 months younger
than I have so much in common that its sometimes eerie. We have very similar mannerisms, senses
of humor, and personalities. In hearing the stories of how my aunts, great aunts, and grandmother
rallied around my birthmother when she was pregnant with me, I have come to appreciate that my
birthmothers loss and trauma was not hers alone, but jointly felt by our female relatives. I hold the
women in my family in great reverence for their strength, fierceness, and solidarity.
10. How do you feel about your adoption experience as a whole?
I do not regret my adoption experience, and hold no resentment toward my birthmother or my
adoptive family. My adoption afforded me many privileges that I would not have had access to
otherwise. I have always known that I was loved and wanted. With that said, I do not necessarily
condone or approve of the transnational adoption industry as it works as a system. The politics and
inequalities that drive the transnational adoption industry are problematic and are not solved by the
system. Rather, they seem to perpetuate the issues, and refuse to seek alternatives to permanently
separating families. I of course agree that every child deserves a family and to be loved, but I dont
think social service agencies and states are doing enough to keep families intact. Instead of
transnational adoption as a last resort, it is seen as the only solution to a myriad of problems.

11. What would you do think are some of the pros and cons about the Korean Adoption
system?
*see above
12. What part of Korean identity do you identify with most? How did interracial adoption affect
you?
For me the losses and traumas that are inherent to adoption always resonate the deepest with me,
which oftentimes reminds me of the Korean notion of han. While I recognize the joys that adoption
can bring, and its ability to save lives, I think it is also important to remember that with every thing
gained from adoption, something is also lost. So often those losses go unrecognized, and I think its
important to acknowledge the losses in a holistic view of how adoption operates. My experience as a
transnational adoptee has certainly rearticulated the ways in which I define family. Within the
network of people I love, including my adoptive family, my birth family, my in-laws, and my
Korean/adoptee friends and colleagues, my notions of family are much broader and inclusive than the
basic definitions of mother, father, daughter, son.
13. Growing up in a white family and white dominated community, have you ever wondered
about your Korean identity? Did you ever try to reconnect to your roots or try to learn about
the culture yourself? How so?
Living in San Francisco, its much easier now to access Korean culture, food, language, etc. I try to
improve my Korean language skills in order to communicate more easily with my birthfamily, and I
spend the summers in Korea both for my research on Korean adoption as well as to continue to build
my relationship with my birth family. While Ive enjoyed immersing myself in Korean culture, I also
take a great interest in the development of a distinctive Korean adoptee culture and community thats
not just adoptees emulating Korean culture, but the formation of a unique culture and identity by
Korean adoptees informed by the Korean adoption experience.