[music playing] I still love Korea. I miss it a lot. I miss my birth family a lot. You know, and I
think, for me, it feels like a kind of
sadness that I've learned to live with, I guess. I think I was in
denial for 50 years. It's a painful thing
to have to look at. And the first thing
that any of us looks at, as an
adoptee, is the fact that we lost something. The moment that
I kind of knew something was
going to happen was the time my grandmother
took me to the train station with my brother, and there
was a stranger there. She handed us off to him. And it's interesting because
it was just my grandmother. It wasn't my father. It wasn't my mother. And we went off on the
train with this stranger. And at the time, I
wouldn't say I said, 'O.K., I'm being given away. Somehow, my grandmother's
giving me away to this stranger, and
I'm going somewhere.' Of course I was scared. We were both crying. And one of the last things
that my grandmother said was, 'Hey, you know, when you
grow up, come visit me.' My twin brother
and I were adopted to Milwaukee, Wis. We grew up there our
entire childhood. Our adoptive father
was Norwegian-American, and our adoptive mother
was German-American. Of course, this
was in the 1960s and early 1970s in Milwaukee. So it was a long time ago. There was virtually no
consciousness around race. The way I like to describe it
is that, basically, I grew up feeling like a Martian
who had arrived from outer space
in a spaceship. And years later, when
I met other adoptees, it was like happening upon
a convention of Martians in spaceships. I feel that that's the main
thing from my childhood -- just being very
self-conscious, and hating mirrors, and
hating the way I looked. I have this memory of staring
in front of the mirror at home in the bathroom. I would have only been
about 4 or 5. And I was trying to pinpoint -- like, trying to kind of
intellectually figure out exactly what features
made me look different. I didn't realize it's
kind of just a combination of all my features. And I was also experimenting
with putting talcum powder on my face, which
is like pure white, because I thought that maybe
it was my skin color that made me different. Now I think back and feel sad
about that little girl that was doing that and struggling
with her appearance in such a way. Part of the
reason I searched, it wasn't necessarily
to have a relationship with a Korean family
or a Korean person. It was just my desire to have
a picture of my birth mother to know what she looked like,
because I think as adoptees, we all want to know
who we look like. Where did our nose come
from, or our cheekbones, or our hair? And these are questions
that non-adoptees never have to think of. But it's something,
as adoptees, we always wonder about. We always wonder what
our biological parents look like. I very strongly urge
any Korean adoptee who is interested to go visit,
but I also immediately advise them that if they
think that it's going to be an easily
integrated experience, they should think again. In the Holt records,
it says that I was left on the doorstep
of a man's house in Wonju, South Korea. And his name is Kim Jong-kwan. And there was an
address given, but the address had a
missing piece to it. But he said that it was my
great-uncle that actually drove me to the agency
to relinquish me and that my great-uncle
still remembers that day. And I said to him [speaking in Korean],
'Don't leave me here, I'll be a good girl.' And that was quite
a shock to hear that I was kind of conscious,
on some level, at least, of what was happening. Because I think I'd
assumed, because I guess I didn't
have any memories of that period, that -- I don't know what I'd assumed,
but it was really surprising for me to hear that and
think about how scary that would have been for
a 3-year-old girl. When you're abandoned
in a public place and there's no record, there's
no identifying information -- my birth mother or father,
nobody left a note. Or some mothers would pin
their child's birth date to their coat or
something and try to just leave a little crumb. So I had no crumbs. So when you have
no crumbs, I think I've always had very
low expectations in thinking that I could
find any biological family. My mother, who would have
been a kijich'on, which is essentially a
military prostitute -- there were thousands
of them in Korea. This is postwar Korea. And it was
essentially if women didn't work on the base,
they worked on their backs. And my mom did the
latter kind of work. And my understanding is
within that military camptown culture, you had women who
served either white soldiers or black soldiers. Clearly, my G.I. dad was white. I was told that he had
rotated back to the U.S. before I was born, probably
had no interest in me. I mean, that was the case with
thousands of us mixed-race children who were
born in Korea. And there were indeed
thousands of us. In fact, we are the reason
international adoption from Korea started. It was basically to purge the
country of its human refuse, us, the mixed-race kids that
were born to the kijich-on and the G.I.s that were
there at the time. We were walking there,
and my heart is pounding. And I'm thinking,
'This is it, this is the thing I've
always wanted. I've always wanted to find
the place where I was found. Here we are.' And the camera's rolling,
and we're walking there. And in the single
most unexpected emotional experience
of my life, I had the rug pulled
out from underneath me. Because in my mind, when
I find that place where I was left as a newborn
on Jan. 5, 1974, it's going to be like
this triumphant moment, this revelatory moment. I'm going to feel
so satisfied, so happy I finally found the
place, the place that I was left at. This is what I've
always wanted. My bar was so low. Most people want to meet
their biological family. I just want to
stand at that spot and have a moment
to myself, that this is where it all started. And that will be
good enough for me. And I thought I would
feel so triumphant and like I had
reached my goal. And I got there, and I
just broke into tears. I was a mess. And I was just -- it was devastating. It was not a
celebratory moment. It was not a
triumphant moment. Any satisfaction about
having found the place was completely usurped by this
tidal wave of grief and pain and one of the most profoundly
lonely moments I've ever had in my entire life. And in my mind's eye,
as we're standing in front of this man's
house, what I saw was a little baby
3 days old in cold weather on a winter's
day sitting on that doorstep by herself. And for me, it was so hard,
and so lonely, and sad. And even though I have -- [cries] Even though I have so much
to show for myself now and many things
in my life that I feel very proud of and
grateful for, none of that mattered in that moment. None of it. It didn't matter
that I grew up to be a healthy
person with a loving family and a good
education and a good job. None of that mattered. All that mattered
in that moment was that this is how
my life started -- alone on this doorstep
at 3 days old. I think those early life
losses always stay with you. I think that's always
been inside of me. And as an adult, you know,
I can look back on it and say that I think the way
I internalized that experience was, I was bad,
I was defective, there was something
wrong with me. So I sort of grew up
with that self-concept. I'm sitting there,
and the two women are sitting there
looking at me. And the one woman
says, 'Does she have any scars on her body?' And I said, 'Well, I
have one on my leg.' And they said -- that's the
only one that I remembered pre-coming to America. And I said, 'I remember
getting burned by an iron.' And she started crying
once that got translated. And she said, 'It
was all my fault, I had just ironed
my husband's shirt, and I told you not
to go near the iron! But you did anyway! And you burned
yourself, but then you knew you were going
to get in trouble, so you didn't say anything. You didn't cry. You just sat there.' And I had stockings on, so
she immediately came over and wanted to lift up my
skirt and look for the scar. And I was like, 'Why
would I make this up? How would I know this story?' And so I'm thinking this
woman is my birth mother. It turns out it was my aunt. The woman sitting next to
her was my birth mother. And she came over, and
she sat next to me, and she just kind of did
the full body scan from head to toe. And she took my
hand, and she gave me a ring she was
wearing, and she said, 'We have the same hands.' And then I finally looked
at her, and I said, 'We do.' We have the same ears, we
have the same size feet. I didn't have a
lot of emotions. I think I was just
stunned that there was a real human being
sitting next to me who was my birth mother. And we went to a restaurant,
and we sat across from each other. And I don't think I
ever looked at her. And I just started talking. They asked a lot of questions
about being raised in America and my adoptive family. And then we agreed to meet
again a couple of days later, and I spent a
weekend with her. Getting to know her
has been really hard. The weekend that I spent with
her, she barely looked at me and I barely looked at her. And at one point,
she was in the room, and she said, 'I know
you're my daughter, but the last time I
saw you, you were 3 and now you're
this grown woman. I don't know who you are.' I was so desperate for her
to know that I was happy and that I was O.K. And
that's all I could say -- I'm happy, I'm O.K.,
don't worry about me. We ended up meeting in a
restaurant with a translator, and with my grandmother there. And I told her I
remember what she said. And that was the grandmother
that led me to the train. And I told her, 'I'm back, I'm
here, and everything is fine. Everything worked out.' And from talking to,
I guess, the siblings, I have a brother and
sister on my father's side, I have one brother and
one half sister that -- he never forgot about us. He actually tried to come
back and get us a month later. He changed his mind. And to live with that guilt
your whole entire life, what had to have been
very difficult -- and my siblings
would say, 'Yeah, every time he gets drunk,
he would say your names and he would yell
out for you guys. And that's how we knew
that you guys existed.' I have a couple of kids, and I
could imagine how difficult that would have been. But at the end of the day,
I appreciate what he did. [pensive music playing]
Thanks for sharing; this is a well done video, and I like that it has Korean subtitles so that it can reach a wider audience. The story about the woman who was reunited with her biological mother and aunt, who recognized the burn scar on her leg, had me in tears.
7:12: "My understanding is within that military camp town culture, you had women who, you know, served either white soldiers or black soldiers. Clearly, my G.I. dad was white. I learned that -- I was told that he had rotated back to the U.S. before I was born. Probably had no interest in me -- I mean, that was the case with thousands of us mixed race children who were born in Korea. And there were, indeed, thousands of us. In fact, we are the reason that international adoption from Korea started. It was basically to purge the country of its human refuse: us, you know, the mixed race kids that were born to the kijchon (기지촌) [U.S. camp town military prostitutes] and the G.I.s that there were at the time."
A fact that often goes unmentioned (but which I'm sure the interviewee is aware of): the South Korean government supplied the U.S. military with these Korean prostitutes. During the Korean War and the decades that immediately followed, South Korea (led by U.S.-backed dictators Rhee Syngman and then Park Chung-hee) was so dependent on U.S. military support and foreign aid that it was willing to do anything to keep the Americans happy (see also: South Korea's participation in the Vietnam War). Also, Park Chung-hee (the father of former president Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in 2017 and sentenced to prison in 2018) encouraged the sex trade because he wanted to generate revenue from the sizable U.S. military presence in Korea:
And these Korean women, pimped out by their own country to the U.S. military, were known by the G.I.s as comfort women -- yes, the same euphemistic term that, today, is more commonly used to refer to the thousands of Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Filipina, Burmese, Indonesian, Dutch, and Australian women who were forced into sexual slavery for the imperial Japanese army.
Edit: Formatting