If I were to be given another life, I would want to receive parental love.

My earliest memories are of living in one room with my birth mother.

A feeling of detachment, and an inability to connect with anybody.

I remember walking down a dirt road in Korea, and crying.

It’s important for me to share, to encourage others who’ve been victims.

Learning Korean really made me the most in touch with being Korean.

I have chosen to see adoption as a part of my life, not the driver.

My adoptive parents are Korean. I found out I was adopted 3 years ago.

My mom told me herself that I was born on the floor at home.

God, why am I here? Why did you put me in this household?

As a child, I often dreamt about what I saw the night I was abandoned.

Yeah, I’m black and Korean. But first and foremost, I’m black.

After that, I kind of realized…okay, I’m a child born of rape.

When I walk into a room, do people look at me and say, there’s the Asian girl?

Mild curiosity grew into a need to connect with adoptees and Korean-Americans.

My mom’s comment to me was, “You should be dating your own kind.”

It’s good to feel like you can acknowledge the complexities around adoption.

Korea never left me. Korea is inside of me. I eat, breathe, and live Korea.

It made me embarrassed, that I had to explain my existence to other people.

He puts his little hand on my face. “Momma, we have the same eyes.”

People say my happy appearance is impressive, given my childhood.

My mother simply asked me, “Would you like to go to America?”

Maybe even more as an adoptee, I’m afraid of losing my parents.

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

My facility experience has made me tough. I don’t cry over small things.

It wasn't until college that I started to sort out my multiple identities.

I enjoy traveling. When you travel, you’re not supposed to belong.

It was like opening Pandora’s Box, this piece of paper in my hands.

Mixed-race kids were seen as human refuse, a scourge on their culture.

My biological parents wanted us to be together with a Christian family.

As of today, I do not know who is telling the truth, and who is not.

When I met my birth mom, it wasn't under the best circumstances.

For the first time, I saw other adoptees who looked a bit like me.

Would I have been better off in Korea? I think the answer is always, no.

It was an unspeakable act. I wanted to forget it. But I couldn’t.

In Korea, I can feel the way people look at me, and I lose confidence.

I learned how to pronounce my Korean name, and realized that it’s beautiful.

I didn’t have problems during childhood. I am who I am, Dutch Korean.

If I wasn’t adopted, I’d be working a rice field. I’m not really an outdoor guy.

All of a sudden, I saw real Koreans, who weren’t speaking Danish.

My adopting father told me he met my mother, and he negotiated with her.

I remember, vividly, the morning my mother gave us up. She was crying.

What I had been looking for in my birth mom, I found when my son was born.

I got married after my husband promised me he’d never mention my past.

My mother thinks that I’m happy all the time, not how I have struggled.

My husband and I are both Korean. Our son inherits our Korean heritage.

I didn’t get the answers I wished for, but I am more at peace with that.

I don't talk much about growing up in an orphanage—my darkest moment.

My adoptive parents loved me so much, before they even had me.

I have both my birth family and my adoptive family, and I love them both.

My biological father is standing there, leaning over a motorcycle.

My oldest son got me a DNA test, and it stated I’m 100% Japanese.

Five Korean adoptees getting together, then 12, 15, 20, hundreds.

I’m most likely a foundling, left near a police station.

It’s not a job, but getting married that’s a challenge.

There’s a different layer on life when someone chooses you.

I was 7 and a half when I was adopted. I was told that I had two sisters.

What if I find out something I don't want to know? That scares me.

I don’t know how to put it into words. I wish I could live like everyone else.

An immigrant family that was unwilling to give up on an abandoned orphan.

There’s no information about me, my birth, my family in Korea. Nothing.

My adoptive parents are Korean. I grew up speaking Korean.

I grew up feeling like a Martian who had arrived from outer space.

I ask myself a lot of questions about my ability to be a mother.

I never really discussed racism with my parents. I didn't want to relive it.

I did a total 180 from not hanging out with Asians, making up for lost time.

That pain never goes away. I take my pain, and I put anger over it.

We always felt we were Danish children, with Danish values and norms.

I sold hard taffy, physical labor. Those jobs were my ticket to survival.

Our extended relatives made it clear. My sister and I were “add-ons.”

I want to be as good a parent as my mom was for me. I’ll try my hardest.

I meet facility alumni. Some are successful, some have gone astray.

In the Holt records, it says that I was left on the doorstep of a man’s house.

My teacher told the class, “This is her last day. She’s going to America.”

I see a lot of Chinese babies who are adopted. We kind of blazed a trail.

When I married, I hid my history. Afterwards, the truth became known.

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

I was born to have an identity complex, being adopted and transgendered.

I miss Korea and my birth family. It’s a sadness that I carry with me.

I’ll embrace the sorrow I still feel, and one day I will heal and forgive.

I am a man who should have died a long time ago, but I have a family now.

It took my birth father 35 years of searching. He finally found me 3 years ago.

I feel my friends hold the concept of finding birth parents closer than I do.

I remember looking in the mirror, trying to see what made me a target.

My college essay was called “My Lucky Number”— my case number, K90821.

The email said, “We found your mother. You have to come to Korea now.”

I was in the orphanage for the undesirable children. I was not adoptable.

I’ve been homeless 15 times, from 1987 to the present—5 years in NYC.

My birth mother has remarried, and her husband can’t know that I exist.

The woman on the phone says, “We think we found your mother.”

I don’t remember much, except the crying—all those unhappy children.

I did 23andMe. My second cousin on my birth father's side contacted me.

I’m grateful, truly, to be alive today. That’s why I tell my story.

I was the baby—the first choice to give up for adoption. I understand that.

What I’ve learned through my faith in the Lord, is that it happened for a reason.

I think that’s why God gave me my daughter, so I wouldn't be alone.

Adoption includes the first family. The child did not appear from nowhere.

She gave me a ring she was wearing and said, “We have the same hands.”

I learned that I was incredibly lucky to have grown up in Denmark.

Because I’ve chosen to become a single mother, I think about my birth mother a lot.