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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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