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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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