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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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