We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”