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

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

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

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

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

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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