Out of a
South Korean
Orphanage and Into the World

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

Birth Year

1970

Adoption Year

1982

Adoptive Country

United States

A documentary
film project by
Glenn Morey and
Julie Morey

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  • Birth Year+
    • 1940s
    • 1950s
    • 1960s
    • 1970s
    • 1980s
    • 1990s
  • Gender+
    • Female
    • Male
  • Adoption Year+
    • Less Than 2
    • 2-6
    • More Than 6
  • Adoptive Country+
    • Australia
    • Denmark
    • France
    • Netherlands
    • Sweden
    • Switzerland
    • United States
  • Aged out of Orphanage+
    • Yes
    • No
  • Subject Matter+
    • Being Mixed Race
    • Have Contacted Biological Family
    • Being Mothers and Fathers
  • Clear Filterx
  • 7 countries
  • 6 languages
  • 16 cities
  • 100 stories

An international journey through the personal memories and experiences of abandonment, relinquishment, orphanages, aging out, and inter-country adoption from South Korea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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