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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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.

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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