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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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