Out of a
South Korean
Orphanage and Into the World

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

Birth Year

1971

Adoption Year

1973

Adoptive Country

United States

A documentary
film project by
Glenn Morey and
Julie Morey

Explore stories by ▾

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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