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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have to stop turning ourselves into victims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Korea still sending children for adoption abroad?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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