Santoki's World

How many of you out there wonder what happens once you find your family? Of course the chances of finding depends on the circumstances of every single case. Were you abandoned, relinquished, how much information did the parents leave? But here I’m talking about things that happen after a reunion.

A reunion with the birthparents can be very joyful, sorrowful, happy, ugly… but instead of just trying to generalize I rather tell you from my personal experience.

I started to search back in 1984 and did that out of respect for my adoptive parents secretely. I know that our adoptive parents wished to adopt orphans so that they wouldn’t have anyone else to fear. Unfortunately for them we were not orphans (my brother got adopted together with me) but that’s a fact I discovered only 10 years later when actually meeting our birthmother.

The search and reunion was a short story after all. Through a newspaper article in the Chosun Ilbo on August 16, 1994 I was reunited with our family. Our birthmother remarried though and had two more daughters and one son.

The first time after meeting them I was in shock. I can’t describe any feelings during that time, all was numb and even back in Switzerland the only time I had feelings was when I told our adoptive parents about what I had found in Korea and that I actually travelled to Korea which they didn’t know either at that time. For our adoptive mother it was a very harsh blow. She felt threatened by the sudden “competition” from far east, as she put it. I felt kind of torn in between my adoptive parents and our birthfamily. It took me not much time though to wish to go back to Korea in order to get to know our family better.

So I packed my stuff and went one year later to Korea and enrolled at the Yonsei Korean Language Institute. I managed to go straight to level 2 so all the Korean lessons I had previously since 1984 paid off…

Yet the communication with our birthfamily was still difficult and I had the feeling that our birthmother still had some dark secrets in her closet. Every time I went to see her I was completely frustrated at the lack of communication. I wanted to tell her so much of my life in Switzerland, about my life in the U.S.A., about what happened to me and about my hopes and wishes.

At that time I thought all she wanted was to see my brother who is older than me. She always mentioned him and almost the only thing she told me was to get married and to have children. The latter she still mentions although she probably has given up on me…

It was kind of difficult to understand as to why my older brother was so much more important to her than I was. The first born son is the one who takes care of the parents. That’s the tradition here in Korea and our mother longed so much for our older brother, to see him, to actually touch him. But he hasn’t travelled to Korea yet. And I doubt that he will. Anyway… for me it was also kind of difficult to get along with the stepfather here in Korea. Everytime I couldn’t phrase what I felt, what I wanted to tell them, I felt such a frustration that I ran out into the rain and to the next phone booth. Fortunately my friend T. was also in Korea and he usually visited his mother in Pusan. So we called so many times and I got rid of so many things off my breast. I was so happy to have him here and was able to talk to him. And I also envied him so much for his strong connection he had to his mother. I don’t have any memories whatsoever from Korea although I got adopted at age 5. That’s why I couldn’t recognize our mother at all. It made it also more difficult to kind of bond with her.

There were about 2 years of hardship in Switzerland during which I didn’t call or write our birthfamily at all. The family was very upset about that but I just needed that at that time. I felt that everything had come too soon and I just needed time to digest all the experiences and also to work on some of the issues before I could continue a relationship with our family. At the same time the relationship to our adoptive parents was also one thing we had to work on.

I had to make clear to our family that I just needed more time, more space and distance because the relationship was so important to me. Furthermore with all the Korean traditions and customs it is sometimes also not easy, to get together with a Korean family when you were educated in a western society. There were so many misunderstandings due to cultural differences and there will still be as usually Koreans have no idea that other concepts than the Korean one exist in this world. I don’t blame our mother on her ignorance. But I blame the Korean society for being unable to take responsibility for their own children, for relying on a practice that came from abroad.

Being an adoptee is not an easy thing. Sometimes I wonder how much Koreans understand of what adoptees go through just to meet their family. How much I had to suffer to actually see them from person to person. To be able to hug her, touch her. She’s there now, she’s not a ghost in my closet any longer.

There will be thousands and more stories of this kind as there are so many adoptees out there who come back to Korea, to search for their roots, for their families. There will be good stories to hear, bad ones. I wish all adoptees a good future and hopefully a good reunion with a good relationship afterwards.

I still mourn my friends who left me because they couldn’t stand life. I wish you were here today.

If you’re still indecisive as to attend the conference or not… here’s the list of our workshops…

Workshop & Presentation Descriptions

Friday, August 19, 2005

International Adoption Between Coloniality and Modernity

Presenter: Tobias Hubinette

This paper looks at international adoption from a different perspective, conceptualized as a trade and trafficking in children taking place between the twin projects of coloniality and modernity. International adoption will be put in relation to a particular Western mode of adopting children, compared to other previous and contemporary child and forced migrations of non-white populations on a global level, and set within the history of European colonial empires and within the context of the emergence of American world dominance after World War II. International adoption will also be connected to Korea’s brutal modernization process, and seen as a regulating and disciplining method of social control and biological purification, to control women’s bodies and reproduction and cleanse the country of impure and disposable outcasts in the name of developmentalist thinking, social engineering and eugenics.

Learning Korean and other University Programs: What Opportunities are Available

Moderator: Jonathan Wright
Speakers: Mr. Hyun Yong Cho, Kyunghee University
Ms. Hyung Jung Kim, Sogang University
Mr. Chang Ryong Kim, Inje University
TBA – Ewha University
TBA – Geumgang University

Representatives from various universities that currently offer language and advance study opportunities to adoptees through scholarships will talk about their specific programs and how their efforts are helping the adoptee community. Learn about how to apply for the various programs and decide which ones best fit your needs.

Two Life Stories: Between Home for Children and Adoption

Moderator: Mirim Kim
Speakers: Hong Il Kim, Cody Winter

Two men share their life stories beginning with childhoods in orphanages. One was adopted to the US and later returned to Korea as an adult. The other has remained in Korea, but had two younger siblings that were sent abroad for international adoption. Both have remarkable stories to share including current jobs, citizenship status, and birth family search.

Worldwide Adoptee Organizing

Moderator: Jane Jeong Trenka
Speakers: Ami Nafzger, G.O.A.’L founder & former Secretary General
Sunny Jo, Korean @doptees Worldwide
Mee Hyun Gerstein, AKA-NY

Learn about the efforts that three ambitious and dedicated women are making outside of Korea in the international Korean adoption community. From online adoptee networking groups to initiating cooperative projects with other international adoption communities, to publishing directories and creating new organizations, come listen to these women share their knowledge and experiences.

Korean TV Reunion Shows

Moderator: Nicole Sheppard
Speakers: Achim Madang (KBS) – Ms. Kyung Mi Go, Mr. Kun Park
Happy Sunday (KBS) – Ms. Eun Joo Lee, Ms. Jee Young
Just Once (MBC) – Ms. Soo Jee Kim
Letters to Mother (YTN) – TBA

Over the past decade overseas Korean adoptees have been featured on many different Korean television programs including regularly broadcasted shows and special documentaries. Representatives from KBS, MBC, and YTN will talk frankly about their respective programs, past reunions and how adoptees are selected to be on their shows.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Why International Adoption is Political

Presenters: Tammy Chu, Sarah Dankert, Jae Kauffman

In the past, a large part of the dialogue concerning international adoption has been centered around the emotional effects of the adoption experience and the personal stories of adoptees. At the same time, adoption agencies and many adoptee groups have tended to focus upon strengthening post-adoption services for adoptees and their families. While certainly valuable, what’s missing from this discourse is the question of why international adoption from Korea has continued, along with an examination of the root causes of international adoption from this country. What are the conditions within Korea that have continued to perpetuate the adoption industry?

This presentation will focus Korea’s existing social welfare system, support for single mothers/families, domestic adoption and other alternatives, adoption agencies, and international policies affecting adoption to show that adoption, is indeed, a political issue. A short documentary film will be shown followed by a brief Question and Answer session.

ASK (Adoptee Solidarity Korea) is a politically active adoptee organization based in Seoul, Korea, whose mission is to raise awareness of the systematic problems of inter-country adoption out of Korea and the socio-political solutions that are necessary to bring it to an end.

Adoptee Service Organizations in Korea

Moderator: Ben Hauser
Speakers: Ms. Mee Jung Park, GAIPS
Ms. EunYung Fairbanks, IECEF
Ms. Aie Ree Jung, InKAS
Pastor Do Hyun Kim, KoRoot

Various adoptee service organizations in addition to G.O.A.’L have opened their doors to adoptees returning to Korea from overseas. From birth family search assistance to comfortable affordable accommodations, post-adoption counseling programs to insurance assistance, learn more about what each organization has to offer and how they are supporting the growing adoptee community in their efforts to become reacquainted with their birth country.

Relationships: Dating and Marrying Koreans

Moderator: Cory Tomcek
Speakers: Tim Butler & Jeong-hee Lim
John Hamrin & Seung Joo Lee
Ken Ohlen

As the number of overseas adoptees returning to Korea increases, so does the number of adoptees who decide to permanently reside in Korea. Adoptees who have experience dating native Koreans will share these experiences including some that have resulted in marriages. Spouses will also join in the dialogue and each will describe how their separate cultures have shaped their current lives.

Not Just Another English Teacher

Moderator: Sarah Randolph
Speakers: Don Roelofs, Shilla Travel
Mike Stensen, US Embassy
Just Han Pereboom, LG Philips LCD

We all know that many adoptees returning to Korea can usually find a job teaching English in some capacity as a private tutor or as a language institute instructor. However, finding employment in other sectors can be a bit more challenging. Listen to how these adoptees have secured non-teaching jobs and describe in detail what their work entails.

Representations of International Adoption and Overseas Adoptees in Korean Media and Popular Culture

Speakers: Tobias Hubinette, Su-yoon Ko and Jenny Na

This panel will examine the development of the Korean adoption issue, namely how international adoption and overseas adoptees have been imagined and represented throughout the years in
Korean media and popular culture. With a history stretching back to well over half a century, international adoption and adopted Koreans have naturally surfaced now and then in the Korean media. However, the massive international adoption of Korean children was for many years silently taking place in the shadow of Korea’s rapid transformation from a war-torn and poverty-stricken country to a formidable success story in the postcolonial world. It was not until the beginning of the 1970s that the adoption issue for the first time came to be treated and discussed as a distinctive and independent subject in itself. Ever since then the adoption issue has been haunting Korea, the #1 country in the world having sent away the largest number of its citizens for international adoption in modern history. Except for portrayals and depictions of adoption and adoptees in Korean media, the panel will give special attention to the appearance of adopted Koreans in popular cultural genres like television dramas and soap operas, cartoon and comic strips, plays and musicals, and popular songs and feature films.

Successful Reunions: Adoptees Reunited with Birth Families

Moderator: Mee Hyun Gerstein
Speakers: Yun Jin Carson, Sarah Dankert, Todd Heckert, Sarah Randolph

Adoptees that have successfully located and have been reunited with their respective birth families will share their stories. Come learn about their search stories, the reunion and post-reunion relationships.