About this girl…
In her first life, Suh Young Sook (name assigned her by an institution) became a Korean foundling.
In her second life, Suki (misinterpreted Korean nick-name) was adopted to America by a troubled and dysfunctional family, which she traded in to become a child bride and mother of two. Later as a single mom, welfare mom, jack of all trades, university graduate, then restless chameleon, she explored the ideas of beauty, meaning, and existence at every reinvention.
In her third life, Leanne (because Koreans prefer her name to sound foreign) has relocated to her native country to measure what she lost, what she gained, and to explore the profound impact adoption has had not only on her, but all other intercountry transracial adoptees and the Korean nation.
At this juncture, Girl #4708 is an investigator uncovering many truths that can only be revealed by the discomfort of culture shock. Always a feminist, she is becoming aware of the need for advocacy for unwed mothers and has learned a great deal about the cycle of adoption and how it is a symptom of larger social pathologies and a global mind-set of colonization between the privileged and the defeated. By living in Korea’s oppressive Confuscian society, she has come to believe the international adoption solution in Korea contributes to arresting development of social services which preserve existing family structures.
Girl #4708 is beginning to understand the society she was sent from, the realities of the adjummas who sent their children away for a better life, the awe inspiring economic development, the many centuries of culture behind it, and the realities of women and mothers here today. None of it is so black and white, and she wants to share that with the rest of the world, that adoption is radical surgery and its efficacy should be questioned and be resorted to only when there are absolutely no other options. She also wants to assist those who have already adopted in understanding how profound the dichotomy between loss and gain can be, and the schizm between the adoptee’s public family life and inner private feelings.
Girl #4708 is seeking the beginning of her story, and to know her real name and birth date. As she uncovers the stories and gets closer to the truth, she is disturbed and lonely, but happier than she’s ever been.
Bravo… great Blog, thanks for all that you say.
mybirthnameisallison
October 29, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Hi girl4708:
I love your blog and the power of your words. I’m a Korean adoptee currently involved in a Conflict Resolution graduate program. For an Intercultural Conflict Resolution class, I am in a group addressing intercultural issues in transracial adoption. As we dislike the typical method of interview/questionnaire and also know how much writing and discussing people have been doing about adoption for decades, we have turned this project into a letter project, and wanted to invite you to participate, if you so choose. We know many people have already written and created many complicated works and reflections around these issues, and also want to acknowledge that they can’t be distilled into one letter. If you would be interested in sharing something you have already written with us instead, we’d, of course, welcome that, too.
I’ve explained the project in further detail here: http://karachoi.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/intercultural-cr-letter-project/
Thanks so much for your time.
Kara
May 13, 2009 at 5:35 am
Girl #4708, I found this website while researching adoption and I was deeply moved. I would like to know if you have uncovered any new information about your birth parents and possible sibling. Please post an update. I wish you the best of luck in your research and journey to find out the truth in your history.
Gavi
October 18, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Thanks, Gavi
My parents have either passed away, haven’t heard my pleas, or choose to ignore them. I’ve come to accept that it may be too late for me, but I feel peaceful about that: I did everything a human could do to find them.
I had to hire a private detective who has possibly identified the whereabouts of girl #4709. However, I am having horrible writer’s block, since I have ONLY ONE CHANCE to make a first impression and explain what kind of person I am and that I mean her no harm.
I hope the right words will come to me and that she is receptive to them. Informing someone about another life may be just as hard as informing someone about a death. In the family.
So that’s where I’m at. Petrified. I like having hope that there is something more than just me. I’m kind of loathe to give that up should the letter be sent and I never get a reply.
girl4708
October 19, 2009 at 6:15 am
Girl #4708, I am so sorry that you found no success in contacting your birthparents. I understand your hesitation and fear about reaching out to the woman who may have been #4709. You are right in that hearing from you may open up many wounds for your possible sibling. Yet, you know deep inside that you have to try to contact her if you are going to complete your journey. You have come so far. Keep writing your drafts, take your time, and the words will come to you. I understand also the huge loss you will experience if you do not hear back from her. The thought of reaching a deadend in your search for this sibling and having to give up this dream must be terrifying. I wish you the best as you ponder this incredible decision.
Even if you do not reach the desired outcome, you have said that this search has given you peace and purpose and a happiness not known to you before. Your work is helping so many adoptees with a shared history of abuse and potential adoptive parents like myself who want to make the best decision for all involved.
Please keep posting updates. I will be waiting to hear if you have any positive contact with someone with a link to your true history.
Gavi
October 20, 2009 at 3:27 am
Thank for you for sharing so openly. I too am a Korean Adoptee who only recently has begun my search for identity. Thank you for your words. Please keep posting!
Kristin
November 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Thank you for your blog and sharing what has happened to you. I have a two-year-old daughter from China and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she grows up feeling loved, secure and, most of all, knowing she can talk about her first family, fears and hopes. I don’t feel at all threatened by her having a first family and I plan to help her search when she is ready.
Gwen
February 22, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Lots of Great information in your post, I favorited your blog so I can visit again in the near future, Cheers
Kayla Cronan
February 25, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Great blog. I half-heartedly did a birth parent search a few years ago but stopped. I felt uncomfortable in the adoption agency, talking to a worker about it. It feels like it’s my own private issue and I don’t even like talking to my wife about it. But I intend to start looking again one day. I think I consciously put the issue in the back of my mind.
Keep us updated on how things develop and I hope to hear more from you.
Lee
March 2, 2010 at 10:48 am
Having read about the abuse you suffered at the hands of your adoptive Father (and the total emotoinal abuse of your adoptive Father), I can’t imagine that your friends can’t empathize with you, and that people told you to “get over it”. It hurts just to read what happened to your young self,and if people can’t empathize, then that’s their lack of humanity. Please know that there are still people in the world who read your words and even if they’ve never experienced the horror of it, can understand why it’s something you can’t just “get over”, and can grieve with you for the losses and abuse you suffered….so sorry….
I hope it makes up in some small way, for the callous indifference of shallow people..
Lin
March 7, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for the responses, all…
Update is the letter was returned. I will, at some point, hire a more thorough investigator to help me find her again. HOLT is still unapologetic about preventing me from giving her a welcoming note (through them as an intermediary) to “protect” her. Their policies are inhumane.
As for my former friends who wanted me to “get over it.” They were responding to my mysterious PTSD behavior. At the time, I was unable to talk about everything here on the blog. They were impatient and irritated because they’d never met someone with so many seeming contradictions before. They were extremely sympathetic and empathic people towards others, but unable to stretch beyond the standard responses.
I wouldn’t call them shallow: maybe self-absorbed and immature. It’s okay: their abandonment forced me to explore all of this, so I guess I should thank them.
It’s nice to know I’m not the only one on this journey, and that some people actually do understand. You can’t get much deeper than identity. Losing that is unfathomable.
girl4708
April 9, 2010 at 1:27 am
Were you in Ilsan, or a different orphanage in Korea? My husband was “found” when he was “3″ and sent to live there in 1969/70 he stayed in the orphanage and in foster care until 1981 when he was finally adopted. Eventually I would like to visit Korea with him and our children, but I would like to get to know more about the past he left behind. When I read your other writing it made me desire to find out more about Holt and whether or not we was really abandoned and why it would have been so late in his life and not as a newborn.
bandbsmom
September 26, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Good question! I was shuffled through some orphanage near Wonju for four days, and then sent to a Holt orphanage in Seoul – though my paperwork does not say Ilsan.
When the plight of Amerasians was broadcast in America after the war, a huge outpouring of charity-minded sensation-minded requests for Korean children appeared. These post-war children were the first wave of Korean adoptions.
After all the Amerasians were gone from Korea, there was now a huge vacuum of western demand for Asian children to fill, which Holt created, and which Holt found a way to re-purpose from its original war assistance efforts. And thus began this endless legacy of Korea exporting children. In the early 60′s most of the children who became orphans were not relinquished at birth, but were abandoned. They were abandoned en masse for many reasons, but mostly because of economic hardship, and this is the second wave of Korean adoptions. Having been abandoned outside IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER, and having seen HUNDREDS of other similar cases from just my little county alone, I am convinced that these abandonments occurred BECAUSE of Holt’s canvassing for children: Everyone knew that abandoning children would equal adoption to the west where the children might get more rice and a better education. Nobody in those early days really knew the implications of international adoption.
I am very angry about this. The way Holt “helped” Korea was by convincing families to deliver their children to a better life (break up their families), instead of giving real help so families in need could stay together.
The assumption that Korean adoptees were given away as newborns is based upon later developments: from the 3rd wave of Korean adoptions to today where adoption was ONCE AGAIN re-purposed in order to meet demand. This was a result of Korea’s economic development programs where young people left their country homes to populate factories. Without family oversight and without birth control (still a problem) many illegitimate children were produced. Now that adoption was now an INSTITUTION in Korea, it became possible to offer adoption as a method of rejecting birth and erase family shame. Because adoption was an INSTITUTION in Korea, it became the defacto solution for families to force their daughters to erase family shame. Because there are no alternatives to support or allow young women with illegitimate children to thrive on their own in Korea, adoption and losing one’s child has become another way in which women are penalized. International adoption is so often an anti-feminist act. And the institution of adoption means that local governments never have to create viable social services for women and families, because International adoption releases the patriarchy of their responsibilities.
Once Korean adoptees move to Korea and learn about this society, meet the unwed moms, grieving ajummas, and speak with Koreans who were NOT adopted, the magnanimity and charity of the west seems really self-serving.
Your husband may have been abandoned during the transition between the 2nd and 3rd waves of Korean adoption, (too lazy to check exact dates) where older children (they were mostly all older children at first) were beginning to be passed over for a new supply of infants. His long stay at the orphanage might indicate that there was something that made him less adoptable (along with age) such as a scar or disability, etc. Ilsan has long been the orphanage where the unadoptable are cared for. And as with all orphans anywhere, after some age it is almost impossible to be desired for adoption. Fortunately, I’ve heard only good things about foster families in Korea…
Adoptees in reunion often discover that their recorded abandonment histories are fabrications. (I’m assuming that’s why you put “found” in quotes) What most people don’t know is that abandonment is and was actually illegal in Korea, and so the abandoning parents had to mask their identity and the adoption agencies purposefully assisted in this when identity was known, in order to have a “legally” fully abandoned child. Adoption was also re-purposed by Korean society and utilized to lesson burdens and neutralize complicated family scenarios. Relinquishing was often not done by the parents, but by meddling family members, usually aunts or grandmothers. Since this was also illegal, adoption agency records have often indicated “abandonment” in these cases. They fail to mention when the children aren’t abandoned by their mothers…
Almost every single file contains inconsistencies, errors, and omissions. And a lot are just outright fabrications. And to become adoptable, we are all turned into paper orphans, with fictitious family names, when actually we have living parents walking the planet, some of whom never intended us to become orphans. It’s a huge mess. That may never get cleaned up. And meanwhile, some of us, like me and your husband, are middle aged and our biological families are approaching the grave.
Your husband will have a shocking and amazing time should he come to visit Korea. Assuming you are Caucasian, that will buffer him from some of the problems those of us who come alone looking Korean but knowing nothing Korean have to face.
I hope I’ve been helpful and wish you and your family the best on this journey of discovery.
girl4708
September 27, 2010 at 2:17 am
There seems to be little support for adoptees who are also dealing with surviving abuse, as well as very little info regarding statistics, if any at all. Do you happen to know how much this is even addressed within the adoptee community? I can find support for each issue separately, but I am a Korean adoptee and I’m also a survivor. I can no longer pretend these are separate issues. I have little opportunity to attend national adoptee gatherings, and have, up to this point, been reluctant to do so for fear of bringing to light these issues and how they would be received. Maybe these fears are unfounded and I would find tremendous support.
I am sorry to hear that you were not able to locate your birth family. I have seriously considered searching at various times in my life, but have felt I’m better off leaving well enough alone. Being a survivor plays a huge role in that decision, my fear is discovering dysfunction in my bio family. Are you still living in S. Korea? I’ve only begun to realize attitudes towards women, adoptees, mixed races, it now causes conflicted emotions, rather than longing to reconnect with my place of birth.
Wishing you well this holiday season.
Malinda
December 23, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Hi Melinda!
Apologies for taking so long to approve and reply to your comment – been preoccupied with adoption-related projects and moving…
My experience with adoption abuse support is that acknowledgement is relegated mostly to privately shared narratives. Among the so-called “angry” adoptees there seems to be an extremely high proportion of abuse and/or dysfunction, which I believe is not talked about because that would be used to diminish their arguments for adoption reform. I think this is unfortunate that they aren’t more public with their private lives, but the fact of the matter is that the public likes to pathologize anyone who has suffered abuse and illogically attribute critics of the adoption industry to mal-adjustment, which is too bad, because a rational argument is a rational argument. And, a lot of adoptees are deeply concerned about their credentials and reputations. However, the fact that abused adoptees exist is damning in its own right, and adoption reform needs to be based on and address the reality of the situation, and it won’t be able to as long as we stay silent, for whatever reason. ADDED: And because so few adoptees make themselves available to speak to, it’s anybody’s guess how many were abused in some form.
Re: statistics, there are none that I know of. Reporting abuse is problematic as the public tends to dismiss re-troactive reporting, attributing it to anything from sour grapes to false repressed memories to melodrama to…Statistics are usually based on reports to authorities and/or recorded tragic events. Never mind that nobody acknowledges or recognizes the added pressure adoptees have to build a publicly accepted facade of family normalcy which makes reporting as children even more difficult. And, as I’ve written about elsewhere, especially in the United States documentation is a problem, as each state in the Federation has different definitions of what comprises a family so it’s impossible to identify who are adopted or not. It is especially difficult to survey adoptees because we are a self-identified population, the majority of whom are grappling with basic identity issues in silent isolation. The adoptees who comprise the adoptee “community” are only a small sample of the whole population because only those who are actively exploring their identity issues are going to speak publicly about something that causes so much personal conflict. So, to gather statistics from the adoptee community is in itself limited. And, as you know, it is a minefield of political factions under a lot of influences of various stakeholders.
You are right to be skeptical of your reception at such a disclosure. Revealing abuse has a polarizing effect among adoptees and it leaves one vulnerable to judgement as mal-adjusted. The reception I’ve gotten has mostly been at worst pity, which doesn’t feel good, or at best sympathy, which can feel awkward. For those who have a political agenda to promote adoption, the reception is typically dismissive, treating you like you are an anomaly. Amongst fellow abuse survivors there is usually a lack of response and changing of subject, but the topic gets re-introduced by them much much later when they have decided that your disclosure has allowed them to also disclose to you. Most other abused adoptees are also being cautious and proceed with great reservation. Or, there are those who are beyond that and they get excited to find a sister/brother in solidarity. Or, you get to the point I am at and you just don’t need to talk about it anymore.
However, I think it’s like the old adage that you have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince: finding someone who understands proves worth it in the long run. If you read about the first gathering and (if memory serves me correctly) one adoptee at the table of second wave of adoptees revealed their abuse, and the discussion turned to abuse as a topic. And it was some incredible figure like over half were abused, and they all broke down in tears, relieved to have finally spoken to others, some for the first time, and to know they were not alone. So it’s a risk one takes, but of value. You WILL find tremendous support amongst those who were abused. You will also find a lot of negative energy. You will sadly find that abuse has taken its toll and done great damage to some, and you must protect yourself from these unstable individuals. But most abused adoptees are socially adjusted and it feels good to compare stories. We all go through difficulties managing our feelings of betrayal and rage, some better than others. Some have found balance and are an inspiration. Some live in bitterness and will die in bitterness. I have spent my whole life repressing these feelings, the last four years working through them, and recently have rejected allowing them to rule my life.
The hard part about meeting other abused adoptees (actually, any adoptees) is recognizing where they are at in their process and that it won’t be at the same place as yours, and that that’s okay. That’s been quite traumatic for us, finding kin and then realizing that despite finding one another, we are always essentially alone on our own paths. But that’s what it means to exist anyway. What matters is that we touch people and allow them to touch us, so that we do more than just survive and just exist, but live. I guess what I’m saying is other abused adoptees (and any adoptees) can be a comfort and a pain, but really we have to do the hard work on our own. For me personally, I compartmentalize these issues when thinking therapeutically, though I recognize where they overlap and do analyze them systemically. And I keep my interactions with other adoptees to a minimum, because it’s too easy to squander precious time with visiting adoptees and adoptees who are anesthetizing themselves from the hard personal work, because I recognize they are in different places in their process and it often disrupts my own, but it is nice to periodically connect.
Searching is not for the faint of heart, to be sure. But it was also very valuable. The closest I got was talking to the partner of the deceased police officer that found me. And that brought me incredible peace – just to see a real person connected even indirectly to something that was previously just fiction. It placed me in space in time. My life was less a figment of my imagination after that. I may have an incomplete history, but at least it was something where previously there was nothing. It allowed me to face the dead end and let it go. I’m not sorry for any of it, even not finding family. I did all one can do and I am at peace with it being too late for me. I continue to work on birth family search issues though, because it’s not too late for others.
I have talked to other adoptees who have uncovered all manner of dysfunctions in their bio families. Even in happy reunions there is always dysfunction. I mean, this is why we were turned into orphans. If not our mothers, it was their families. If not our fathers, it was our country. Our whole story is one long story of dysfunction. The world – is a dysfunctional place. There never was or will be the fantasy we hoped for, which is why it was fantasy by definition. But to be sure, there was some love there too. What you find will be what you find. It’s your own life and you have to set up your own clear boundaries. But you are still entitled to your own story.
I think the great, great thing about searching and living in Korea has been the awful, gut-wrenching discovery process. Epic. All those forces you speak of and the whole spectrum of conflicting emotions that go with it – especially criticism and blame – are mighty and self-destructive foes to vanquish! Some people go through their whole lives not being able to name the enemy, yet this process makes us intimately aware of the enemy and all its names, as it’s in our faces every day. In that bizarre way, we are privileged. In a weird way, it’s almost addictive. A lot of adoptees live and leave and come back repeatedly. I’ve grown as a person because of this remarkable experience. I’ve gone from feeling assaulted every day to making peace with Korea. I did not reconnect with this place as a lost returning daughter, but accept it and created new and different connections. I am no longer afraid of Asians. I am also no longer burdened by being an adoptee. I am still righteous, but I’m no longer bitter and angry. It’s psychically dangerous, but worth it. I highly recommend it.
Currently I am packing my belongings for my return back to the states. After three years, it will be nice to start again with all this behind me.
Happy holidays to you, too!
girl4708
December 28, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Hi Girl #4708,
I am a well-educated Caucasian parent of three young biological children. I would like to have one more child, but for various reasons, I should not (and will not) go through another pregnancy. My husband and I have started thinking about becoming a fostadopt family. Through those classes – we have just started the process – I have been introduced to the idea of transracial adoption. I stumbled upon your blog via Google.
I’m intrigued by the threads I have read regarding transracial adoption here. I have a lot to think about. My question is how much your experiences as a transracial adoptee may have been changed for the better with a more supportive family environment? It’s pure speculation, and perhaps a futile exercise. Regardless, I am curious.
As a potential adoptive parent bringing a child out of foster care, I don’t care what the child looks like (race), although I understand that superficial looks (race) has a strong impact on sense of self for all of us.
I’m very interested in your thoughts. Thank you.
Peggy
February 29, 2012 at 7:19 pm
I’d like to add this to the latest post (another person just posted a similar question) at transracialeyes.com if you don’t mind. There you can get the opinions of other transracial adoptees. Let me know if this is okay with you.
girl4708
March 11, 2012 at 11:54 am