Searching in Pusan …

To the person or people who recently visited my blog after searching for information about daughters left in Pusan, and searching for an adoptive family in Pusan:

I suggest that you contact GOA’L for assistance, as well as the four major Korean adoption agencies that have conducted overseas adoptions:

Holt ; ESWS ; KSS ; SWS

Even if you believe your child was adopted in Korea, please also consider that he or she might have been adopted abroad instead. Many mothers and parents were assured by social workers and orphanage intake workers that their children would be domestically adopted by Korean families — but in many cases, this was false, and the child was sent overseas to be adopted by a foreign family without the Korean parent’s knowledge.

GOA’L maintains databases of adoptees searching for their Korean families, as well as Korean families searching for adoptees. Korean-speaking employees and volunteers are available who can help advise you with your search.

If you know that your daughter or son was taken to an adoption agency or orphanage, I encourage you to write a letter to your daughter or son and ask the adoption agency employee or social worker to place the letter in your child’s file, if at all possible.

Also, Korea Welfare Foundation maintains databases both for adoptees searching for their Korean parents, and for Korean parents searching for their daughters or sons.

Please have hope; many Korean adoptees search for their Korean parents at some point in their lives. Perhaps your daughters or sons are searching for you now. 행운을 빕니다.

Fun things come in 3’s

Tagged by Soon-Young…

Random sets of 3’s:

3 things you WILL do in this lifetime:

1. Unpack all of my boxes
2. Publish a book other than children’s nonfiction
3. Hold up my end of a (small) conversation in Korean

3 songs with lyrics that have made you cry:

1. You Belong to Me (Bob Dylan’s verison)
2. New Favorite (Alison Krauss)
3. Why (Annie Lennox)

3 TV shows you enjoy watching (old or new):

1. Heroes
2. So You Think You Can Dance
3. 내 이름은 김삼순

Dreams you once upon a time had, but that haven’t come true and you’re okay with that:

1. To have a pet unicorn
2. To win the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes and get one of those really big checks
3. To live downtown in a major metropolitan city

3 places you go/have been where you found a sense of peace:

1. On the stone bridge overlooking the creek bordering the farm I grew up on
2. Looking out over the mountains and East Sea at 석굴암
3. My favorite patch of beach on a quiet day (not telling where!)

3 minor regrets in life:

1. Giving up violin and piano lessons
2. Deciding not to study abroad in college
3. Not eating more ice cream and cream cheese while I could still manage …

3 clichés or common phrases that you tend to believe are true:

1. Time flies when you’re having fun.
2. All that glitters is not gold.
3. When it rains, it pours.

I tag everyone who is (a) traveling to another country, (b) getting married, (c) publishing a book, or (d) having a baby this summer.

If you read only one thing today …

… let it be this.

In 65 days …

… I’m leaving for Korea.

Usually, we adoptees find that when we go to Korea, we lose weight because unless you want to eat Whoppers, KFC and McDonald’s (or instant ramen from the convenience store) for every meal, it can be both difficult and intimidating to order food.

Interfacing with Korean Koreans is, in fact, one of my weaknesses, because I get so self-conscious and ashamed about my minimal knowledge of the Korean language that I freeze up and start stammering in broken English like the queen idiot of all idiots. And it has only gotten worse over the years. Back when I knew only about 10 words, I was much more confident in my naïveté, and would bravely spit out my 10 words with horrible pronunciation, to the puzzled looks of the Korean speaker before me.

However.

After speaking with my 언니 today, regarding my visit to Korea and the time I’ll be spending with her and 엄마, I’m more concerned about gaining weight. At least perhaps I can load up on food while I’m with them, like a greedy little chipmunk, so that during the rest of my stay in Korea, my body can just feed on its stores.

엄마 has already purchased two boxes of 갈비 … for me! I burst into a fit of giggles when I heard that.

엄마 is making 깍두기 today … for me! I could hear her chopping radishes in the kitchen.

So far, 90 percent of their plans for my stay with them center around feeding me — what, when, where and how often.

Although there was also talk of 찜질방. (Eek!)

When 언니 asked me what special things I wanted to do, all I could think of was, I want to sit next to you and 엄마 somewhere quiet, and see the things you see.

(I am a thrill-seeking world traveler.)

It has been 5 years since our lives collided again after spending 26 years apart, but now there are just 65 days left until …

Adult Korean adoptees: Join me in Seoul!

According to the countdown clock on my personalized Google home page, just 81 short days stand between me and my glorious return to the mothership.

Actually, I am traveling to Korea sooner than that, but there are 81 days until the IKAA Gathering, and that’s what I’m counting down to. This will be the fourth international gathering of adult Korean adoptees, but the first to be entirely organized by adult adoptee organizations, which truly makes this a landmark event for us.

This will also be the first international adult Korean adoptee gathering that I will have attended. Although I’ve been to mini-gatherings and conferences, I haven’t yet had the experience of attending a gathering of this magnitude, with hundreds of adult adoptees in one spot — and the fact that this summer’s big event is in Korea makes it that much more exciting.

I’m honored to be participating in one of the panel sessions at the Gathering, along with some other adoptees who have been active in various ways among the online Korean adoptee community. Beyond that, I’m looking forward to the first-ever international research symposium on Korean adoption studies, art exhibitions, the other conference sessions and workshops, and the many social activities. Most of all, I can’t wait to be among so many of my fellow Korean adoptee friends, old and new, from near and far. In Korea.

Crazy.

I firmly believe that there’s no better way for us adoptees to experience Korea than with others who can share in the same sensations … of joy, anxiety, hope, sadness, giddiness and/or delirium … as only an adoptee can know. Although many of us often find that, having been transplanted from our birth country as children, we now “fit in” with Korean Koreans no better than we have “fit in” among our surrogate populace in certain ways, we can at least find belonging with our fellow Korean adoptees. This can be a comforting thought when all other comforts seem scarce.

So, Korean adoptees age 19+ (and spouses and children of Korean adoptees age 19+): Register now (registration fee increases after June 15!), book that discounted airfare and those discounted hotel rooms, and meet me in Seoul in 81 days for six days of fun, friends, fun, fellowship, fun, food and fun! Who knows when another opportunity quite like this one will present itself again?

See you there?