A birth family reunion story

Seoul Searching, Rick Reilly, Time Magazine, August 28, 2000

After 11 years and 6,000 miles, we still hadn’t met our daughter’s mother. We had come only this close: staked out in a van across from a tiny Seoul coffee shop, the mother inside with a Korean interpreter, afraid to come out, afraid of being discovered, afraid to meet her own flesh.

Inside the van, Rae, our 11-year-old Korean adopted daughter, was trying to make sense of it. How could we have flown the entire family 6,000 miles from Denver to meet a woman who was afraid to walk 20 yds. across the street to meet us? Why had we come this far if she was only going to reject Rae again?

We were told we had an hour. There were 40 minutes left. The cell phone rang. “Drive the van to the alley behind the coffee shop,” said the interpreter. “And wait.”

When a four-month-old Rae was hand-delivered to us at Gate B-7 at Denver’s Stapleton Airport, we knew someday we would be in Korea trying to find her birth mother. We just never dreamed it would be this soon. Then again, since Rae was a toddler, we’ve told her she was adopted, and she has constantly asked about her birth mother. “Do you think my birth mother plays the piano like I do?” “Do you think my birth mother is pretty?” And then, at 10, after a day of too many stares: a teary “I just want to meet someone I’m related to.”

“When they start asking that,” the adoption therapist said, “you can start looking.”

We started looking. We asked the agency that had arranged the adoption, Friends of Children of Various Nations, to begin a search. Within six months our caseworker, Kim Matsunaga, told us they had found the birth mother but she was highly reluctant to meet us. She had never told anyone about Rae. In Korea, the shame of unwed pregnancy is huge. The mother is disowned, the baby rootless. Kim guessed she had told her parents she was moving to the city to work and had gone to a home for unwed mothers.

Kim told us the agency was taking a group of Colorado and New Mexico families to Korea in the summer to meet birth relatives. She said if we went, Rae’s would probably show up. “The birth mothers almost always show up,” she said. Almost.

We were unsure. And then we talked to a family who had gone the year before. They said it would be wonderful. At the very least, Rae would meet her foster mother, who had cared for her those four months. She would meet the doctor who delivered her. Hell, I had never met the doctor who delivered me. But meeting the birth mother was said to be the sweetest. A 16-year-old Korean-American girl told Rae, “I don’t know, it just kinda fills a hole in your heart.”

We risked it. Five plane tickets to Seoul for our two redheaded birth boys–Kellen, 15, and Jake, 13–Rae, me and my wife Linda. We steeled Rae for the chance that her birth mother wouldn’t show up. Come to think of it, we steeled ourselves.

At first, it was wonderful. We met Rae’s foster mother, who swooped in and rushed for Rae as if she were her long-lost daughter, which she almost was. She bear-hugged her. She stroked her hair. She touched every little nick and scar on her tan arms and legs. “What’s this from?” she asked in Korean. She had fostered 31 babies, but it was as if she’d known only Rae. Rae was half grossed out, half purring. Somebody had just rushed in with the missing four months of her life. The foster mother wept. We wept.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997807,00.html#ixzz1lKVtBL8l

Overseas adoption: child welfare or abuse?

Overseas adoption: child welfare or abuse? The Korea Times, 12-30-2011 16:00

By Kim Do-hyun

 

Some years ago, during a seminar about overseas adoption from Korea, I stated that the practice is “child abuse rather than child welfare.” Some of the social workers who were working for overseas adoption agencies looked very shocked when they heard my presentation.

 

After the seminar, some of them came to me and made strong complaints and protested. They argued, “Why do you insult and disgrace us, while we try to find sweet homes for abandoned children through overseas adoption?”

 

Korea’s overseas adoption program started immediately after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Now Korea’s per capita national income is more than $20,000 and the economy ranks in the world’s top 15, yet Korea is still one of the world’s major countries sending its own children overseas for adoption.

 

According to government statistics, Korea has sent nearly 200,000 children overseas for adoption from 1953 to the present. Among those children, there were 5,546 mixed-race children sent from 1955 to 1973 (after which mixed-race children were no longer counted because the vast majority of adoptees were full-blooded Koreans), 98,178 children from unwed mothers, 28,823 children from broken families, 29,950 abandoned children and 37,216 disabled children. 

Korea (and adoption) in the news

Korean-American Director Rediscovers Roots, The Chosunilbo, December 3, 2011

Tammy Chu was adopted by an American family at the age of nine and raised in rural New York state. She never saw another Korean until she went to college. “I remember what my birth parents looked like, but I forgot how to speak Korean and memories of Korean culture also disappeared from my mind,” she recalls.

Chu became a documentary film director and came back to Korea in 1998 for a project. “When I came to Seoul, it felt strange yet familiar and uncomfortable yet comfortable.”

She now lives in an apartment in Itaewon. She had shuttled back and forth from New York and Seoul for some 10 years and eventually decided to settle down here. Last year Chu, who can now understand a lot of Korean, won the top prize for a documentary at the Busan International Film Festival for her film “Resilience,” which focused on Korean adoptees.

Read the full article here.

South Korea’s Baby Mill, Asia Sentinel, THURSDAY, 01 DECEMBER 2011.

Despite a faltering birth rate, Korea still exports more adoptees than any other country

Despite having one of the world’s lowest birthrates and the 14th-largest economy, South Korea is a major source of infants adopted internationally each year.

As the country has grown richer, its total fertility rate has fallen to the lowest level in the industrialized world, from more than six babies per mother in 1960 to 1.15 today, far below the accepted replacement level of 2.1 per mother, according to figures supplied by the World Bank. Despite that, there seems little impetus to keep its adoptable children at home. Many factors are at work that lead to South Korean babies being adopted, both domestically and abroad.

According to the Korean Ministry of Health, an estimated Korean 220,000 babies have been adopted by parents in 14 receiving countries since the global child diaspora began in 1955 when an American couple, Bertha and Henry Holt, adopted eight at one go.

Read the full article here.

Korea Still Sends Hundreds of Babies Abroad for Adoption, The ChosunIlbo, November 23, 2011

Korea is still sending hundreds of babies for adoption to the U.S., highlighting the need to strengthen child protection in the country. According to the 2011 Annual Adoption Report to Congress released Friday, out of the total of 2,047 foreign-born children adopted by U.S. families from October 2010 to September 2011, 734 or 36 percent were from Korea.

Worldwide, China was the birthplace of most children adopted overseas with 2,589 out of all 9,320 children. Next came Ethiopia with 1,727 and Russia with 970. Korea ranked fourth with 736, followed by 632 from Ukraine, 230 from the Philippines, 228 from India, 207 from Uganda, and 205 from Taiwan.

Read the full article here.

K-pop: Soft Power for the Global Cool, Huffington Post, 11/14/11

From the unapologetic fanaticism that is often connected with hallyu (the recent spread of Korean culture around the globe), it is almost as if the K-pop factor just fell onto the South Korean government’s lap, eagerly waiting to be used as an instrument for expanding soft power and cultural engagement with the world.

For a small country with humble beginnings, South Korea is now under the global spotlight in myriad ways. Just this week Google revealed its latest mission to set up a YouTube channel exclusively for K-pop. Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, visited Seoul to meet with President Lee Myung-bak as well as a slew of top executives at several major IT organizations in order to gain support for this project.

The K-pop sensation burst onto the already-existing Asian pop music scene years ago, but its carefully organized system of matching good looking young singers (now often bilingual in English, Japanese, or Chinese — and chosen in order to enter those respective markets) with globally-attractive dance beats and ballads has clearly been adopted as the au courant choice of dance/pop style not only within Asian borders but in the Western sphere as well.

Read the full article here.

Ah, the quest for looking exactly the same. . .

In South Korea, Plastic Surgery Comes Out of the Closet

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Dr. Park Sang-hoon, head of a top-ranked clinic in southern Seoul, consulted with Chang Hae-jin after her double-jaw surgery, a procedure that involves cutting and rearranging the upper and lower jaws.

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: November 3, 2011

SEOUL — With a blue pen, Dr. Seo Young-tae drew arches on Chang Hyang-sook’s eyelids, marking where to cut and stitch to create a new fold to make her eyes look larger and rounder. It is an operation so common here that most women on Seoul streets seem to have a double fold, though only one of every five Koreans is born with one.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

How to get a Korean boyfriend – ㅎㅎㅎ hilarious

Villager recounts tale of saving infant’s life while on duty in S. Korea, a baby that later became his daughter

George Horsford, Daily Sun

Herb Boyce

Herb Boyce, of The Villages, displays his book, ‘Land of The Morning Calm’. Boyce wrote the book under the pen name Harry Bryce.

Posted: Monday, October 31, 2011 8:00 am

By Livi Stanford, Daily Sun

THE VILLAGES — Something had moved in the tall grass alerting 1st Lt. Col. Herb Boyce immediately.

The resident of The Villages was on a search and destroy mission with the Korean Army in a small village about 40 miles outside of Chun Chon, South Korea, in 
October 1968.

The North Korean infiltrators, Boyce explained, pointing to the loss of life including livestock, had destroyed everything in the village.

Little did Boyce know that what he would he would find in the grass would change his life forever.

Students meet South Korean president at White House

White House Trip Makes an Impact on Students, Centreville Patch

Colin Powell Elementary and Centreville High students recently attended a ceremony welcoming South Korea’s president to the United States.

• By Mary C. Stachyra
• Email the author
• 12:04am

    

Centreville High students at the arrival ceremony for the South Korean president. Credit courtesy Centreville High

An American adoptee story

Korean orphan grows up to find love, contentment in Foley, al.com, Published: Friday, October 14, 2011, 8:44 AM

FOLEY, Alabama — Mihyon Ellis’ life with her husband, Frank, in Foley is worlds apart from how her life began.

Get to Know Mihyon Ellis of Foley

She was an orphan in Seoul, Korea, hungry and without a home. An American serviceman’s family adopted her when she was 11 years old. They took her to live with them in Florida and then California. It was not a pleasant atmosphere to grow up in — Ellis was treated more like a servant than a child. By the time she was 15 years old, Ellis was already working full time, first in a sewing factory and then in an insurance company.

More adoptees in the news. . .

Fridley Resident Organizes Slutwalk to Give Rape Survivors a Voice

Local rally and march is part of international movement.

• By Laurie Buck
• Email the author
• October 1, 2011

October ends with Anoka’s parade of costumed marchers. Costumed walkers in the Oct. 1, 2011, SlutWalk in Minneapolis will have a much different message: Rape is Rape and No Means No and that the “rape culture” we live in needs to change.

Kimberia Sherva, one of the organizers of the event, is from Fridley and is a survivor.

Fridley Patch: You’re from Fridley? Are you originally from here?

Kimberia Sherva: I was born in Seoul, Korea. I was adopted and raised in Detroit Lakes and moved to the cities in my early 20’s.

Patch: And you’re 25 now?

Sherva: People ask that a lot. No, I’m 40.

Patch: SlutWalk Minneapolis has been getting a lot of press. How do you feel being thrust into the spotlight?

Sherva: Something like Sally Field in her Oscar acceptance speech “You like me, you really like me”.  It’s really important because of the message we’re trying to get out. There have been a lot of assumptions and perceptions about the name. There isn’t a problem with the walk but the way people feel about the word ‘slut’ before it. What we’re trying to say to people is ‘OK, we know it’s a hard word, but there’s a reason why that word was chosen.

Patch: You had an open mic night last night. Why did you feel that was necessary?

Sherva: We wanted to give rape survivors and victims of sexual assault a venue to talk if they wanted to. In any way shape or form, be it talk, sing, tell a story, read a poem, anything they felt comfortable doing, or just be there for support. It was a no pressure environment; no one was pressured to do anything. There was talking, there was sharing, and in the end, I feel it was very empowering and positive. There were moments when we cried, moments when we laughed, and there were moments when there were just hugs. It was wonderful.

Patch: How do you feel about the fact that you are going to have over a thousand people at your walk? There are over 1,300 registered on your website and many more who have replied with “maybe” on your Facebook Event page.

Sherva: It’s actually like a big old Christmas present. We’ve worked very hard to get the word out, about who we are and what we’re trying to do to get the message out. That many people validating it, that they believe that as well, it’s often terrifying that there will be that many people, but it’s also empowering and we hope that everyone looks around at everyone else, and they will, because I have something up my sleeve for the opening ceremony, where all will be saying ‘we’re in this together, this is so cool and awesome’, with connections, new friendships and new bonds being made, and all sorts of really positive energy from that amount of people.

Patch: This is very personal for you.

Sherva: It is. If a person has been raped once, it can be easy to escape the victim-blaming. But as a person who has been raped more than once, at some point in time it shifts towards What are you doing? What’s wrong with you? Why does this keep happening to you? There’s got to be something that you keep doing to—I don’t want to say deserve it—but to allow it. And no one allows rape. Not once, not twice, not 10 times, not 20 times. People need to understand that. And because of the way we’ve been raised—in a rape society—that person gets looked down upon.

Patch: I may be naive, but how does it happen that a person can be raped multiple times?

Sherva: Rapes happen between people who know each other about 85-90 percent of the time. When you look at that, you know that it’s a boyfriend, a husband, a friend, or a relative. That’s when those numbers start piling up. When you’re in a marriage where you’re being forced to have sex every night, 20 rapes is nothing. In an abusive marriage, that happens more than we know.

Patch: People have a problem with the term “Slut” in SlutWalk. Why?

Sherva: Because slut is such a triggering phrase, such a dirty word to use, why even use it? And that is our point exactly for using it. When you call someone a slut, you’re degrading them, you’re defaming them, you’re blaming them, and you’re shaming them. That needs to stop because it’s none of the victim’s fault. When you call someone that in a rape situation, you’re blaming the victim. When someone gets raped more than once, say in a long-term relationship or a marriage, they already feel enough shame, and calling them a slut because of that, surely isn’t going to help matters.

Patch: In that situation, though, would a woman be called a slut?

Sherva: The point we’re trying to make is that using that word to define a person who has been raped doesn’t define rape. Is a child a slut? Is an elderly person a slut? Is your mother, your aunt, your cousin, your best friend a slut? No? Then what gives people the right to call someone else that name, because when you call someone THAT name, you’re calling someone that someone else LOVES that name? Why would you want to hurt someone  by using that name at all and why would you want to BLAME that person for the rape or sexual assault in the first place by using that name as a weapon?

Patch: What can you say to a young man, in his teens or early twenties, to teach him and his peers how NOT to perpetuate the rape culture in our society?

Sherva: First of all, let’s say they’re going off to school to college and they go to a party, because that’s what happens, and let’s say there is a group of their guy friends and one of the guys says, “See that girl there, she’s kind of drunk, dude, I’m going to get lucky tonight.” What’s the thing to do? Teach those young men to step up and say, “Dude, you’d better not, don’t you touch her, and if you DO try anything and we hear about it, that we will testify that this is what you said and you’re gonna go to jail, so you’d better think twice.”

These flashmob marriage proposals are so cute. . .

You’ve probably seen these by now, and if not then you should! For some reason they make me cry. . .it could be because I’m hormone-ramped and emotional. . .who knows. Anyway, they’re so cute!

OFFICIAL Trang and Nam Proposal Flash Mob at UCLA 9-24-11
Nam and Trang met eachother on the campus of UCLA.
He decided to bring her back to where they met for the ultimate surprise!

I love her reaction when she first hears the music.

Jamin’s Downtown Disney Flashmob Proposal
This next one has a bit more advanced dancing. The first one anyone can (and does–all ages) do the dancing. But in this one you can tell their friends really got some rhythm. Again, very sweet.