When I tell South Korean nationals that I’m a Korean-American adoptee, their reactions vary from a kind of backhanded recognition (“Oh, so that’s why you can’t speak Korean”) to profuse apologies (“I’m so sorry that happened to you”) to expressions of jealousy (“You’re so lucky; I want to go to America, too”). There’s one question, though, that they almost always ask: “Do you know your Korean family?”
Beyond Infantilizing Portraits: South Korean Adoptees Speak Out
Perhaps the world’s best-known Korean adoptee today is Adam Crapser. After living in the U.S. for almost four decades, Crapser was deported to South Korea late last year because his adoptive parents had never filed for his American citizenship. The twists and turns of
Korean Adoptees Search Against the Odds and Agencies
When Fleur Pellerin became a prominent member of newly-elect Francois Hollande’s cabinet in 2012, headlines in South Korea started buzzing about how she was the “flower” that made South Korea known to the world. Pellerin was a Korean adoptee; a few days after her birth in