A Tale of an Alien: Growing Up Without a Culture

My story is like a million others since 1953.

It’s this year that a phenomenon called the International Adoption of South Korean children began to emerge. From the ashes of the Korean War (1950 to 1953), thousands of children were left orphanaged. Added to this number was the increase of “Ameriasians” - a mix of half Korean and half American, the production of the “G.I. babies.”

True to the arrogant, Westernized Christian thought, religious groups started the process of international adoption from the orphanages that spanned after the war. Combine this with a proud, and often misunderstood (by a Western point of view) culture of family lienage, and the economical export of Korean children was born. In fact, international adoption serves many purposes for the Korean government, firstly that it brings in over 20 million dollars annually, and secondly that it relieves the responsibility and financial burden of raising the children.

My entire life I am standing on the other side of the looking glass. This is a fate that my parents, loving as they were the day they adopted me, gave to me. I am neither Korean nor am I an American. I will never speak my language fluently, nor be able to reminisce about my grandmother making kimchee in the kitchen. In fact, I often look at cookbooks, ladened with the memories I will never have, with meloncholy.

America does not know how to handle mixed racial households. Growing up in the small town of Lexington, MA, I would often fend off the gawking of strangers, as my family and I would sit down at a restaurant table, or at the grocery store. Even today as an adult, I will go to dinner with my boyfriend, his two children and my daughter (a “Ameriasian”) and the contempt and disdain - or just plain curiosity and ill-manners - of the staring people around us is something that I continually notice. Sometimes I stare back at them.

I am alone in my feeling. Yes, I do know that other KADs (Korean Adopted Descendents) exist out there. But if they are like me, they guard it like a shameful secret. They too have been stared at.

But as the years go by, and I learn to accept my life and forgive both my adopted mother and my birth mother, I can start to appreciate the gifts that were given to me. I am part of a unique culture, one that does not adhere to the boundries of a culture I do not understand. And I finally understand that I can take from each of them the better, and disregard that which I do not agree.

As I travel through the journey of closure and I look into the eyes of my daughter - perhaps the only person in this world who is biologically related to me, I started this website, in hopes that one day, one adopted mother will understand the confusion and pain that I have gone through. One day, she may show her child that others are out there, and yes, they understand too. I am not alone anymore.