All about our GUESTBLOGGER:

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.

Dispersed and Returned

Am I anywhere different?

The scenery doesn’t really change. I’m still inhabiting this body. I’m still outside looking in.

This is my first myspace generation type narcissistic self photo, taken in the bathroom of the Seoul Folk Flea Market. I like how it could have been taken anywhere, and I am standing still and the rest of the world is moving around me. It just seemed like what I should do at the time. And later, after attending the Disbursed and Returned exhibit about returning adoptees, it wanted me to post it and write about it.

Rev. Kim Do Hyun, speaking to the Korean audience of subway go-ers passing through the exhibit, wrote:

Having to continuously explain your existence is not necessarily a pleasant thing….When international adoptees no longer have to explain and justify their existence, the returnees are liberated from the coercion of continuous self-explanation."

And yet I don’t have to do that here, not really. I recognize Rev. Kim is trying to elicit understanding from the Korean people, and the point he made later was that it is not us adoptees who have explaining to do: it is the Korean people who should be making explanations to us.

Here, I WANT to explain my existence, but nobody really wants to know. As soon as you open your mouth, they can tell, and they’d rather not talk about it. You are a reminder of their shame. And in the United States, with every new encounter, I had to explain my existence. And the best one of all, that I got with alarming frequency, was, “What ARE you???” I am not one of you, obviously…

Here, I blend in. Here, I am not one of you, though it’s obvious I should be.

I really liked what Maria Hee Jung, returning adoptee from Denmark wrote.

I think most adoptees realize that they don’t really have a country that is truly theirs, when they come to Korea. I think it would actually be easier for me to be accepted and to feel comfortable in a third nation without blood relation and anything else."

Tobias Hubinette, Swedish adoptee, wrote in Comforting an Orphaned Nation:

It is precisely in the interstitial space, oscillating between this still unfinished reconciliation with the past and still on-going imagining of the future, that the adopted Koreans are appearing as comfort children in order to ease and console the homeless and orphaned Korean nation."

To Be Continued...