Reunion with one's Birth/Natural/Bio Family...For Adoptees it is just one of the many thoughts that MAY cross their minds when they are growing up. It may be in a culturally mixed family, where one KNOWS that they were adopted, or when in domestic adoption the adoptee discovers or is told that they were adopted. No matter, when thoughts develop such as "who am I?" and "why was I given up?" We find sometimes fantasy thinking and wondering "WHAT IF".
It is said that 75,000 visits to Korea by Korean Adoptees, some as children with their adoptive parents/family members, many as adults, have taken place. The first visits usually include the processing adoption agencies, foster parents, and even the first orphanage (if it is still open). A 'taste of Korea', experiencing the land of our birth, and for most it is a re-connection that opens up many questions with few answers.
For fifteen years I lived in Korea, teaching English, as a half-breed, mixed-blooded Korean-American. It was my opportunity to be involved with Global Overseas Adoptee's Link, from the beginning in the coffee shops of Seoul, circa 1997 with the founder Ami Natzger. Ami saw the need for an organization to help KADs find their way around and get some help. Nolin and about a dozen of us continued to meet but it was Ami who did the 'heavy lifting'.
Reunion has happened with only 2,600 approximately, and the stories are a range from total rejection by the Birth mother to a developing relationship with both families of the adult adoptee. We must realize that the past cannot be undone, cultural differences are huge, the reasons for relinquishment are vast, and each story is unique. We can though learn what some have gone through and are dealing with on day to day basis. This blog is by Elle, a Swedish Korean Adult Adoptee, and I encourage you to go back before 2010 when reunion took place. Follow her journey from the beginning, give encouragement and comments. This could be your story, it will help you to know her's.
The Korean War Baby
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Jaesun says this
Heavy Me Stuff
This is my latest attempt of a blog, I write about my life as a
Korean raised in Europe, living and being raised in Sweden, about
Korea, adoption, my Korean family, reunion. And also about my daily
life, opinions and values.
I look upon my life in different stages:
- Stage I. The Ignorant/Oblivouis State (my arrival in Sweden til my 5th birthday). As I was not yet fully aware of ethnicity.
- Stage II. The Awakening. (from my 5th birthday til my 12 birthday). I begun to realize that I was different since I was adopted.
- Stage III. The Time for Impugnation. (12th birthday til 18th birthday). The teen years, time for questions and finding identity.
- Stage IV. The Honemoon Phase. (18th birthday til 25th birthday) Around the time I found and meet my Korean family.
- Stage V. Age Of Realism. (25th birthday and ongoing.) The time after my second trip, I realized and accepted many things…
As for the future stages( Stage VI and onwords ) I’m
not sure what they exactly will entail but I’m more than happy to share
my daily experience with anyone who might be willing to listen.
I’m fairly confident and convinced that Korea will be a part of my
life just as adoption always be. The two simply wouldn’t function
together…
I wanted to let you know that on Wednesday, June 20th, we are launching a 
I agree that qualifiers should be used rather than blanketing something or someone and all of adoption in discourse. A qualifier would have been suitable here because it's not entirely true. There are indeed *many* instances where adoption has caused the loss and separation of mothers and children.
As an adoptee and feminist, I have long been concerned with the U.S. obsession of "righting" the "illicit" childbearing of impoverished and/or unwed mothers by adoption--something that came about after careful marketing and the creation of a supply and demand system in the domestic industry in the United States. In the 1970's, for every one "unwed mother" who might give her baby up for adoption, there were ten prospective adoptive couples waiting to adopt (that ratio has since skyrocketed astronomically) with few facilitators and institutions at the time disagreeing that an adoption wasn't the only option. This system stacked against vulnerable, young, women did in fact cause them to lose their babies to adoption. The need for adoptions to happen as, second to marriage, the only way for a woman to "redeem" unwed childbearing drove the losses of over one million women. These are losses the blossoming industry at the time absolutely caused.
The over one-million U.S. women, and who knows how many worldwide, victimized by this system should not be dismissed. Their children were also victims. How can we dismiss them or tell them how to feel about it all either?
I know you've heard the voices of these mothers. What they say is true. My mother was treated very much like this in the 1980's. The second she walked into the agency, the decision was already made for her. Adoption was the agency's #1 priority and so many absolutely repugnant things happened to her, I, and my adoptive parents, just so adoption was the end that justified the agencies means.
Not every person, mother, family, or adoptee shares that experience. But we cannot dismiss them. I don't want my mother dismissed because her loss to adoption--because of adoption--isn't nice to think about because that's not fair. She was one of those women people use as examples of those who don't want their babies, she was raped. She loved me. She wanted me. I don't "pine" that I wasn't kept. I "pine" because of her horrific experiences--because she's a human being, and my mother, and no one should have to be treated that way.
I don't blame my adoption, adoptive parents, adoptive parents as a whole, adoption workers, original parents, or anyone else for any problem that I've ever had. But I do expect adoption to be accountable for the reprehensible amount of losses it, in itself, causes to orphans, foster children, youth adoptees, adult adoptees, original families, and adoptive families. I'm gladly a "whiner" for the cause of accountability ;-)
My point is that the facts are that a child was conceived, in any manner (marriage, unwed premarital sex, rape, incest, IVF, etc) and then adopted in any manner, that adoption does not CAUSE the loss and separation. A life has been produced, and no matter how it was brought into being, babies and children are in the world having already suffered loss and separation.
It is these and other conditions that CAUSE separation/loss not the other way around. It may be death of one or both parents, it may be extreme poverty, it could be the mother was forced by the societal and family lack of support, or she just did not want to be a mother yet. Rape or incest, and a decision not to abort or lack of facilities or religion may prevent turning to abortion. There are many Causes for the separation.
AGAIN, this is Post conception and relinquishment phases. Demand for children to be adopted did not Cause pregnancy and male preference did they? No. "Supply" is over abundant for many factors, in different ways over the years it changed as in the USA fewer women gave up their children. Single motherhood became more acceptable by society in many countries (one factor). It is a clear indication that THE RESULTING adoption both Domestic and International is that there is a huge SUPPLY. Not Demand 'causing' the Supply. YOU SEE? You prove my point, that it is not the cause but the Effect of the huge SUPPLY that led to the marketing and some abuses within the system. THIS I AGREE WITH, that abuse HAVE and DO occur.
I can agree with those who are upset about the extreme viewpoints (i.e. "forever families", Christian zealous motivations to adopt and save a child"). There are also problems of the Process that international adoption has undergone and In-Country adoptions are still unregulated in Sending Countries. Non-Hague signatory countries are still allowed to send orphans, so the Hague Conventions are worthless and cannot be enforced.