Korean Adoptee

The Sense of Wonder ~ By Matthew Salesses

Matthew Salesses pens a new novel of a game where the rules are different for some players

(Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2023, ISBN #978-0-3164-2571-1)

Review by Bill Drucker (Fall 2025)

Not that long ago, in the world of American professional basketball, two outstanding Asian players came on the scene, the Chinese superstar Yao Ming and Harvard-educated Chinese American Jeremy Lin. Despite their popularity and winning performances on the court, the media didn’t know how to deal with them.  Fans loved them, but there persisted a strong undercurrent of anti-Asian prejudice.

One story about Lin was that when he was at Harvard, he walked across the gym floor, and heard a coach or other staff member snarl, “The science building is across the commons.”  Lin felt pressure to constantly prove himself on the court, as a college player and as a professional. 

As a player, Lin had outstanding seasons in 2011-2012 as point guard for the New York Knicks.  Fans loved him and the enthusiasm was called “Linsanity.” Nonetheless, he was passed over (or snubbed) for the National Basketball Association (NBA) All Stars team.  He played other American basketball franchises, and then decided to play in Asia.  A six-foot-two-inch, 200 pound player in his prime, known for passing and shooting, Lin was cheered by fans, but razzed by the reporters, opposing fans, and even other players. 

Shaquille O’Neal was pressured to make a public apology for one anti-Asian crack.  Lin and Tiger Woods, another professional athlete who is also Asian, took the high road and accepted the apology without further fanfare.  During the pandemic’s Asian-hate era, his Asian identity was often insultingly thrown back in his face. However, looking back, Lin’s career had many highs and few controversies. His biggest fault seems to have been playing pro basketball while Asian.

Fast forward to 2023.  Inspired by the Lin narrative, seasoned novelist (and Korean adoptee) Matthew Salesses has produced a bristling satire of a fictional Asian player (Won Lee, of Korean heritage), and of the NBA franchise with all its bureaucracy and many faults.  Salesses throws in for good measure the issues of masculinity, sports role models, fandom, racism, and the the very flawed international K-drama industry.

The author portrays women working in or adjacent to the world of men’s professional sports as (refreshingly) unique individuals. Wives are hardly sports wives (whatever that is).  There are no bench warmers or cheerleaders to be found.  

The author puts the character of Won as the first person narrator in the first part of the story, as he struggles to position himself in the sports world. Despite his obvious talent and drive, the stubborn team coach browbeats Won and keeps him benched, trying to maintain control over him. However, Won knows the drill.  As a newbie NBA player, he needs to take on the role of the token Asian while also being a team player.  He is also the coach’s whipping boy.  The coach can hold the player’s contract over his head.  If Won doesn’t play, his season is over. 

The author introduces some other interesting characters to the mix. Won’s significant other Carrie Kang, a TV producer, is smart, sexy, and brutally honest.  With Won waffling, Carrie is inclined to knock some sense into him, rather than hold his hand. 

There is also a (Korean adoptee) reporter Robert Sung, who is a basketball washout, never having risen through the ranks as a player. He brags to Won early on that he and superstar Paul Burton, the Knicks captain (dubbed Powerball or PB) were teammates in high school. Sung takes Won under his wing, but Won smartly stays on the defensive, perceiving quickly that Sung is an opportunist and known to be vindictive in his writing to those who get on his bad side.

When Won leads the team in a seven-game winning streak (which was also a Jeremy Lin accomplishment), the media and fans go wild.  They dubbed him “the Wonder.”  It should be his moment, but the coach continues to invest more in the talents of the superstar PB.  PB likes the Asian point guard but also holds back; he is aloof as team captain. The rest of the team aren’t acting like Won’s friends either. 

Sung writes about Won as a rising star.  Sung, in his vindictiveness, both loves and envies PB.  He praises fellow Korean Won at first but uses him as a wedge against PB.  Sung’s jealousies about the success of his one-time high school teammate undermine Won and eventually destroy PB’s personal life.

Won himself is fan of PB on the court, but his personal drive and competitive nature get the better of him. Instead of treating him as a valuable asset and team member, Won sees PB as a rival.  As Salesses portrays it, the game gets to all of them; players, coaches, the sportswriter, and the wives. 

After close contact on court with PB, Won injures his leg.  Everything he has lived for stops cold in its tracks.  Won’s coach and team drop their investment of time and energy in him. Only PB shows some remorse.

Sung uses the incident to go after PB in his writing, and all the years of pent-up aggression against him surface.  When Sung can’t get enough satisfaction from blaming the team’s misfortunes on PB, he begins to blame Won for the bad luck.  It is an extreme, high-visibility example of how when you win, everybody loves you; but the moment you drop the ball, you are the team’s scapegoat.

Only Carrie Kang continues to support Won.  After the Won character is the lead protagonist and first-person narrator, Carrie’s well-developed character takes over as narrator.  From her vantage point,  Carrie recognizes Won’s many talents on and off the court, his sheer talent, and his maturity in dealing with direct and indirect racial assaults and the many personalities of the world Won inhabits.  She also sees his many faults.

Carrie has her own separate issues.  Her beloved sister is dying of cancer.  Carrie has very different views about confronting the disease compared with her sister’s acquiescing husband and their confused Korean family. 

She is also an ambitious K-drama producer, working on both sides of the Pacific. After hooking up with Won, she gets the idea for a new K-drama about the life of an NBA star.  In Korea, she deals with the Korean-ness of K-drama production politics and practices.  Interestingly, her struggles mirror those of Won, except they are on a different playing field. Carrie sees that she has to play the game, which for her is fraught with extra complications because she is a woman and a Korean American.  Won and Carrie are both enduring their own industry’s big egos who attempt to hold them back, frustrating their success and inflicting many irksome microaggressions.  

The Sense of Wonder is a briskly-paced, razor sharp, and entertaining read. Salesses is on fire in this story, pulling in diverse topics that create a cohesive narrative that is also wildly funny and insightful. Every page has something to say.  He takes sharp jabs at the NBA, American sports fandom, and anti-Asian racism.  He throws in a terrific sub-narrative that is like a K-drama 101 lesson chapter. He treats us to his criticism of the Asian American experience, including his observation of the skewed views of Asian masculinity

This author skillfully barrels down the court, treating us to some creative moves in his unwinding of this tale.  Original, confident and deftly written, the story is totally readable in just a few sittings.

Matthew Salesses is an award-nominated author of seven books.  As a Korean adoptee, he often integrates in his writings the issues of inter-racial adoption, identity, race and racism.  Salesses lives in New York City and teaches writing at Columbia University.

How home cooking brings comfort and a sense of belonging | By Suni Miller Zmich (Spring 2022 issue)

According to my infant medical records, when I was nearly a year old, I only weighed eight pounds – the same as my oldest daughter’s birthweight.

I am a Korean adoptee, but my parents rarely acknowledged my Koreaness as a child because I rejected it when they tried. I remember eating Korean food only twice during my childhood, but I loved the traditional Jewish and southern food that came with my family. Surely, my need to savor was brought on by the malnourishment I endured as an infant.

Food is primal for me, probably because of my rough start in life. It is my obsession.

Recently, I drove home with two-and-a-half gallons of kimchi, sporting red splatters on my coat from the gochugaru (Korean red chili powder) mixture, looking like a victorious paintball player. Over my lifetime, as a Korean adoptee in a white family, I haven’t known many other Koreans, and have had very few chances to be in a close community with any. For much of my life, I felt very white, despite what the mirror (and others) told me every day.

Serendipitously, I had been invited to a kimjang – a traditional collective making of kimchi. The energetic group of ladies at the event were welcoming as we gathered outside. A few were “Korean-Koreans” (i.e., Korean immigrants who have been making kimchi since childhood), but most were Korean adoptees like me. As we chopped vegetables and mixed the ingredients with our gloved hands, camaraderie and obscene amounts of garlic were enfolded into the concoction. We joked about motherhood and Asian babysitters – sending us into fits of laughter.

Afterwards, I wondered if acceptance is exactly what the kimjang tradition was meant to nurture – a time when Koreans are unguarded and understood. Being included brought a sense of completeness that I subconsciously searched for my entire life (not to take an inch away from my American family’s Jewish and redneck traditions). As a nomadic Army brat, I never knew that Korean adoptee communities existed in America until recently.

Last year, when I spoke to Joy H., one of the interviewees for my book, Through the Lens of Ourselves, she described a “subtle internal click” that happened when she met her Polish biological family. A significant portion of our conversation was dedicated to nuanced Polish recipes. Her newfound heritage has given her an excuse to eat kielbasa, the sausage she loved her whole life. The completeness she felt washed over me as she talked about her birth father’s family Christmas tradition of making pierogis (think: flat half-moon shaped ravioli boiled and sautéed in butter and garlic).

Reflecting on my satisfying kimjang day, I thought “Now I get it.” My “click” was raucous and permeating. Who would have thought that kimchi could not only be healing for my digestive system, but also for my soul? I knew also that it was not just the kimchi produced, but that the satisfaction came from doing something so basically Korean with other Korean people, and the acceptance I felt from that gathering.

Food has always been central to my family. From my adoptive Jewish family on my mother’s side, I learned about the healing properties of matzo ball soup, the equivalent of American chicken soup. My beloved grandmother taught me an adaptation of the traditional recipe. After cooking the stock for hours, she would mash the vegetables and garlic through a colander, returning them to the pot to create a thicker and more rustic soup. Traditionalists say that the vegetables are “spent” after boiling them and should be discarded. I disagree. They still offer textural and visual value. The miniature pieces of carrots lend a welcoming rich color to the dish and create a comforting and substantial mouthful.

Similarly, years later, when I tried the Korean soup yukgaejang for the first time, I immediately understood it to be the equivalent to matzo ball soup. The bold reddish color reminded me of an amped up version of my grandmother’s recipe. The beef bones are simmered for hours with vegetables to slowly develop a depth of flavor.

I have had both soups at different times when I’ve been under the weather. The matzo ball soup reminds me that I am loved by my Jewish family. The yukgaejang makes me feel better physically and simultaneously reminds me of how I yearn for familial tradition. The flavors are addictive, and the experience is psychologically familiar. The taste is of something I once lost as an infant and now rediscovered through my senses.  The spiciness of the broth opens my sinuses, allowing me to breathe both literally and metaphorically. I can taste the minerals from the shiitake mushrooms – almost as if they were plucked from Asian soil, giving me a glimpse into the lives of my ancestors. I can picture my Jewish grandmother having tea with those ancestors in the afterlife.

My aunt once told me that after my parents adopted me, my grandmother became obsessed with all things Asian. Even though I spent a lifetime often feeling out of place due to my adoption, the time spent with my grandmother was the exception. Being with her, and in her house, was always a homecoming experience. Our relationship revolved around food – she would take me to fancy restaurants – just the two of us.

The heart of her house was a supersized gourmet kitchen, complete with two types of grills, two sinks, state of the art appliances, and matzo ball soup made with love. At one point, she gave me her porcelain china and formal dining room furniture – they are now beautiful antiques. Her spirit joins us at the table for holiday meals, as we sip from Limoges teacups painted with Asian designs. When I open the cabinet doors, I swear I can smell her house and the hundreds of meals she served.

Recently, a friend and I joked about how I lucked out having a Jewish family, since Jewish and Korean cultures share so many values. Both cultures carve out distinct divisions between right and wrong, and coloring outside moral lines is not negotiable. Righteous outrage at injustice is expected. Education is paramount. But it is our love of food that brings Jewish and Korean family members back to the table over and over.

In contrast to my mother’s Jewish family, my dad’s family members are self-proclaimed rednecks (of the Appalachian hillbilly variety). Growing up, my mom and dad used to joke about how “red” his neck was. When I was a child, I thought they were referring to his skin color because he has some Cherokee roots, and his neck is tinged with red undertones that are pronounced when he tans.

From my redneck relatives, I learned about the importance of slow-cooked grits and the joy of biscuits made from scratch. I remember my dad fondly talking about visiting his grandfather in coal-country Kentucky. They would have a grand-slam breakfast before a full day of manual labor, fueling up to make it through the workday. It recently occurred to me that the love needed to create country home-cooked breakfasts is not unlike the soulful effort put into kimchi-making. Kentucky breakfasts are made to last through long workdays. Kimchi is created to last for months. Both are made with love and intention. Both are shared rituals.

For most of my lifetime, I wasn’t so sure that my redneck sensibilities fit well with my Korean roots. However, I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to our attitudes about food, we match. Whenever I would visit my dad’s parents, Granny would stuff me with American junk food, potatoes and gravy, and packaged white bread slathered with butter. As we left, she would insist I take a handful of candy bars for my trip home. Proffering food was her version of love. As an adoptee, I think I somehow understood that, never turning down a serving.

When my Jewish grandmother learned about the non-nutritious food I indulged in while at Granny’s house, she was aghast, telling me I needed to say “no thank you.” I never did. How could I reject someone’s love when that’s what I craved my entire life?

My obsession with food is probably a big part of why I fell in love with my husband. When we dated, he cooked for me, and when I had his garlic-forward alfredo sauce for the first time, I knew I was in trouble. He cooks about 90 percent of our dinners, and for 32 years he has shown me his love over and over.

As young adults, my husband and I gravitated towards the European peasant cuisines rich in aromatics. As we developed our palates, I realized garlic was the constant thread in our adventures. As we moved across culinary continents, our exploration of Asia brought us to Korean cuisine, lured by its abundant use of garlic and spice.

As child, I loved when others cooked for me – it gave me a sense of belonging. As an adult, I still love being fed, but I love to cook for others too. Breakfast is my favorite meal to make for my daughters – certainly a vestige of my redneck heritage. Fill ‘em up before sending them out into the world.

My daughters are now busy adults and come home when they can. We are all looking forward to our next visit because I bought large kitschy glass containers which will be transformed into kimchi jars. My girls are excited to participate in our first family kimchi-making party, a kimjang. And I am equally excited to nourish their souls with the Korean tradition of love.

Korean adoptees, public TV and public radio collaborate in a Twin Cities broadcast event | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2025)

The complex topic of deliberately falsified information in many Korean adoptees’ adoption files will be the subject of a free live broadcast event happening November 11 in St. Paul.

A South Korean government announcement about the false records dating back decades was issued this spring and included an apology for the widespread fraud. The high incidence of falsified records means that it will (or has been) very difficult or impossible for affected adult Korean adoptees to find their birth families.

The forum, to be held Tuesday, November 11, 6 p.m. at Arbeiter Brewing Company in Minneapolis, is part of a series of live community discussions for the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) program North Star Journey Live, designed as dialogues from underrepresented communities.  The November 11 event is a special collaboration of Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) and MPR. The general public is invited to the event (tickets required), which is titled Mistaken: Minnesota’s Korean Adoptees Grapple with Confessed Systemic Corruption.

The program, which will be taped live and re-broadcast later as a daytime radio program, will feature four speakers and a host, reporter Kaomi Lee, who is also a Korean adoptee.  Lee is usually covering stories about Minnesotans outside the Twin Cities for the weekly local news show Almanac on TPT.  She was asked to host this forum, not only because she is a member of the group being discussed, but also because she is knowledgable about the topic.  

The show’s MPR producer, Kelly Gordon, is married to a Korean adoptee. In addition to the North Star Journey Live series, Gordon also produces the Big Books and Bold Ideas series, featuring live book author talks, as well as the Minnesota Now radio program.

Gordon explained that North Star Journey Live began in 2020 during the pandemic, using remote zoom call discussions designed to invite community dialogue during a time when people were isolated. Once they could hold live events, the program continued with in-person forums such as A Post-George Floyd Reflection, when the former police chief and others discussed individual and community healing and rebuilding after Floyd’s public murder by Minneapolis police; and the FRONDO at the State Fair, a live event that brought together the Hmong and Black cultures of the Frogtown and Rondo neighborhoods (i.e., FRONDO), for a community discussion.

The panel speakers for the next North Star Journey Live event  (all Korean adoptees) include: Ami Nafzger, president of AdopteeHub, which reaches out to adult Korean adoptees with social and self-care programming and birth family searches; Cameron Lee Small, a therapist who works in adoption literacy and counsels adoptees and their families; Matt McNiff, director of the Camp Choson summer Korean culture camp; and Mary Niedermeyer, the CEO of the non-profit organization Communities Advancing Prosperity for Immigrants (CAPI).

A recent announcement after years of build-up

Many adult adoptees have known for years, at least anecdotally, that Korean adoptees frequently found significant errors in their own adoption files. A PBS Frontline TV documentary (South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning), first broadcast in September 2024, documented and described in detail the systemic neglect and abuse of the adoption system in South Korea, and the fact that other countries with programs to adopt Korean children failed to scrutinize these programs for signs of fraud, and in some cases, simply looked the other way.

The TV film documentary was a collaboration of the Associated Press (AP) and PBS, and was possible due to years of reporting and research work by AP reporter Tong-hyung Kim. It was nominated for Peabody and Emmy awards, and was conferred the 2025 Osborn Elliott Journalism Prize and two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for its in-depth reporting on systemic corruption.

A few months after the broadcast of South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning, on March 25, 2025, the South Korean government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) admitted its own system was culpable in fabricating or falsifying adoption records, and it issued a public apology.  The statement came after a nearly three-year investigation by the TRC, which examined more than 350 files submitted voluntarily to its investigation by Korean adoptees from many countries. Of those, the TRC reported that 56 contained falsifications that rose to the level of human rights violations. The other 311 cases were each deficient in some way, but were set aside due to lack of time.

Every major news resource nationally and internationally reported on this revelation, after which social media posts by Korean adoptees and allies proliferated. Although many Korean adoptees had known for years about the false records, others in the community were in shock at the revelation.

Minnesota producer takes on the story

Gordon said the idea for the program came when she was asked by a (Korean adoptee) manager of the Duluth MPR station if they could do a program about this issue, which affects many Minnesotan Korean adoptees, particularly older ones, since the files were falsified mainly in the ‘70s and ‘80s. After research and many talks with community members, Gordon assembled a panel who are all Korean adoptees and who had expertise on the topic. She said Lee was a “natural fit” to be the host.

The level of knowledge is uneven in the community among the general public and adoptees, Lee explained, which makes an event like this a way to get out some basic information to Korean adoptees and a mixed public audience on a very complex topic.  

For some adoptees, Lee said, the Frontline documentary “may have been the first time they had even heard that there could be some falsification of records and that their story of their file may not be the true story.” The documentary brought the story to a much wider audience than it had had in the past, “including some adoptees who haven’t been connected or haven’t done much searching, so I think it was quite shocking for a lot of people,” Lee said.

In recent weeks, there have been other developments, including that the new South Korean president made his own apology for the falsified adoption records in a speech on October 1.

The timing is one factor that has pushed this issue of accountability, in South Korea and in their own communities internationally. An important part of the timing is the age of the affected population of adoptees. Adoption is a “lifelong issue,” Lee said, that changes through one’s lifetime as one is aging.

An interest in their roots

Lee said that she has observed Korean adoptees going through a later-in-life type of coming out as an adoptee, “and developing interest in their roots and in family connections.” There are also many with aging adoptive parents, becoming caregivers at some point, and when adoptive parents die, feeling the grief as another kind of abandonment. “It opens up some new things. If adoptive parents are no longer with you, you are alone in the world again, which may be triggering.”

Lee found out in recent years that her own adoption records are probably fraudulent. Listed as abandoned on the records she found, she said that there was no statement in the file about who brought her to the orphanage, no consent for relinquishment, no record of the police being called, and no record of an attempt to locate family. She does not know if any of the information is true; because it was so sparse, she suspects it was fabricated.

A shoddy transfer of agency records

The revelation about false adoption records, combined with a more recent controversy regarding the transfer of all adoption records from individual agencies to the South Korean government both caused confusion and distrust among adoptees.  “There was a lot of anger over a decision to store the records in some kind of suburban storage facility that was not even archival quality,” Lee said. “It feels like, once again, our records are not being treated with care and adoptees themselves are not being treated with care. Again, that we are not deserving of that kind of respect for our own lives that others receive.” 

After much protesting by adoptees, and media attention about the records storage in recent months, Lee said “we learned that the records are now slated for storage at the national archives where they should have been all along.”

Concerning the records debacle, Lee said, many question remain about “whether agencies got rid of records of things they may have been liable for” prior to the mandated transfer, she said. “That is the accountability factor that adoptees are still looking for.”

The first resettled Asians

Minnesota is a place where “most people went to school with an adoptee, is married to an adoptee” or there is some family, neighborhood, or workplace connection, in metropolitan areas as well as the most remote rural areas, Lee observed.  “We have really embedded ourselves in the culture here. And as a group we were really the first Asians to be resettled here. But because we came as children and not as family units, it made our immigration story very different.”

Korean adoptees, at least until recent years, were “kind of a silent group,” Lee said, but it is an interesting immigration story that so far has not been well explored, she said.

However, Korean adoptees have increasingly become been more active and more vocal. They have taken on the burden of self-advocacy and the movement has gathered strength.  They have also been doing the work, arguably, that governments should have done, in securing their rights to their own records. “We adoptees have been the ones doing the research and putting the pieces together,” Lee said.  In South Korea, several groups of European Korean adoptees have taken their grievances about adoption records to the court system, asking judges to decide whether their human rights have been violated.

An event with a dual purpose

According to Gordon, the program serves a dual purpose as a gathering place where people can discuss with one another and hear speakers, and as a radio broadcast that a wider audience can enjoy.  It will also be videotaped for use as a Youtube video and posted after the event, she said. “The people in the [live] audience will be primarily Korean adoptees, but we are taping it to play to the tens of thousands of listeners on Minnesota Public Radio,” she said, “and I’m guessing since Minnesota has the largest concentration of Korean adoptees in the U.S., I think everybody in Minnesota probably knows somebody who is a Korean adoptee …I am trying to make sure we are talking to this audience as well.”

Bringing up important questions

Lee said that for adoptees, the event will consider questions unique to the international adoptee identity. Adoptees are a diverse group, and ideas about justice and fairness to adoptees will vary, she said, “But I really think that having our records truly open to us is the kind of accountability everyone all agree on,” Lee remarked.

There are many layers of human rights violations to correct, “the rush to send us away for profit, and the shoddy paperwork and the falsified stories, names and identities.  And just the very active hiding of identities and the paper trail, and non-transparency. These kinds of things are the abuses adoptees have had to endure,” said Lee.

Although at this point in her life, Lee said she is skeptical as to whether accountability will happen, she believes that a sincere attempt at amends and truth-telling by the South Korean government can help adoptees emotionally. “I do think that if the government would release our records, that would go a long way in making things right and restoring justice to us.”

Lee said, that for the adoptee audience, she hopes the event will spark some questions that adoptees must ask themselves about the current revelation. “It’s human nature and as you go through life and you’re middle-aged and older, you start to think about what did your life mean, and your purpose in life, and your adoption and why it happened, and the family you might not know about.” 

Considering this issue on the records fiasco in South Korea, Lee said she is curious to ask fellow Korean adoptees questions like “What does justice look like for you? Is this something you need to know before you die?” And “Do you think it will help you in your own healing?”

Update: MPR will broadcast the full North Star Journey Live forum Mistaken: Minnesota’s Korean Adoptees Grapple with Confessed Systemic Corruption on Wednesday, November 26, at 9 a.m.  After that, the videotaped version will be available on Youtube.