Korean Quarterly

Giving Voice to the Korean American Community

Korean adoptees

Baking a niche in Korea

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Korean adoptee opens Seoul bakery café specializing in authentic American treats | By Sara Salansky (Summer 2024)

SugaMama owner and master chef Christine Pennell with a slice of her traditional American apple pie and (right) tie-dye cupcakes.

American visitors to Korea hankering for a taste of home can find it at SugaMama, an American-style bakery café in Seoul.

The café began after owner Christine Pennell moved to Korea. She soon found that she hungered for the American-style baked treats she had always made for her children and friends, never realizing that her craving would blossom into a business. . After two meaningful trips to Korea, she moved there in 2020.  

She always wanted to live in Korea, and she also wanted to learn Korean and to find her birth parents. But the move soon became a more significant life change. Though “I didn’t say I moved here.  But now that I have a bakery, my kids say that I have to say I moved here, and so for three and a half years I have lived in Korea.”

“I knew I needed to do something for work in Korea,” Pennell said in explaining how the business got started. “I didn’t want to be an English teacher.  I was told that there was basically no authentic American baking in Korea, and when I’d go to bakeries, and wanted something with apples in it, there weren’t a lot of apples in it.”

Pennell said she wanted to get a sense of the demand for full-on American-style baking.  Living alone in Korea, she missed baking and cooking for people. In April 2022, she started baking in her apartment using a tabletop oven, and gave items away to test the market potential of various baked items.  She posted on a Facebook page intended for foreigners living in Korea (known as expatriates or expats) that she was giving away baked goods, and invited the group members to bring containers and try for free. At one point, a group member questioned her motives, after which the administrator of the group page told her not to advertise her free baked goods any more.

SugaMama Cafe in Seoul.

Despite being kicked off the group page, there was still demand for her baking.  Pennell’s next step was to find commercial kitchen space.  She struggled to keep up with weekly orders using the tiny oven in her apartment. In December 2022, she found an appropriate kitchen facility to lease.  

Pennell said that, at first, she was just baking items that were pre-ordered, but after a few months in the new commercial kitchen, she decided to decorate and furnish some space in the bakery with tables, chairs and a seating area so that people could sit down and enjoy a treat there.

Soon, Pennell and her daughter Victoria were working with shovels and saws, building three outdoor sitting areas with pergolas and flower beds.  During the heat of the summer in Korea, Pennell said, they were hard at work while the neighbors walked by wondering what was going on.  SugaMama bakery café opened officially on August 23, 2023.  

Without a persistent drive to live in Korea, this venture would never have happened. Pennell recalled that, for as far back as she could remember, she wanted to live in the country of her birth.  As a teen, this longing deepened.  She recalls having a fight with her parents, and her response was “I’m going to move to Korea!” She was not able to follow through on that desire for many years, but it was always there.  

Pennell said she also always wanted to find her birth mother. When she was 24, she started looking, but didn’t have enough money to go to Korea.  The adoption agency sent her a response of “there was no information on her family,” which was discouraging.

Pennell remembers a film she saw in 2017, Lion, Lion, based on the 2013 non-fiction book A Long Way Home, a true story of transnational adoptee Saroo Brierley, and how he sets out to find his birth family in India 25 years after being separated from them. The film inspired Pennell to continue to renew her search for her own birth family.   

In researching everything about the birth search process, Pennell discovered a social media group called Korean American Adoptees.  Through that page, she learned about a DNA match program that, sponsored by entrepreneur philanthropist Thomas Park Clement, through a DNA matching and search organization 325KAMRA. She got her first DNA kit free through the program.

Pennell visited Korea in 2018, her first time since she left the country in 1972. It was a three-week tour sponsored by her adoption agency.  In addition to seeing tourist sites, she visited Daegu, the city of her birth. She also rented a car and drove to some coastal areas of Korea. She returned to the U.S. even more determined to find a way to live in Korea.  

In 2019, Pennell found out through a DNA match that she had a sister who was adopted to a family in Belgium. The two met in Korea that same year.  She also found out that she could apply for dual Korean-U.S. citizenship, so she started that process. In June 2020, on her third trip back to Korea, she returned as a Korean citizen.   

In 2020, there were still many pandemic restrictions, but it was a perfect time to take a Korean language class on line, and study in her spare time. In October 2020, when all of the restrictions were lifted, she finally moved to Korea. 

What is unique about SugaMama? Pennell stresses that she is not a professional baker, but has been a home baker ever since she was a teenager. She loves to feed people; she is especially happy that she can provide Korean adoptees with a safe place for them to hang out, talk in English and eat some good food.

On the SugaMama menu: Meatball grinder with homemade meatballs, sauce and baguette and (right) lemon, strawberry and funfetti cupcakes.

Nothing suggests Asian fusion cuisine at SugaMama. It is authentically American, even the décor, and the products are organic and delicious. On the menu are favorite American treats like oatmeal dark chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, ginger snaps, and coconut macaroons. She also makes flavored breads such as banana bread and cinnamon rolls, as well as yeast bread, like baguettes and a sandwich roll.  Pies and cakes are also on the menu, along with several different sandwiches to eat in or take out, such as a meatball grinder, a sausage, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich, and a tuna melt. Pennell said the fastest-selling items are her apple pies and funfetti cupcakes. 

A recent menu item, New York style “everything” bagels and (right) a customer getting work done in the cafe.

Korean customers can’t pinpoint why the American desserts taste different from Korean desserts and typically ask her “how?”  She explains to them that she uses real ingredients like vanilla and sugar and cinnamon and real sprinkles that truly enhance the flavor of her desserts.  This makes sense to Korean home cooks – she sees their heads nodding with understanding.   

Pennell said she is happy to take requests for orders of things that are not on the menu. She will research recipes and make the item, provided she can find all of the ingredients, which is hard sometimes in Korea.

Pennell understands the link between food and feelings of home, and said she knows these feelings can be difficult for adoptees, especially those who are in Korea and do not yet know the people or culture.  It can be very emotional, and sometimes lonely.   

Her advice to those on the fence about moving to Korea is that a healthy perspective is the key to a positive experience. She asks the question “Are you moving because you think it will fulfill you, or you want to experience something different and new, or are you wanting to move because you hate being at home?”

Another piece of advice – the more Korean language instruction and practice, the better, since overcoming the language barrier is difficult. To communicate accurately, it may be necessary for newcomers to use the translation app on their phones “and that’s OK,” she added.  

As hard as it is for American entrepreneurs to start a business in the U.S., not knowing the culture and doing business in a second language exacerbates all of those challenges in Korea.  Pennell said success depends on “true friends” in Korea who can be trusted to help with the process.

SugaMama is located in the Gangseo-gu, Deungchon-dang neighborhood of Seoul, and directions are included on the SugaMama website: https://www.sugamamakorea.com.  There is also a Facebook page and an Instagram page with delicious photos of food at: sugamama_korea.  

SugaMama staff: Jihyun Im, Christine Pennell and Dongmi Suh present three apple pie variations, crumble, lattice top and full coverage top. At right, Pennell samples a slice of the lattice top. .

A door opens for birth searching

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AdopteeHub in Minnesota and GOA’L in Korea launch collaboration for search and post-reunion services | By Martha Vickery (Summer 2024)

July will be the launch of a new birth search portal by the Twin Cities-based, adoptee-run organization AdopteeHub. The portal will be a key part of a birth search service that is the first of its kind in the 60-plus year history of international adoption.  It will blend technology with expert research, counseling and translation to achieve reunifications of Korean family members with their birth children across the miles and cultures.

The new database, called the Hope Registry, will be a confidential way for both birth parents in Korea and adult Korean adoptees to enter their personal information as a first step in a birth family search or birth child search.  Korean families searching for children they placed for adoption and adult adoptees searching for their original families will get expert assistance to help them in subsequent steps, ideally (but not always) culminating with a family reunion that will be permanent and meaningful.

A bilingual and bicultural approach

Ami Nafzger, executive director and founder of AdopteeHub, said that their organization is partnering with the Seoul-based non-profit Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link (GOA’L), which she also founded in Korea (in 1998).  The two organizations will administer the program in two languages and in two cultures. This joint, bi-cultural approach will allow both native Koreans and Korean adoptees to voluntarily post their own information on the new data base as the first step in the often-complex process of finding birth relatives.

Nafzger visited the GOA’L organization in late May to meet with and train staff who will administer the Hope Registry, the database part of a larger program that will include post-reunion support. Prior to the July launch, she said, she will also train two Minnesota-based staff to help register adult adoptees for the new program.  At launch time, set for July, she said, only U.S. Korean adoptees can register. The program will be expanded later to include Korean adoptees living in other countries.

GOA’L Family Search Team, Yeo Kyung Wie and Kyong Mi Paek, with Kara Rickmers (center), GOA’L Secretary General.

Kara Rickmers, GOA’L’s secretary general since February, met with Nafzger several times during her May trip to GOA’L headquarters. GOA’L welcomed the partnership, Rickmers said, which has been in process for about a year.  Right now, she said, adoption agencies do not have a legal way to share information with birth parents about adoptees, and there is no service available to help birth parents search. 

The Korean government’s National Center for the Rights of the Child (NCRC) runs a database on which anyone can enter their information, but that database is public, therefore many birth parents and some adoptees are reluctant to use it. The data on it is not actively managed, so it does not work as a staffed search service like the Hope Registry, according to Rickmers.

Under a recent law, adoption agencies were supposed to consolidate adoption records under one service, however, that project was never accomplished, due in part to the agencies’ reluctance to follow the new law.  Agencies retain their own information and release adoptees’ files according to their own policies, Nafzger said.

Having lived in Korea and worked with searching adoptees through GOA’L starting in the late ‘90s, Nafzger sees the birth search challenge from both sides.  The situation for birth families is unchanged from the situation she observed when she began to do searches in Korea nearly 27 years ago, she noted. In terms of search services, she said, “I’ve talked to a few adoption agencies, and they’ve said there is still nothing for birth families.”

Korean adoptees have had a few more resources available, but there are many deficiencies in search options for adoptees as well, Nafzger observed. Typically, adoptees might put birth search information on social media such as Facebook, which is problematic.  She said of Facebook “All the viewers can see it, it’s not specifically going to the Korean community, and it’s all in English.”  

A key ingredient – privacy

Since the mid-1990s, when a large group of Korean adoptees reached adulthood, many have tried to find their birth families in various ways. They have used newspaper advertising, appeared on popular morning TV shows in Korea that feature people looking for lost friends and family, employed detectives, and used a DNA database maintained by South Korea law enforcement. Sometimes, adoption agencies or other organizations offering homeland tours to Korean adoptees supply staff who  assist in birth searches while tour participants are in South Korea.

The disadvantage of many of these methods is that birth families and adoptees must be willing to go public with their search, which can be a negative and intimidating experience. None supply follow-up for adoptees in the important post-reunion phase of the journey.

In contrast, she explained, the Hope Registry database will be in both English and Korean, and the information entered by the users is confidential.  Only basic information, approved by the user, such as a name and a photo, will be available for viewing by other registered users on the portal.  Each participant will enter more details, however, that information will be only for viewing and use by the staff working confidentially to match participants with family members.

Funding a labor-intensive project

Entering information on the database is only the initial step in part of an overall program that combines technology, data and guidance.  The researchers find key information or ask the participant for more information “because the more information we can gather, the better a chance for a match,” Nafzger said.

Many adoptees have already entered their names and information on GOA’L’s database.  GOA’L database enrollees will need to separately enroll with the Hope Registry, although information on the GOA’L database will be used by staff as one of the search resources, Nafzger said.

Because of one anonymous major donor, the start-up costs for the program are covered. Participants will be able to register for $30. Another donor, the Thomas and Wonsoon Foundation, funded by Korean adoptee and entrepreneurial inventor Thomas Park Clement and his wife, artist  Wonsoon Kim, will supply the funding for DNA matching of birth parents and adoptees, and will also support the post-reunification program. This grant will make the DNA test free for program participants.

Success of the program will depend on sourcing more funding and getting ongoing support from donors who are on board.

Preparing for anything to happen

As a social worker with years of experience in birth search, Nafzger said she favors doing an initial  “readiness assessment” for Hope Registry enrollees, possibly a counseling session paired with a questionnaire for all participants, so that adoptees and birth families will be prepared to deal with all the possible outcomes of a search.

Other readiness resources for adoptees, still to be developed, may include examples of stories and/or videos about adoptees who searched and were reunited, or not reunited, or those who searched but were rejected by their birth families, Nafzger said.  Through GOA’L, similar resources in Korean will eventually be available for Korean nationals who enroll, she said.

There are no models for AdopteeHub to follow on how to help after a family is reunified -– post-reunion support services will be a new invention. Nafzger observed that “Post-reunion resources are missing. They just don’t exist. And we need to start doing something around those things. Too many adoptees have found families, but then lose contact with them.”

Managing expectations across cultures

Rickmers, who has lived in Korea for six years, and worked with GOA’L for the last four years, noted that there are many search resources available for adoptees, compared to almost none to help a family that is newly in reunion. Beyond the language barrier, she said, there are the larger problems of “the expectations on both sides -– the point of view of the birth family and the adoptee are often very different in terms of what a reunion means to them,” she said.  Such expectations “can often lead to miscommunication and suddenly they are no longer speaking and no longer in reunion.”

Back in the ‘90s and early 2000s when Nafzger was finding birth family matches for adoptees who came to her through GOA’L, the organization got a publicity boost through a story in the newspaper Kyung An Ilbo and after that,  through a KBS network TV documentary. As a result, several hundred Korean nationals volunteered with GOA’L, mainly to help with birth searches. Because of those native speakers, hundreds of parent-child reunions were achieved, she said. Native Korean volunteers are still essential to GOA’Ls program today.

The GOA’L staff who will work with the Hope Registry are two native Koreans “who have both worked overseas for many years,” Rickmers said, “and they can understand the Korean perspective but can also advocate for the perspective of the adoptee.”  Over time, she said, GOA’L will “build up its post-reunion program in a more nuanced way, and work towards a formal reunion support program, with AdopteeHub, including the steps of how to prepare for the reunion, how to negotiate issues, and how to follow-up over time with birth families and adoptees, she added.   

GOA’L can also work with birth family members and adoptees when an in-person search is impossible due to either party’s work commitments or financial issues.  Services will include translation/interpretation and help in initial meetings and follow-up virtual family meetings.

Rickmers noted that GOA’L has had success in posting printed flyers on bulletin boards and in community centers and marketplaces in a neighborhood where an adoptee was known to have been found. The flyers include a photo and list any relevant information about the adoptee, asking for those with knowledge of that adoptee or their family to come forward.  

However, she added, there is a limit to what GOA’L can do by proxy when the adoptee is not in Korea.  Also, she said, the response is much more enthusiastic in a community when the adoptee personally shows up with a GOA’L staffer. “When people see this person who has come so far to do this thing, then we can see how the community oftentimes opens up and people will almost bend over backwards to help this person,” she said.

Walking neighborhoods to do birth searches is also a good way to inform Korean nationals about how the Hope Registry works for birth parents. Because some birth parents they search for are elderly, GOA’L will produce information on paper, and allow prospective enrollees to pick up a form in someplace like a community center and mail it into GOA’L, she said.

Nafzger said that use of technology, including virtual calls and social media, along with translation services, counseling and guidance, is another way to enhance and support reunions and for enrollees across the world work  on their relationship over time.

Building participation among birth families

Rickmers said another part of GOA’L’s role will be to announce the opening of the registry to the Korean public at the right time, and campaign for it through its own contacts and through the media. It’s essential for the success of the program, she said, that Korean birth parents trust the program and come forward to add their information to it.

Nafzger said she will be discussing the new program with adoption agencies with the objective of achieving their support and will agree to refer birth families to the program when they walk into the agencies seeking information about their adult birth child.  

A larger but related issue to persuading the public to use the Hope Registry, Rickmers said, is for Koreans to accept Korean adoptees as members of Korean society. She wonders how best to promote this idea,  whether it is getting Korean adoptees to volunteer for causes in the community, to campaign through media, or just break down cultural barriers through people-to-people exchanges.  It is a long-term objective, and a societal issue “that goes beyond GOA’L and even beyond adoption,” she said.

Searching for birth family is a personal decision.  Nafzger said she expects the energy for the new birth search service and post-reunion support service  to build slowly.  “I think once some adoptees have done it, others will learn about it and want to do it,” she said.  “Other people may need [a birth search] but maybe not now. We want to provide that safe, comfortable environment.  We want the resources to be there when they are ready.”

Editor’s Note

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Familiar people and activities and the orderly nature of fall | By Martha Vickery (Fall 2022)

Minnesota 2022 Kimchi Festival. Photo by Kim Jackson

In addition to visual cues, like geese practice-flying in a chevron shape in the sky or noticing less
pavement on a favorite walking trail as it gets covered with leaves, there are some energy cues that
signify fall is coming. I sense a certain sense of order about fall, some urges to get mentally organized for
the work ahead. Even for those of us who are no longer affected by school schedules, the instinct to get with it happens anyway as vacations come to a close, and we set our minds to being back at work again.

I also found myself tentatively thinking that perhaps, after two-and-a-half years of pandemic ups and
downs, things are getting back to normal. Or at least, in a state of new normal. Certain activities, like
outdoor festivals in late summer and early fall gave me a sense of old times.

Some of the 2022 Minnesota Kimchi Festival kimchi competition entries. Photos by Kim Jackson

One of the days I felt most normal was the day of the Kimchi Festival, presented by Adoptee Hub, a service and educational group by and for adult Korean adoptees, devoted to social services and cultural enrichment specifically tailored to them. The Kimchi Festival, although designed to provide fun access to Korean culture for Korean adoptees through food, was also of interest to a wide audience.

There was a sense of newness because there has never been a Kimchi Festival in Minnesota before. This was the first one, although Adoptee Hub wants it to be an annual event. It was fun to see the Kimchi Contest judges, volunteers from the Korean American Women’s Association, sit down before a bemused audience to give a little critique of the kimchi samples entered into the contest. It may have been a first-time experience for all of us to hear the results of a kimchi contest. Some were “a little salty,” or “a little fishy,” and a couple of the samples, including one made with asparagus, were pronounced to be “innovative.”

There was also a sense of newness because the Twin Cities Korean American community was showing up to its own large-scale in-person event for the first time in a few years. There were vendors, performers, churches, and community groups. It felt both new and old, and both strange and familiar at the same time.

For me, it was super-fun because I had to stop about every two feet as I walked along, to talk to
someone I knew and had not seen since before the pandemic. It was so satisfying to see so many of the
same people again; to know they were the same and see that they were OK.

The food was good too. I was having one of those moments of joy, resting at an outside table after
getting a couple kimchi samples, when a Korean American guy I did not know sat down next to me and we exchanged a few bits of small talk. One of the things he said was “Isn’t it great to just see the people?” I knew what he meant – it was not only great to see any people having fun at an outdoor event
together, it was also special for me and my Korean family members and friends to see so many Korean
faces at the same event. I felt somehow relieved. Intellectually, I knew the folks were still there. But, yes, it was great to just see them.

At the end of 2016, the year after the Adoptee Citizenship Act was first introduced, adoptees and allies from across the country travelled to Washington DC for an Adoptee Citizenship Day of Action, at which they delivered more than 35,000 postcards from supporters of their nationwide advocacy campaign. 

Another event in of the fall involves government getting back into gear. I spent some time delving into
the progress of the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA) which would confer automatic citizenship on all
international adoptees, irrespective of their age or date of adoption. It would also bring home all
adoptees who have been deported to their country of origin. In 2022, the ACA made more progress than it has ever made in its seven-year history. It was passed in the House of Representatives in February,
then went to the Senate and was stripped from a bigger bill.

To bolster support for the bill, the lobbying group Adoptees for Justice (A4J) sought and received
support at the state level, including a resolution from the conservative state of Utah to unanimously
support the ACA and call for its U.S. Senators to get behind it. It still could get through in the last months
of the 2022 session of Congress. A4J is urging all supporters to tell their Senators to step up and support
it.

Kudos to Sara Jones, a community organizer and Korean adoptee along with all her allies in the Utah
business and government community for all the work needed to get their resolution through the state
legislation. Bi-partisan cooperation can happen!

Dexieng Dae Yang and Laura Anderson in The Humans.

Also among the fall 2020 stories are reviews of two recent live theater productions that put a new spin
on famous plays. One at Park Square Theater, was The Humans, a Tony-award-winning play that has
seen many productions in many theaters. This one was staged and casted by dramaturg Katie Bradley, a
Korean adoptee, to show this family drama as a family with two Asian daughters. Although nothing new
is added to the play, the substitution of two Asian daughters and one Black boyfriend, instead of a
white family whose members racially match, sends a different kind of message to the audience about
the nature of the drama.

Cast, directors and production crew of Death of a Salesman: (Front row left to right) Katie Bradley, Adelin Phelps, Christopher Thomas Pow, Greg Watanabe, Rich Remedios, Kevin Fanshaw, Ajah Williams; and (back row left to right): Rick Shiomi, Seth Patterson, Lily Tung Crystal, Eric Sharp, Olivia Wilusz.

Similarly, Theater Mu’s recent staged reading of the classic Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman,
directed by local actor/playwright Eric Sharp ( a Korean adoptee) in collaboration with Seth Patterson
and Theater 45, flipped the script on this well-known story of the failed American dream with an all-
Asian cast. Having live theater back is another great joy for Twin Citians as we step into a seemingly fragile new-normal environment.

As we enter the last quarter of 2022, we have to reflect on what a big year it has been for KQ and for all
who support us, as we transitioned from paper and online editions to 100 percent online with a new
digital archive still on the way. Before the end of the tax year, please consider a donation to help KQ
continue to bring this independent, volunteer-driven journal to you into the future. Thanks readers!

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Novel reveals truths of adult adoptee reality

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Famous Adopted People ~ By Alice Stephens

(The Unnamed Press, Los Angeles, 2018, ISBN #978-1-944700-74-4)

Review by Bill Drucker (Summer 2024)

The story begins with Lisa Pearl, who is living in Japan and teaching English. On a trip to Seoul, she reunites with Mindy Stamwell, her best friend since the two met at Korean camp as children. The two have planned to locate their birth parents through an organization called MotherFinders.  While Mindy is wired at the idea of meeting birth family, Lisa is distracted.  She has skipped out on her teaching job in Japan, and is making up for loss of sleep by fueling up on alcohol, drugs, and Dunkin Donuts.

Lisa never had much need-to-know feelings about her past, but through a series of events, she is about to encounter her past in an extraordinary way.

So begins Alice Stephen’s novel Famous Adopted People. Stephens cleverly uses two juxtaposed techniques to drive the story and to discuss issues of adoption as adults experience them.  There is the cynical, often drug- or alcohol-induced voice of Lisa Pearl as she spouts her feelings about adoptees’ issues mixed with confessions of personal failures. 

There is also the interesting addition of 18 chapter intro pages.  Each page is a North Korean propaganda poster, depicting typical images, such as an armed soldier or smiling peasant girl.  Part of the face on each poster is covered by a chapter bar and a second larger bar below it with a quote from or about a famous adoptee.  The first is Moses.  As the reader gets further into the story, these bits of data are incorporated into and become important to the overall narrative. 

Lisa is well educated, and speaks some Chinese and Japanese. However, she seems unable to put her considerable education and skills to bear on her life.  She drags her butt, unable to write, plan or set any goals.  She loves Mindy, but her friend’s constant lectures to Lisa to get it together are grating. 

Harrison, a smooth-talking Korean guy gains Lisa’s trust.  He comforts her, takes her to bars.  When he brings her a McD Happy Meal, she takes the coffee but says she only eats Wendy’s fast food because of course, the Wendy’s founder is the famous adoptee, Dave Thomas.

Harrison (or Ji Hoon) introduces Lisa to the arrogant Jonny, a Korean guy who drinks and talks about himself and the expensive consumer items he can afford, such as Audi, Rolex, and Johnny Walker Black Label.  In the trusting haze of alcohol, Lisa does not really care when Ji Hoon covers her mouth with a white handkerchief.  The words she hears as she fades out are, “We knew we’d find you.”

Lisa wakes up in what seems like a luxurious palace where she is apparently being imprisoned.  Rather than get any straight answer, she is given a vague runaround by the people she encounters.  In a short time, she meets the head of the house, one Honey LeBaron who is white and claims to be Lisa’s birth mother, saying that she got pregnant with Lisa through a brief encounter with a student rioter.

The ironic plot further unrolls as Lisa discovers that the palatial house, which is located in North Korea, and the constant attention and monitoring by servants, are because Honey is the lover of the Dear Leader of North Korea. Honey is also a pampered prisoner in the house, and the mother to Jonny, an heir to the North Korean ruling dynasty. She is also hungry for power.

Lisa can barely believe this delusional woman is her birth mother.  When Lisa accidentally calls her “Mom,” the woman softens and responds.  “Say that again.  Tell me you love me.”  But it is short lived, and the monster mom resurfaces. 

A servant, Ting, helps Lisa escape to China when all hell breaks loose after the Dear Leader suddenly dies. In the chaos, the people cry for leadership as Jonny seizes power.  In his path to the throne, he will kill anyone in his way, including Honey and Lisa, for knowing too much.

The story is a manic roller-coaster ride.  The reader tags along in the protagonist’s strange adventure, one that alters the trajectory of her unfocused life.  Threads of identity and belonging are woven through this acerbic and surreal story.  Is Lisa a birth child of a delusional monster or the adopted daughter of a Jewish American family? She has used the excuse of adoption as the bane of her existence, but her story — and, by inference, all adoptees’ stories — is much more complex once she knows more.

The first pages of each chapter, with famous adoptees’ quotes, get more biting and bitter.  The Chapter 7 intro page shows a grim-looking soldier with an AK-47.  A quote from musician and famous adoptee Liz Phair is: “I don’t think you can be adopted without being a little bit screwed up.” 

In Chapter 8, Steve Jobs is quoted as saying his biological parents were a sperm bank donation.  “That’s not harsh, it’s just the way it was, sperm bank thing, nothing more.”  In the chapter narrative, Jobs is described as “a genius, a revolutionary, an asshole.”  Other remarks by famous adoptees are negative about adoption.  Soon Yi Previn disowns her adoptive parents (Mia Farrow and Andre Previn).  One chapter intro page notes that Korean adoptee Toby Dawson, the Olympic bronze medalist, is still denied by his birth mother. 

These famous remarks give the novel a sense of both the uniqueness and the commonality of adoption issues.  In the final chapter, Lisa is back among the sane. She blogs on a website called FamousAdoptedPeople.com.  What begins as Lisa’s narrative becomes the author Alice Stephens’ thoughts. 

The author clearly believes that the meaning of adoption should not be defined by others, rather that the adoptee has ownership of his or her own narrative. She points out in ironic ways the onslaught of racist and stereotypical remarks adoptees are subject to, such as Jonny in Seoul telling her to eat up because “there are hungry kids in Alabama.”

In her bizarre plot which borders on black comedy, Lisa/Alice Stephens points out effectively that knowing one’s own story may still not be enough. For the adoptee, there may be no happily ever after. 

Stephens was born in Korea, and is among the first generation of transracial international adoptees.  She currently lives with her family in the Washington, DC area.  She has published short-form writings in many literary publications.  Famous Adopted People is her first novel.  Her creativity in crafting this story, with social insight and wry humor, makes us hope that this first novel will not be her last.

Looking at how we can do better

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Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood ~ By Kimberly D. McKee

(Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 2023, ISBN #9-780-8142-5892-7)

Review by Alice Stephens (Spring 2024)

Transracial adoption is a failed experiment in multiculturalism, according to Kimberly D. McKee’s latest critical adoption study, Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood. Through an examination of representations of transracially-adopted girls and women in popular culture, McKee highlights the contradictory characterizations of adoptees as perpetually-stereotyped outsiders treated as sexualized, tokenized, and humorous objects, even within their own families and communities.

According to the author, “Adoption Fantasies makes visible the nuances that shape the nexus of objectification experienced by Asian women and girls as a lens through which to consider the ethics of representation and the ramifications of how racialized and heteronormative gendered tropes become operationalized on a specific subset of adoptee experiences.”

Focusing on cultural works that feature female Asian adoptee characters, the book begins with an examination of Sex and the City and Modern Family, two popular TV shows that depict the adoption of an Asian baby girl by white families. McKee dissects their plot lines in order to illustrate that “Adoption was never about the adoptee. It was always about the fantasies of adoption held by white adoptive parents.”

In Sex and the City, adoption is presented as the disappointing alternative to having a biological child. After being unable to conceive, the character Charlotte and her husband decide to adopt. Cue the racist reaction from relatives, the misconception that hordes of unwanted third world orphans are just waiting to be saved, and the centering of the white adoptive parents as they have to settle for a Chinese infant.

The adoption of a Vietnamese infant, given the name Lily, by a gay couple in Modern Family, McKee asserts, demonstrates the couple’s “homonormative conformity to ideals of family.” However, by making the adoptee Vietnamese, the show ignores that Vietnam prohibits same-sex couples from adopting. “By overlooking the legal fictions necessary to render their adoptive family possible, Modern Family is complicit in reducing adoption to ahistorical narratives designed to bring joy to white consumers — those viewing the series as well as (prospective) white adoptive parents who see themselves represented in the Tucker-Pritchett family.”

McKee picks out multiple instances of factual elisions and racial microaggressions in the show as Lily’s Vietnamese identity becomes conflated with other Asian cultures, representing the paradox of “racist love,” defined in a quote from Amy Tang as “attitudes of admiration and acceptance that nonetheless work to uphold white supremacy by valorizing nonthreatening attributes like industriousness and docility.”

To frame “racialized sexual harassment,” McKee discusses two movies with secondary female Asian adoptee characters, Sideways and Better Luck Tomorrow. In the former, a transracial adoptee character, played by Sandra Oh, is an object of the white male gaze, characterized as sexually voracious. Pairing with a schlubby white man, she is an expendable sex object that enhances his story of the triumph of white maleness. Her sexual appetite (the white male protagonist crows, “She fucks like an animal”) is presented as a racial characteristic rather than a personal one. And while the characters in Better Luck Tomorrow are all Asian American, that does not shield the adopted female character from “hypersexualized representation” as a prop to explore Asian American masculinity.

McKee’s interpretation of the relentless sexual preoccupation with the bodies of young Asian girls and women is expanded as she analyzes the scandal surrounding Soon-Yi Previn’s relationship with Woody Allen, her adoptive mother’s romantic partner, through the HBO series Allen v. Farrow, as well as the memoirs of her adoptive mother, Mia Farrow; and her now-husband, Woody Allen. Farrow is one of Hollywood’s original transracial adopters, amassing a brood of children from Vietnam, South Korea, India, and the U.S.

Though never married, Farrow and Allen together adopted a white girl, Dylan, who later accused Allen of sexual abuse. Allen’s sexual relationship with Soon-Yi was exposed to the world when Farrow found naked photos of Soon-Yi in Allen’s apartment. McKee argues that Allen’s incestuous behavior was overlooked by the general public who do not recognize that incest can occur in adoptive relationships. “Diminishing the possibility of incest within adoptive families upholds the notion that adoption is somehow a lesser version of biological kinship while overlooking the psychological trauma of incest.”

The author points out that the media blamed Soon-Yi for being a homewrecker, rather than interrogating Woody Allen’s role in the relationship that came to light when and he was a powerful cultural icon at age 56, and she only a college freshman at 19. No matter his claims of not being a father figure to Farrow’s children, he was the long-term partner of Soon-Yi’s mother, and yet it was Soon-Yi who was characterized as the aggressor.

Additionally, McKee believes that Soon-Yi’s claims of physical and emotional abuse from Farrow were dismissed, as they contradict the popular view of transracial adoption as saviorism. “The assertions of abuse also call attention to Allen’s ability to manipulate Soon-Yi to leave one form of abuse for another.” Even her brother, the crusading journalist Ronan Farrow, has “failed to interrogate how uneven power dynamics affected [Allen’s] pursuit of Soon-Yi.”

To show how Koreans and Korean Americans also exploit the adoption trope, McKee turns her attention to the movie Seoul Searching, in which a group of Korean diaspora teens visit Seoul on a homeland tour. Each of the characters represent a stock teen-movie trope: The rebel, the tomboy, the bully, etc. As an homage to John Hughes blockbusters, the film also replicates the American director’s use of misogynist and racist tropes, which the author meticulously details.

As this is the Korean diaspora, there is also a transracial adoptee character, who is successfully reunited with her mother by the end of the film.

The film’s ability to facilitate conversations about the realities of reunion ensures that it departs from other portrayals of adoption, including documentaries that may celebrate reunion with little consideration of its ramifications in the lives of adoptees. Nevertheless, the film reinforces the notion that adoption leads to a better life, because it overlooks the losses and struggles adoptees experience in favor of a flattened perception that absolves the South Korean government, orphanages, and adoption agencies of the conditions that made those adoptions possible.

Finally, the author scrutinizes the popular Netflix documentary, Twinsters, as well as the accompanying memoir, Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twin Sisters Reunited, as “adoptees’ entrance into 21st century U.S. middlebrow culture.” Written, starring, and co-directed by Samantha Futerman, the film tells of American adoptee Futerman’s discovery that she has a twin who has been adopted to France, and of the two sisters’ subsequent reunion.

McKee notes that the story is presented as a heart-warming tale that celebrates adoption and makes the adoptees into cute objects, while never interrogating why the twins were separated from each other or the underlying issues with the South Korean adoption system. Futerman’s adoption papers claimed she had been a single birth, reflecting a troubling lack of veracity in official documents that is commonly reported by Korean adoptees. Rather than investigate the darker aspects of the twins’ stories, the documentary adheres to the popular notion of adoption as a fairy tale. Nonetheless, McKee celebrates the twins’ “biographic mediation, asserting autonomy over what, how, and when details of their adoption are disclosed.”

Though adoption fantasies are deeply entrenched in the popular narrative, the author notes that there have been recent works that are offering a wider and more authentic perspective on what it is like to be an Asian adopted female. McKee observes, “Perhaps what I have learned since embarking on this project is that we will write our way out.” There is an ever-burgeoning canon of works by adopted people to counter the false, sentimentalized narratives that trap adoptee characters as the objects in their own narratives, rather than the subjects.

Though the language can veer into the academic, Adoption Fantasies is an important text that presents a fresh and unapologetic inquiry into a culture that objectifies adopted Asians from infancy to adulthood, perpetuating racism and misogyny under the guise of multicultural love. By training a keen critical eye at widely-consumed cultural products, McKee makes visible the embedded racial and cultural attitudes that have provided the scaffolding for transracial, transnational adoption in America, and asks us all to do better.

National News

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Adoptees for Justice calls on supporters in key states, more constituent support | by Martha Vickery (Fall 2022)

At the end of 2016, the year after the Adoptee Citizenship Act was first introduced, adoptees and allies from across the country travelled to Washington DC for an Adoptee Citizenship Day of Action, at which they delivered more than 35,000 postcards from supporters of their nationwide advocacy campaign. 

In the waning months of 2022, at the end of a long year of lobbying and visiting constituents, supporters of the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA) are hoping their bill will finally get over the finish line in the Senate, during the session that continued as of September 6, after a summer break.  (See KQ last update on the ACA that ran in the Fall 2020 edition)

The ACA, a proposed law which would confer automatic citizenship to all international adoptees, was passed in the House of Representatives in February as part of a large trade-centered bill, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act  (nicknamed “the Competes Act”), which is designed to increase U.S. semi-conductor manufacturing, and deal with supply chain issues of manufacturers in Asia.   

All bills must be passed by both houses of Congress, so after that passage, the bill went to a conference committee before being sent to the Senate.  After going through the conference committee process, ideally when two versions of the bill are reconciled, a  version of it was passed in the Senate, and eventually made law in late July, as the so-called CHIPS-Plus Act (the long form of the CHIPS-Plus Act is the “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semi-conductors for America” Act).

However, in the process of the compromise, the ACA was stripped from the bill, along with other added provisions.  Since July, the strategy has changed, but the fight is still on to ensure citizenship for all adoptees, with help from Asian American organizations and Korean adoptee groups in several key states.

Taneka Jennings, Rachel Koelzer, and Michelle Liang of NAKASEC outside Iowa Capitol in spring 2022

Adoptees for Justice (A4J), the national education and lobbying organization sponsored by the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC), has used the last few months to re-boot, and lobby for the ACA to be passed in another form, either as a stand-alone bill, or as part of another bill.

If passed, the law would cover all international adoptees.  It would confer citizenship on all children who will be adopted internationally in the future; it would also confer citizenship on any international adoptees who currently do not have U.S. citizenship.

Taneka Jennings,  the A4J campaign director until recently, has tracked and lobbied the bill for the last few years. After it passed the House in February, she said, the bill had made the most progress it has ever made to becoming law since its inception nearly seven years ago.

There is still a chance that the ACA bill will make it through the 2022 Congress before the session closes in December. A lot rides on how much constituency support it will get from now until the end of 2022 when the session closes, Jennings said.  

Gathering support from states

A4J has been lobbying in key states to get more support for the bill. According to the A4J website, supportive resolutions have been passed in six states (California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky and Utah) and six cities (Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Seattle).

The ACA bill was first introduced in Congress in 2015.  Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was the first to propose the sweeping bill to ensure automatic citizenship for all international adoptees, irrespective of their age or year of adoption. Other legislative fixes, such as the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, covered only international adoptees who were age 18 or younger at the time the law was adopted.  This left a lot of older adoptees out.

Issues associated with lack of citizenship, such as lack of access to medical care and other citizen benefits like Social Security, inability to get student loans, passports, and secure employment, have plagued an estimated tens of thousands of these older international adoptees over their lifetimes. Jennings said that it is not known how many international adoptees are living without citizenship.

South Korea, one of the few governments that tracks the U.S. citizenship of its international adoptees, has reported that there are 18,603 Korean adoptees to the U.S. whose U.S. citizenship was never recorded, Jennings said.

According to Jennings, international adoptees have also reported they have been living with an old “order of deportation.” That is when the country of origin does not accept the deported person because it considers the deportation to be a violation of the person’s human rights, so the adoptee continues to live in the U.S. without citizenship.  

“There are people who have been living in the shadows for upwards of 20 years, unable to work legally or to get benefits,” Jennings said, due to orders of deportation, or other irregularities that prevented them from obtaining citizenshiip.  The inability to get work and proper medical care cause major problems for adult adoptees when they have been unable to obtain citizenship, she added. “Conditions like diabetes and congenital spinal issues – those are a couple of the examples we know of that folks in our community are dealing with.”

In extreme cases, some adoptees have been deported for felony convictions, such as certain drug charges. Others have been impoverished because they are unable to access crucial support benefits, such as Social Security.  As written, the ACA would solve these issues, and bring all the deportees home.

L-R, Staci Robison, Shelly Johnson, Sara Jones, Senator Jani Iwamoto, Larry Jenkins, Jini Roby, Jang Kim.

Jang Kim’s dream of citizenship

Jang Kim, 44, of Utah, is one such Korean adoptee for whom the passage of the ACA would mean a significant and immediate improvement for his life.  Through connections, he met Korean adoptee Sara Jones last year and joined the campaign in Utah to pass a supporting resolution.  As part of the campaign, Jang testified before the Utah legislature during the 2022 session.

Estranged from his adoptive family at age 10 due to his adoptive mother’s severe mental illness, Kim was 18 or 19 when he began to realize that he did not have the correct paperwork to get a driver’s license or to be hired in the conventional way.  His asked his adoptive parents for help, but they could not or would not produce the original adoption paperwork.  Working with U.S. immigration as a young adult, he determined through Korean Social Services that he had indeed been adopted in Korea by his adoptive parents, but that they had never finalized the adoption in the U.S. Legally, he was stateless.

Jang has made a living in the Salt Lake City area by working for friends and family, and also at conventional jobs by getting paid “under the table,” he explained. It was a situation that led to employers taking advantage of his predicament by underpaying and overworking him. Employed at a custom furniture-making company, he learned carpentry skills over time, and worked his way to the level of a master carpenter but never was paid more than $12/hour. The employers would sometimes announce that the staff was required to do an “all-nighter” to get jobs finished on deadline, he added.

On his own, he worked with federal immigration officials, and eventually achieved permanent residency status. There were a lot of process complications – sometimes the officials did not even know how to handle his situation, he said.

Kim eventually obtained a green card, but lost it when his wallet was stolen. That resulted in his having to begin the permanent residency process all over again. It was incredibly frustrating, he said.  “As a green card holder, you can get things like a Social Security card and a [driver’s] license.  But if you lose it, you can’t just get replacements of all your credentials like citizens can. …Even if you have a record of it and lose the physical green card, they will make you go through the entire permanent residency application process all over again. That put me in a tough spot because when lost my green card, I was really back to square one.”

The main advantage to citizenship would be simply a practical one – to be able to have all his documents, and never have to worry about things getting lost and having to start the process all over again. He would have a status that could never be taken away.  

So far in his life, Jang said, he has not been able to think beyond the practical very often. Making a living and affording a place to live took up nearly all his time and energy.  Recently, the idea of life as a citizen is beginning to fuel his imagination. He has never left the country, and has only been outside Utah twice in his life. Citizenship would mean not only access to jobs at a liveable wage, but a passport, and possibly the chance to travel to foreign countries for the first time. 

Jang is a photographer, and likes to take photos of street life. Doing photography on the streets of Seoul and Tokyo is a dream that could be within reach soon.  Citizenship would “give me the motivation and self-worth to strive for some other things too,” he said.

Utah signing of a resolution supporting automatic citizenship for international adoptees: (back row, left to right) Senator Jake Anderegg, Nubia Pena, Rep. Robert Spendlove, Sen. Jani Iwamoto, Sara Jones, Shelly Johnson, Kari Holt-Larson. (front row, left to right) Gov. Spencer Cox, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.

Sara Jones and the Korean adoptee-led Utah campaign

Sara Jones said she got fired up to do her part for the ACA in her home state of Utah when she heard through NAKASEC that the bill had passed the house but was having trouble with conservatives in the Senate.  Utah bills itself as conservative, but also as family-friendly.  Jones led a coalition of state leaders and community advocates to successfully pass a concurrent resolution (passed by House and Senate, and signed by the governor) in favor of the ACA.

In her career of leading workforce development projects, Jones, a Korean adoptee, has met and worked with many of the industry leaders in the state, as well as with many Korean adoptee leaders.  In gathering her coalition, she strategized that the ACA could be framed as a way to support families and also the future workforce of the state.

One of the co-sponsors was Sen. Jani Iwamoto (D) the first Asian American woman elected to public office in the state, now retired; the other was Rep. Robert Spendlove (R), who also works for Zions Bank and approached the citizenship campaign as a way to cure a workforce issue for the state. She also asked for and got support from some prominent Korean adoptee community leaders in Utah.

Jones said their group’s strategy was that the adoptee citizenship issue is an economic one. “That was something I really pressed on,” she said. “A lot of people assign it as a family or immigration issue, and some people have asked me ‘well why is it an economic issue?’ And I just asked ‘have you ever led your life without citizenship in America?’  It affects everything. It’s a limit to resources, and access to capital and your livelihood… It was so interesting how many policy makers did not understand that. It’s because  they take their citizenship for granted.”

Zhen E Rammelsberg and Taneka Jennings deliver postcards from Iowans in support of the ACA to U.S, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

Building ACA support in Iowa

Jennings said she participated in three trips this spring and early summer to build constituent support in favor of the ACA. The idea was to send a message to U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking member of the Senate, that his state favors citizenship for all adoptees. During the summer Iowa actions, more than 300 postcards were hand-delivered at one meeting with the senator. Nine Asian American immigrants along with faith leaders wrote a coalition letter of support to Grassley. A public meeting was held with the sponsorship of the Iowa Asian American-Pacific Islander Commission, and A4J supporters also talked to participants in the Asian American Festival, CelebrAsian, held in Des Moines in late May. Iowans were overwhelmingly positive and in favor of the bill, Jennings said.

An Iowa Korean adoptee group held constituent meetings with Grassley’s office and, members wrote two op-eds about the topic, Jennings said. One Iowa Korean adoptee went to the town hall constituents’ meeting sponsored by the Asian American commission, and talked to Grassley directly about it, she added.

As a group, Republicans have been in favor of stricter immigration. The lobbying trips in the name of A4J, with support and sponsorship from local organizations, was to persuade Iowans, and through them, to persuade Sen. Grassley, that adoptees were always intended to be citizens, and that their lack of citizenship is due to a legislative oversight. Although Iowans have been receptive “the reality is that there is a conservative camp of the Senate that simply do not want to expand citizenship rights to anyone,” Jennings said.

Facing up to the injustice to adoptees

To fix the citizenship issue for the adult adoptees who were left out of the poorly-conceived Child Citizenship Act is also “an admission that adoptees were wronged, and to face up to the fact that laws on the books are unjust to a whole age group of international adoptees,” Jennings said.

There are still some legislators, among them Sen. Grassley, Jennings explained, who voted for the existing Child Citizenship Act (passed in 2000). A4J has been pushing the agenda that Congress now has an opportunity to repair this legislative oversight that has been a source of hardship for thousands of international adoptees.

“It is not super surprising that we would be facing a lot of barriers,” Jennings observed.  “From our perspective, it’s not anything our community has done. It’s the brokenness baked into our adoption and immigration systems, and we’re asking for it to be fixed, and that there’s a level of taking ownership at a systemic level that is kind of hard [for some legislators] to do.” 

Although the Adoptee Citizenship legislation has the potential to improve the lives of tens of thousands of international adoptees, it is considered a small bill when compared to many others in terms of the numbers of people affected, she explained.  The bill will be in the Senate to be voted on this fall, possibly as a stand-alone bill, and possibly as a part of another bill.  It is standard practice to make the smaller bills parts of larger bills, according to Jennings.  

 “Our bill has wide bipartisan support, and we think it has the best chance in these broader bill packages of passing.” In the end, Jennings said “It does not matter if it is passed as a stand-alone or part of a larger bill – we only want to see it pass.”

Constituency support for the Adoptee Citizenship Act is crucial right now.  Adoptees for Justice has a form to fill in for a letter of support to national elected officials at this link https://www.adopteesforjustice.org/take-action/

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Families across cultures

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In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family ~ By Sara Docan-Morgan

(Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2024, ISBN #978-1-4399-2283-5)

Review by Alice Stephens (Spring 2024)

All human relations require some kind of communication, and communication is integral to the family unit. When the adopted child enters a new family, they take on the cultural characteristics of that family, regardless of their ethnicity or country of origin. If the adopted person then reunites with their first family, they must learn how to bridge the years of separation.

This fraught process becomes much more complicated when the person has been adopted from abroad. Sara Docan-Morgan, a professor of communication studies and a Korean adoptee in reunion, examines how Korean adoptees and their birth families navigate reunions, and the communications issues involved, in the extensive new study In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family.

Though the focus of Docan-Morgan’s book is how communication affects reunion, In Reunion serves as an excellent primer on Korean adoption, from its origins as a way to “rescue” war orphans and mixed-race children, to the Korean government’s reliance on it as a substitute for a social safety net and an effective way to raise money for depleted post-war coffers, to its global reach and sociological effect on adoptees and their families, both Korean and adoptive.

By introducing the chapters with personal testimony of her own reunion story, Docan-Morgan adds a relatable tone to In Reunion that elevates it beyond an academic text, making it accessible to interested readers. The author is explicit about how, when, and from whom she gathered her data, including a handy table of participants, fourteen adopted to America and four to Denmark, even providing the questions that she asked in two interviews conducted 10 years apart. The author’s stated goal “is to understand, examine, and illuminate the experiences of transnational Korean adoptees in reunion… [and] draw special attention to the role of cultural and language differences in the development and maintenance of relationships between transnational adoptees and birth families.”

Delving into why adoptees seek out their original families, the author points out that even within the same adoptive family, one sibling may choose to search while another chooses not to. Some have the blessing and participation of their adoptive parents, including five whose parents initiated the search while the adoptees were minors, while others did not involve their adoptive families. The author writes, “[R]eunions occur through a series of incremental decisions.” The adoptee must initially decide to search, then whether to meet the family, and finally whether to maintain a relationship.

Often, the first meeting does not match the adoptee’s expectations. Many report being in shock, disassociating, masking their emotions, and/or reacting with less outward emotion than their birth parents. That introductory meeting is an unsettling initiation into the arduous process of establishing a relationship with one’s closest blood relatives across yawning chasms of culture and language. Along the way, the adoptee must carry the burden of everyone else’s feelings, careful not to seem to be rejecting the family that raised them for the one that birthed them, or favoring natural parents over adoptive ones. Docan-Morgan notes that “letting go of expectations for a specific type of family relationship can create space to build a closer relationship.” The less expectations and more flexibility everyone in reunion has, the better.

But cultural assumptions are hard to overcome, and confusion, hurt feelings, and misunderstandings are inevitable. Some interviewees spoke of not being able to see themselves in their genetic families, while others were put off by birth family members’ direct criticisms about weight, appearance, marital status, and other personal characteristics. Due to patriarchal values, females comprise the majority of Korean adoptees, and many raised in the Western tradition struggled to perform to their birth family’s standards of feminine beauty and behavior.

Some birth parents refused to tell other family members about the adoptee, straining the relationship and causing pain. A few adoptees found contact with siblings or cousins more rewarding than with parents. The author concludes that familiarity with the cultural and historical reasons behind their Korean families’ actions made adoptees more able to accept behavior that might have otherwise offended them.

Not surprisingly, Docan-Morgan found that one of the hardest barriers to overcome was that of language. None of the interviewees retained any of their native language, and most hadn’t studied it before they were reunited. Those who did try to learn Korean found it very difficult, requiring years of dedication to achieve basic conversancy. Respondents in the study also said that few Korean relatives spoke any English. Moreover, some family members expressed disapproval at the lack of the adoptee’s Korean language proficiency, putting the burden of communication entirely on the adoptee without acknowledging their own role in the loss of language.

There is an “emotional weight” to studying Korean, as well, that adoptees may find too heavy to carry. Therefore, it is helpful for interpreters to be present during meetings, though instances where long spoken passages are whittled down in translation to a short sentence or two led to trust issues in the reliability of the translator. In many instances, nonverbal communication becomes crucial to the relationship.

While straddling two countries and languages in their new relationship with birth family, adoptees reported that they must also tend to their adoptive families’ feelings and concerns. Some parents may be excited about their child’s reunion, while others may fear that they will be replaced by the birth parents. Traditionally, adoptive parents have controlled the adoption narrative, celebrating adoption (“Gotcha”) days, emphasizing a “meant to be” bond, promoting the notion of a “forever family.”

Some interviewees felt obliged to reassure their adoptive families that they still reign supreme in the adoptee’s heart, and to withhold their true emotions around reunion. Meetings between the sets of parents can be stressful and awkward as the birth parents express guilt and shame. Many felt a lack of emotional agency, as they were obliged to tend to everyone’s feelings before their own.

Ten years after Docan-Morgan’s initial interviews, she conducted a second interview with 17 of the original participants. In the interval between interviews, new communication technologies had emerged in the form of smartphones, the messaging app KakaoTalk, video chats, translation apps, and social media. While a few had lost touch with their Korean families, most had persisted in the relationship, whether that meant annual visits or an occasional text.

In the intervening years, participants had become more aware of the history and politics of transnational Korean adoption and the larger social forces that shaped their lives. “Whether it was through interacting with other Korean adoptees online or in person, or reading about the topic, interviewees spoke of issues such as deception by orphanages and adoption agencies, ensuing trauma for birth families and adoptees, power discrepancies between women and men in Korea, and the lack of agency for single mothers in Korea.” They accept that there will always be an “adoption information gap” in their stories, as details have been altered by adoption documents, or because birth family members hide facts, or due to knowledge simply lost to the relentless march of time.

Docan-Morgan makes clear that, just as with adoption, reunion is no fairy tale with a happily ever-after ending. She surmises that the most successful reunions are those where the adoptee understands their relationship with their first family “through the lens of Korean culture.” In order to do this, they must adjust their communication techniques to transcend language and enculturated thought systems. The book concludes with recommendations for the adoptee and adoptive parents going into reunion.

By examining Korean transnational adoption through the lens of communication and reunion, Docan-Morgan has written an accessible work of scholarship that will enlighten all readers about  the complexities and challenges of transnational adoption.

Korean power leads City Council

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Historic all-women board includes two Korean Americans in St. Paul | By Martha Vickery (Spring 2024)

Newly elected Korean Americans St. Paul City Council members: President Mitra Jalali and Vice-President HwaJeong Kim. Photos by Stephen Wunrow

Much attention has been given to the all-women St. Paul City Council, elected in November and seated after an early January inauguration, due to the important firsts it represents.  It is unique in several respects, in addition to the fact that its members are now all women. It is also a young group; all under age 40.  Six are women of color. Four of the seven were elected for the first time to the Council.

Also unprecedented in city and state history is that the current council leaders, President Mitra Jalali, and newly-elected Vice-President HwaJeong Kim, are both Korean Americans. Jalali, who represents Ward 4, has an Iranian American father and a Korean American adoptee mother. Kim is a Korean adoptee.

HwaJeong Kim gets sworn in to her City Council position last January with friends and family members looking on. Photo by Rich Ryan

Kim, elected to represent Ward 5, is an activist/organizer and also a non-profit executive director and former legislative aide. She grew up in the small city of Independence, west of Minneapolis, and went to college at Hamline University. She remembers getting to know the local Korean American community early by participating in culture camps and other activities in the Twin Cities with other Korean American kids.

Kim describes her career in community organizing as starting from a humble place – being alarmed at a dangerous pedestrian crossing she and other pedestrians used at the corner of Rice Street at Lawson in the north end of St. Paul, the area she now represents. She had to use the intersection to get to her 2016 volunteer job at the Rice Street Library.  It was a ‘somebody should do something’ moment, and propelled her to organize for change, and eventually to serve on the North End Neighborhood Organization. Through the neighborhood organization, there was eventually a re-design of the Rice Street corridor.

“Serving on my district council deepened my relationships with my neighbors and confirmed my belief that we become creators of change when we center ourselves and our communities in decision-making,” she wrote on her website.

After working on transit and public safety issues at the neighborhood and district levels, she got practical experience in pushing for causes she believes in while serving as the legislative aide for Ward 5 (2018 to 2021), and as a member of the city’s Planning Commission and its Zoning Committee.  Important issues for Kim include fighting for “affordable housing, healthy communities, strengthening city services, and passing progressive policies that protect our most marginalized neighbors,” according to her bio.

She is also the executive director of the non-profit Minnesota Voice, which supports voting rights, voting access, civic engagement and education. Its programming includes activities such as candidate forums, organizational training, and voter education outreach.  

Newly sworn in St. Paul City Council members (left to right) Anika Bowie, Rebecca Noecker, Saura Jost, President Mitra Jalali, Vice President HwaJeong Kim, Nelsie Yang, Cheniqua Johnson. Photo by Rich Ryan

In early 2024, barely a month after the January inauguration, Jalali was still focussed on getting the newly-coalesced City Council up to speed. “There is an energy shift with the four new members, and it is a time of transition and a learning curve is underway,” she said.

Jalali was first elected through a special election in 2018, and re-elected for her first full term in 2019, then re-elected in 2023.  She became Council president in January.

Mitra Jalali gets sworn in as St. Paul City Council president last January with her parents, Hossein Jalali and Sookja Jalali. Photo by Rich Ryan

When first elected, Jalali was the youngest council member, the second woman of color to serve on the Council, and the only renter among the members. She has identified the City Council’s most pressing priorities as housing, sustainability/climate action, and community safety.  

Jalali’s previous work includes being a teacher, community organizer, and policy aide and congressional staffer to U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison. Her priorities in office include affordable housing and homeownership, public safety and police accountability, building city sustainability including better and safer transit, and local economic development.

In February, while the Council was still getting acclimated, an activist group was attending its meetings and demonstrating in front of City Hall to call for a city resolution supporting a cease-fire of the war in Gaza. In pushing for a resolution, the group made some procedural errors that made their demands problematic for the Council to act on.  At first, there was no proposed resolution before the Council, so there was nothing to vote on.

Council president Jalali talks with an activist group supporting a cease-fire in Gaza about the process for getting their resolution heard and voted on. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

After the meeting adjourned February 21, Jalali spoke with some of the group members, expressing sympathy for their cause, and explaining that there is a process for getting a resolution before the Council, including documentation that the people asking for the resolution are actually St. Paul residents.

The group members were passionate, while Jalali was patient but firm. “You asked me a question and now you are talking over me while I’m answering. I am still speaking now,” she quietly told one group member. The women went temporarily silent.

The next week, at the end of the regular meeting, Councilmember Nelsie Yang asked to suspend the rules (concerning procedure for meetings) to introduce a resolution which was not on the agenda; Jalali refused and gaveled the meeting to a close before she could do so.

Yang reportedly later said that she could not find a council member prior to the February 28 meeting who would second her resolution. The situation was short-lived; the objection was largely about procedure and allowing time for Council members to review what would be vote on. Some members also expressed concern about the appropriateness of the City Council weighing in on matters of international policy. 

Around the same time, several Minnesota cities, including Hastings, Columbia Heights and Minneapolis also passed some version of a Gaza cease-fire resolution. The resolution campaign is being employed as a tactic to express dissatisfaction with the Biden Administration’s policy on the war in Gaza.

At the March 6 regular meeting, the Council had a thoroughly-reviewed resolution, and was prepared to vote yes on it. The resolution was introduced by Councilmember Cheniqua Johnson (Ward 7).

Some of the Council members read prepared statements before the vote. Rebecca Noecker (Ward 3) remarked that, even after she learned how other Minnesota cities had passed similar resolutions, she had reservations about spending Council time on matters of international diplomacy which could distract from other pressing local issues before the Council. Noecker, who is Jewish, said that the attack on Israelis by Hamas hit her personally when her children lost their favorite teacher in the October 7 attack. Winding up her statement, she said she intended to vote in favor of the resolution.

St. Paul City Council vice president Hwajeong Kim (right) and City Council member Nelsie Yang at a recent meeting. Advocates for a ceasefire in Gaza attend the meeting in the background. Photo by Stephen Wunrow

In her prepared statement, Kim compared the Gaza struggle to the 1910-1945 occupation of Korea by the Japanese. “My ancestors and the people of Gaza share common enemies, namely imperialism and colonization. When I see the history of Palestine, I see reflections of my own ancestral history. The intentional destruction of food systems, art, ecosystems, the environment, schools and temples; the destruction of safety, inherent culture, the erasure of sacred traditions and religion. My ancestors revolted against Japanese occupation and U.S. imperialism because they deserved liberation. Palestinians deserve the same.”

Jalali, who expressed support for the resolution, said that the City Council will be focused during the next year in a few broad areas of a much more local nature.  One of them is housing, concentrated particularly on the quality and quantity of rental housing. Jalali said she wants to encourage local ownership of rental housing “to keep that revenue circulating in the community.” Another priority is how to apportion sales tax revenues to maintain streets and parks.

Making public transit safe and equitable is also needed, she said. The Council will be working with MetroTransit on its enforcement and safety plan, which is expected to increase ridership over time.  There are federal funding dollars that need to be distributed across community programs from the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, some of which can go to clean energy projects that will benefit city residents.

Looking at how an all-women, young, majority people-of-color City Council has been elected could be called a coincidence, but that would be missing a back story which points to some important demographic and political trends.  Whether through organizations targeted to help emerging women candidates, outright endorsement of women candidates by women elected officials, personal mentorship, or just by being public good examples, women have been helping one another get elected in St. Paul and in Minnesota. It happened as a part of a nationwide trend.

Former City Council President Amy Brendmoen (Ward 5) endorsed Kim as a City Council candidate in 2023 when Kim was on the Planning Commission. Before that, Brendmoen also encouraged Councilmember Rebecca Noecker (Ward 2) for Council, who was first elected in 2016. That year, the headlines in January announced that there would be two women members on the Council  – Rebecca Noecker and Jane Prince (Ward 7).  

Jalali said she has also been encouraged by women who came before her and by women who told her they got the courage to run for office by watching her win elected offices. The trend is becoming a wave.  In her experience, Jalali said, “Every year, our group of women leaders has grown.”

Kim thinks that an all-women Council was likely to happen sometime in the near future. Even before her own campaign, Kim heard the views of thousands of voters after working on many other campaigns, often going house to house talking on behalf of many progressive women, particularly women of color and LBGTQ women candidates. That the majority of Council are people of color also indicates a transforming St. Paul demographic.  From the local angle, she said “seeing how the electorate has moved and changed, I believe we are witnessing a reckoning with whiteness.”

Defining themselves

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Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants ~ By SunAh M. Laybourn

(New York University Press, New York, 2024, ISBN #978-1-4798-1478-7)

Review by Alice Stephens (Spring 2024)

As the demographic age of Korean adoptees becomes older, they have assumed control of their own narrative, producing literature, media and works of art in which their own identify is defined. They have also taken control of their group’s critical legal and human rights issues, lobbying for a law that would protect adoptees’ citizenship even when adoptive parents failed to secure that citizenship as children. 

These creative and self-aware activities by what is now a mature and established U.S. immigrant group are described in depth by sociologist (and Korean adoptee) SunAh M. Laybourn in her recent book Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants.

As a Korean-born person in a white, American family, I have spent a lifetime grappling with being a transracial, intercountry adoptee, but there was one part of my identity that I habitually ignored. It was not until my 40s that I recognized how being Korean is part of my heritage, and that another piece of my identity is that of an immigrant. I could perhaps efface that part of my story and identity because my father was an American soldier, making U.S. citizenship part of my birthright. But the reality is that he abandoned me in South Korea. If I had not been adopted, I would not have been eligible for U.S. citizenship.

Adopted in 1968, I was naturalized in 1971, and among my adoption documents are my naturalization certificate, a welcome letter from Richard Nixon, and a pamphlet explaining my rights and responsibilities as an American. It was not until Adam Crapser’s deportation case hit the news in 2017 that I became aware that the American government had no laws in place to guarantee citizenship to all children adopted from abroad.

Laybourn explores the “exceptional belonging” experienced by Korean adoptees and the impact it has on their identity construction. The author explains in the introduction,

I define ‘exceptional belonging’ as the condition for being extraordinarily equipped for inclusion through culturally constructed narratives of deservedness while also being routinely identified for exclusion whether through formal policies, informal practices, or interpersonal interactions.

Through the lens of exceptional belonging, the author closely scrutinizes the unique place that Korean adoptees occupy in the American continuum of hierarchy, with whiteness as the apex.

In the course of her research, Laybourn gathered information from an online survey, in-depth interviews, Korean adoptee events, and analyses of adoptee-centered films. The majority of those interviewed were adopted into white families and were in their 20s to early 30s in 2016, when the interviews were conducted. Some had been long involved in the adoptee community, while others were new to it.

The popular American immigrant story usually depicts loss, struggle, and self-sacrifice. But the typical challenges of immigration — such as gaining entrance to the U.S., assimilating to a new culture and language, establishing financial security — do not apply to the infant or toddler adoptee. Through proximity to whiteness, they are not subject to the usual indignities of being a fresh-off-the-boat newcomer.

Growing up, it is not unusual for the Korean adoptee to identify as white, and to deny or reject their Korean origins. Laybourn claims that for adoptees “it was within their family that they first encountered positive feelings associated with being American (i.e., white) and negative feelings associated with being Korean.” Socialized to view themselves in a white racial frame, Korean adoptees then encounter resistance from others in society, and even from within their own families, who may engage in overtly racist language, or convey a more subtle form of othering through comments like “We don’t see you as Asian.”

Once the Korean adopted person is separated from the protection of their family, it becomes clear that they are not allowed the benefits of being white. They are asked insensitive, probing questions such as “Where are you from really?” and “Do you want to look for your real parents?” They are held to the stereotypes of the Asian model minority — hardworking, obedient, good at math — and the girls and women are subject to sexual fetishization — exotic, eager to please, sexually knowing.

They experience the same garden-variety racism of racial epithets, jeers, and casual or explicit discrimination experienced by every other Asian in America. This can be perplexing to the adoptee. “Transnational transracial adoptees confuse the ‘us’ and ‘them’ of in-group/out-group boundaries. Korean adoptees raised in white families are one of ‘us’ — white family members — and one of ‘them’ — Asian foreigners — conflicting racialized positions,” the author observes.  

This idea of being a foreigner despite proximity to whiteness has manifested itself into frightening reality for some intercountry adoptees who, upon reaching adulthood, discover that their adopters never obtained American citizenship for them. Adulthood, according to Laybourn, transforms Korean adoptees from “adoptable orphans” to “deportable immigrants.” Laybourn uses the example of Adam Crapser’s deportation to South Korea as testament to the transformation of a child in need of saving to a foreign adult with criminal tendencies.

Twice adopted into abusive families who neglected to get him naturalized, Crapser was a catalyst for adoptee activism, as numerous intercountry adoptees began to discover that their parents, too, had abrogated their responsibility to naturalize them. The adoptee community was outraged that Korean children could be separated from their families in order to complete an American family, then left with no legal protection when their adoptive parents failed in their duty to make them American citizens.

“The irony was that for undocumented adoptees this better life [that adoption purportedly offered] was similar to the life they may have had in their home country. They existed on the fringes of society, unable to partake in the benefits as citizens,” the author writes.

The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 rectified the situation for intercountry adoptees under 18 years old, but does not cover adoptees who were older than age 18 at the time the act became law in 2000.  Galvanized by this issue, adoptees began to organize and advocate for themselves, creating groups such as the Adoptees Right Campaign and Gazillion Strong to promote passage of the Adoptee Citizenship Act (ACA), which would bestow automatic citizenship on people adopted by U.S. citizens.

“Advocacy for the ACA was distinct from previous adoptee citizenship legislation, as it was primarily spearheaded by adoptees for adoptees rather than by adoptive parents or adoption agencies,” the author points out. While trying to move away from the image of adoptee as child, ACA advocates found that “legislators could be moved by thinking about white interests more than immigration interests just as they were at Korean adoption’s inception.”

Therefore, it was more efficacious to emphasize the protection of white family interests, and to emphasize that adoptees were “good” citizens who were in this situation through “no fault of their own,” distinguishing them from “bad” undocumented immigrants, who have been subject to increasing vilification in this time of extreme political polarization. Though iterations of the bill have been introduced multiple times in Congress, the ACA has yet to be passed, leaving an untold number of adoptees in jeopardy of being deported from the only country they have ever known. Meanwhile, immigration laws have only become more draconian and the naturalization process more fraught.

From the collective identity of adoptee activism, Laybourn then examines individual identity formation, which typically happens well into adulthood, once the adoptee is somewhat autonomous of their adoptive parents and fully cognizant of the micro-aggressions and othering that happen within society, friend groups, and their own families. Often, they begin to reclaim what was denied to them, such as Korean culture and Asian solidarity. They no longer avoid thoughts of their birth families for fear of being disloyal or ungrateful to their American parents. That change in perspective often leads to their engaging in active searches, including trips back to Korea. They find validation and support by being in community with adoptees, no matter class, religion, sexual orientation, and other differences.

Creative works that seek to capture the Korean adoptee experience have sprung from adoptee efforts to define themselves in society, and Laybourn plays close attention to the film documentaries Twinsters and aka Seoul, which she explains as “two contemporary mainstream adoptee cultural productions created by adoptees, as sites of disidentification, where adoptees rework the normative meanings of adoptee, adoption, family, race, and citizenship.” Taking a fine-tooth comb to the documentaries, the author makes an argument for how these films reframe the Korean adoption narrative by giving adoptees control of the story and making the broader public aware of the global community that is manifested in meetings like the International Korean Adoptee Association’s tri-annual Gathering in Seoul.

She also dissects the controversy around the non-adoptee-directed movie Blue Bayou, which was perceived as using Crapser’s story without his consent, and not going far enough in promoting adoptee citizenship rights, resulting in a disavowal by adoptees, meant to be its target audience.

Events are moving fast in Korean adoption studies, and Out of Place does not include recent news such as South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation investigation of adoption, Sweden’s halting of Korean adoptions following claims of malfeasance, and Denmark’s commitment to end Korean adoption for the same reason, all of which were instigated by adoptee activism. Popular movies such as Joy Ride and Return to Seoul, while not adoptee-directed, are moving the adoptee narrative away from sentimentalized savior stories. And within the last five months, three critical adoption studies by Korean adoptees have been published, including this one.

Though this is a scholarly work, the writing and concepts are accessible to the general reader. Through terms like “exceptional belonging,” “public racialization,” and “adoptable orphan, deportable immigrant,” Laybourn gives a vocabulary to that peculiar niche Korean adoptees inhabit in their own country, whether citizens or not.

Seniors with no citizenship

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A pardon campaign targets two transnational adoptees aging without retirement benefits | By Martha Vickery (Winter 2024)

(left) Emily Warnecke with attorney Jenny Seon of the Ahri Center and (right) Judy Van Arsdale.

A service and advocacy organization for transnational adoptees is building support for two adoptees from California who need a governor’s pardon in order to apply for citizenship and qualify for important health and monetary benefits they need as retirees. The Adoptees for Justice (A4J) organization is gaining support for the pardon from individuals and organizations within California and in other states as well, with a goal to secure the pardon from Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024.

A comprehensive bill to convey citizenship to all transnational adoptees has been introduced, rewritten and reintroduced in Congress numerous times for more than 10 years. With lobbying support from its champion organization A4J last year, the Adoptee Citizenship Act got very close to being law.  It was successfully added to an omnibus bill during last year’s Congress, but was stripped from that bill late in the session.

Absent that key bill becoming law, transnational adoptees who were not made citizens as children, need to obtain citizenship as adults through other means.  Until recent years, citizenship was a separate court process from adoption, and sometimes parents/guardians did not take this step. They may have been ignorant of the law, or may have failed to go through the citizenship step for some other reason.  It is estimated that many thousands of international adoptees are without citizenship. A large group of these adoptees are now becoming senior citizens.

The two transnational adoptees who are subjects of the current pardon campaign by A4J are both in their 60s, and both have convictions for minor crimes in their past.  That makes their need for citizenship both time-sensitive and procedurally difficult. Both women have been active in the citizenship campaign of A4J for many years; A4J recognizes that their work on behalf of fellow adoptees was part of choosing them as the recipients of this advocacy.    

The Pardon Judy and Emily Campaign on behalf of Korean American Emily Warnecke and Taiwanese American Judy Van Arsdale is one of the recent efforts in a broad campaign to keep the citizenship campaign for adoptees in the public mind.  The Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) through A4J, its branch organization, has been promoting the pardon campaign with the public.

The pardon campaign includes a petition for individuals and a sign-on letter for organizations (see links in note at end). According to Mary Angilly, a consultant working with A4J, the project is California-specific but A4J organizers want to get groups from many states to sign onto the letter.  Similarly, the petition circulating online to encourage Gov. Newsom to pardon Warnecke and Van Arsdale can also be signed by non-Californians.

Angilly said that the group organized some days of advocacy in Washington, DC during October, and has been working with members of Congress to try to get new co-sponsors for the bill, concentrating particularly on potential Republican co-sponsors, since it is intended as a bipartisan bill.  A4J’s goal is a comprehensive bill that will include all transnational adoptees, including those who have been deported to their country of origin.  This would allow deportees can return to the U.S. and live as citizens.

Jenny Seon, an attorney and an immigration law expert working with Ahri Center, a southern California legal aid and advocacy organization specializing in immigration, has been planning the legal strategy for the pardon campaign.

Seon has been working with A4J since about 2013. Back then, she explained, she was working on immigration law with a different organization. When she transitioned to the Ahri Center, she brought transnational adoptee clients with her, and continued to take on more adoptee clients with immigration challenges. Working with adoptees often includes researching and discovering that person’s entire immigration history, she said, since many immigrated too young to remember anything about it, and may not have understood their legal predicament as non-citizens until they reached adulthood.

The need for the official pardon is because both VanArsdale and Warnecke have past criminal convictions for some minor crimes, Seon explained. The convictions were resolved more than 10 or 15 years ago. “However, for immigration law, those crimes still stand, and they will block any attempt to get citizenship,” she said.  “For immigration purposes, the law looks at it differently. Even though all those years have passed, it won’t matter.  For Judy, even applying for citizenship could trigger deportation.”

Obviously, Seon said, they are not going to risk triggering a deportation.  “The only alternative really is to ask the governor for a pardon,” she said since official pardons by state governors are acceptable documentation for the immigration authority.

Beyond the inability to vote and participate in civic life, not having citizenship carries a lot of serious negative consequences for non-citizen adoptees, particularly as they get older and need to retire.  Warneke and Van Arsdale both need the basic benefits of Social Security retirement income and Medicare health insurance coverage, and they need them soon, Seon explained, since both are at retirement age, and both have significant health problems. 

Emily’s story

Warnecke said she worked for many years in a career as an inspector in the California aerospace industry, ensuring that precision parts and tools were produced to the correct standards for industry or the military. She learned on the job, becoming certified in various inspection and tool-calibration skills, and rising in the field to a high level of certification.  Warnecke has been divorced for many years after an abusive marriage and has a 43-year-old son.

According to Seon, Warnecke’s case is not a typical one. Her adoption was processed in Tokyo, and the paperwork was lost. Her parents never made her a citizen, believing that her adoption made it automatic.  This situation, compounded by the criminal conviction, triggered the U.S. government to begin deportation proceedings for her some years ago. Due to the unusual routing of her adoption through Japan, South Korea had no record she had ever been a citizen. South Korean authorities refused to accept Warnecke as a deportee, Seon explained, and her case remains in limbo. She has to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) annually, Seon said. Her legal status is uncertain.

Warnecke now lives with a condition that makes it painful for her to walk or sit. She uses a walker or a wheelchair to get around.  “My goal was to continue to work in aerospace and get my pension and retire,” she said. The degenerative disk condition in her spine got steadily worse in her 50s, and finally her doctor told her she should not attempt to go back to work.  Initially, she qualified for a state disability support program which had limited funding, and eventually her funding for that ran out.

Subsequently, she applied for Social Security and was turned down. Her goal for getting citizenship is primarily to access full disability benefits, which will provide the most support for her as she ages.  After she was turned down for Social Security, she was referred to A4J by a legal advocacy organization she had contacted. She has been working with A4J and NAKASEC as an advocate since about 2016, she said.

Judy’s story

Born in Taiwan, Van Arsdale was the oldest of eight children of a single mother. When she was a child, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation was working in Taiwan to sponsor Amerasian children (a term used at that time); staff found the children by going door-to-door and asking people about the location of any children whose fathers were American, Van Arsdale explained.  She remembers two staff members from the foundation meeting her after school one day and walking home with her. After talking to her parents about the foundation’s sponsorship program “they signed me up and we got $10 a month. That helped a lot, because that was half of my dad’s salary,” Van Arsdale recalled.

A life-changing event for her happened at age 12, she said, when she needed an emergency appendectomy.  Her adoptive father-to-be was the surgeon who worked at the nearby Christian Science Church-sponsored hospital.  Her mother talked to the surgeon after the surgery, and eventually found out that he and his wife were interested in adoption. Her parents and the doctor and wife agreed on the adoption. At that time, the Pearl Buck Foundation was also facilitating intercountry adoptions for Amerasian kids as well, according to Van Arsdale.  She lived another four years in Taiwan with her adoptive parents before immigrating to the U.S.

Van Arsdale left her adoptive home in California at age 17; it was precipitated by her adoptive mother’s abuse. As a young adult, she served time for a minor crime. Her struggle was exacerbated by being young, poor and having no support network; she was represented only by a public defender. Van Arsdale said she remembers contacting the public defender attorney several times while in prison to alert him that her permanent residency (green) card and Social Security card had been confiscated by prison staff, and to ask him to retrieve them. She later found out they had been lost. Her criminal record has also made it complicated to obtain replacement copies of those two ID cards, which are crucial for accessing Social Security retirement support and Medicare benefits. She is now age 65.

As an adult, Van Arsdale pursued a career as a registered nurse.  At one point, a patient filed a minor complaint against her, which resulted in an automatic background check. When she filled out the information for her original license, she said, she did not add her long-ago criminal conviction to her background, fearing repercussions. The required background check brought it to light. Thereafter, her license was put on probation, which made it nearly impossible to get another job as an R.N., she explained. The situation led to a continuing struggle with poverty and housing insecurity.

Van Arsdale, a founding member of Adoptees for Justice and an activist for adoptee citizenship for the last eight years, explained that her adoption was done in Taiwan while her adoptive parents still lived there. In searching for her paperwork many years later, Van Arsdale said, she found out that the Pearl S. Buck Foundation’s Welcome House, located in Taiwan until 2015, had been closed, and she was told that records stored there had been destroyed. There are no copies of her paperwork in the U.S., she said.

Living in limbo

Like Warnecke, Van Arsdale was always reassured by her parents that her citizenship was automatic because she was adopted.  Since discovering she is not a citizen, she has heard many stories from other transnational adoptees about how their adoptive parents were given conflicting and wrong information about their children’s citizenship by authorities. Van Arsdale reasons that there was a poor understanding at that time about adoptees’ citizenship status because transnational adoption was still so new.

Personally, Van Arsdale said, getting a pardon and then citizenship, “would open up a new world for me. It would be a transformative process.  It signifies a commitment by the government to justice and compassion for adoptees like myself.” 

Aside from that, there are many practical concerns that citizenship would solve for her. “The Social Security which I paid into while I worked for almost 30 years – I can’t access it. It is crucial for my financial stability and well being.” The same goes for Medicare, which she was also denied. Citizenship would also give her opportunities for better job opportunities, as well as civic privileges.

During this time of being in limbo for deportation, Warnecke said she has thought a lot about non-citizen transracial deportees.  “There are so many who have been deported. Their stories are sad.  Even if I get my citizenship I will not stop fighting for adoptees and for DACA,” she said, referring to the limbo of immigrants brought into the country as children, and never made citizens, and the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which was invented as a stopgap to avoid deportation of young adult immigrants who had always lived in the U.S.

Warnecke said she has personally spoken to members of Congress about the A4J bill, and has been successful in getting new co-sponsors signed on. She has discussed with elected officials the case of Phillip Clay, a Korean American adoptee who committed suicide in South Korea after being deported due to being a non-citizen and having a criminal conviction.

Warnecke said that Jenny Seon from Ahri Center, Becky Belcore from NAKASEC and other Korean Americans, some of whom are adoptees, have helped her even though they have citizenship. She said she is committed to advocating for non-citizen adoptees struggling with citizenship whether or not she achieves her own citizenship.

In the spring, A4J will also mount a campaign to persuade the governor to grant the pardon. It has been a slow and steady process since fall 2023 to raise awareness about adoptees whose path to citizenship is difficult because of missing documentation, a criminal conviction, or both. Gov. Newsom could shorten the journey with the stroke of a pen, and transnational adoptees with their supporters will be pushing for that support in the months to come.

Editor’s note: A4J is urging individuals and organizations to support this petition, and to support the Adoptee Citizenship Act. The A4J petition asking Gov. Newsom to grant the pardon, is at this link. The sign-on letter for organizations to support the Pardon Judy and Emily Campaign is at this link.

Copyright ©2024 Korean Quarterly. All rights reserved.

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