I’ve found throughout my life that often times, when talking about adoption, the folks leading the conversation are not adoptees. This has occurred to me both personally and observationally and has been mentioned by many adoptees anecdotally.
I was talking with a friend of mine who was thinking about adopting a child domestically. Part of being a potential foster or adoptive parent includes going through training, at least in the state that she lives in. She shared with me those experiences and often spoke of guest speakers whom were subject matter experts. I asked her if any of the expert speakers or writers of the learning materials that were being presented in class had been orphans, foster or adopted children (domestically or internationally)? She said no and that it hadn’t occurred to her to think about that perspective. It sounded like biological parents were also not consultants in her experience, focusing instead on the expertise of foster families, adoptive families, or institutional workers.
While I’m sure institutions and individuals related to adoption (or fostering, orphans, or similar) all mean the absolute best, and that it’s an oversight to not include the perspectives of adoptees or biological parents, the omission is a missed opportunity. Rather than telling adoptees what to think or feel, and spreading information about the adoption experience that doesn’t include these perspectives, it seems valuable to widen the conversation.
As I’ve navigated my own adoption experience, especially since reconnecting with my birth mother in summer 2020 (we have not met in person or spoken because it would mean signing away support from my Korean adoption agency, but have frequently passed non-identifying letters to each other through our agencies), something I’ve realized is how little the biological parent’s (especially biological mother’s) perspective is represented. Often the narrative made publicly and privately (including to adoptees) is that the birth mother was young, uneducated, single/unmarried, or potentially a prostitute whom made the tough but heroic decision to give up her child (100% willingly, fully briefed on and understanding of the process and rules/regulations/laws, without coercion) to a loving, vetted, nuclear, sometimes Christian, typically Caucasian Western or Western European family. While this narrative may be true and accurate the majority of the time, in my experience it’s not wholly representative (especially from the perspective of my biological mother and myself as an adoptee).
During my own birth-search process, I learned from my biological mother that very soon after I was born she was asked to sign some papers. She was told that I was ill and needed to be taken care of at the hospital. Those papers relinquished me from her care at behest of my biological father (without her full consent or understanding).
I was institutionalized as an orphan, the records stating that I was willingly given up by my biological family in a joint decision. The institution eventually became my “legal guardian”. I was renamed to Da-Bee 다비 (my true birth-name was omitted) and my new name was recorded on all legal documents. (I’d not known my birth-name, or that Da-Bee wasn’t my birth-name, until talking about it with my biological mother over these past months). My biological father began telling her that I was still being taken care of by the hospital because I was sick. Eventually after enough time passed he told her that I’d be returned to her if she was good and did what he said. While she was working to get me back, I was already processed and available for international adoption.
This type of exchange, while very common for Korean adoptees especially during the Korean War – 1990’s era, has since been classified (by the UN) as “illegal adoption” or “child trafficking in the form of adoption”. A short snippet about this as stated by the UN can be seen below.
“Adoptions resulting from crimes such as abduction and sale of and trafficking in children, fraud in the declaration of adoptability, falsification of official documents or coercion, and any illicit activity or practice such as lack of proper consent by biological parents, improper financial gain by intermediaries and related corruption, constitute illegal adoptions and must be prohibited, criminalized and sanctioned as such.
Illegal adoptions violate multiple child rights norms and principles, including the best interests of the child, the principle of subsidiarity and the prohibition of improper financial gain. These principles are breached when the purpose of an adoption is to find a child for adoptive parents rather than a family for the child”.
Previous to my birth, my biological mother (whom was a high school graduate then 20 years old) had made plans to attend a vocational beauty school to support herself and her to-be infant. She started attending beauty school during the period when she thought she could have her infant returned to her. In letters she has often described the period of her life immediately after my birth, and several years later, as “a living hell” during which she became completely disengaged with her family while putting herself through school to try to create a life where she could support her new-born baby. Unfortunately, after a number of years it became clear that she would not get her biological child back.
She opened up a hair salon four years after my birth after finishing school, eventually marrying a man with whom she had another daughter 10 years after I was born. She has shared with me that she lived with intense guilt and depression over the 30+ years since her first born left her life. She never told anyone about what happened, had bouts of depression annually around my birthday, and found it hard to be around her family since many of her sisters had daughters that reminded her of her first biological daughter (me).
When the Korean adoption agency reached out to her last year she had been in a state of slow acceptance that she would never have her first born bio-daughter in her life. She told me (and has sent photos accordingly) that she had started hiking up Seoraksan (설악산) whenever things got hard to pray for her first born daughter and to leave a stone on top of the stone tower there.
My biological mother told me that when she received word from the Korean adoption agency that her biological daughter had been found, and wanted to make contact with her, she could not stop crying. She kept asking if her biological daughter was safe, healthy, and okay. Apparently the agency felt this was an odd response since, by all accounts, she’d given me up and was reacting in an irregular and overly emotional manner at the news. However, from her perspective this was a totally understandable reaction. From her point of view, if her accounts were true, this was news that she’d waited for for over 30 years. She had started to give up hope. She had not knowingly given her first born biological daughter up. She was extremely invested in learning what had happened to her biological child, if that child had lived a good life, and what that child was like now. Her initial letters to me reinforced those feelings and have continued to do so.
Why am I sharing this personal experience and perspective? It’s not to breed ill-will, criticize anyone involved in my adoption story, or to create a pitiful narrative. I completely understand that every adoption story is different, that we’re all subject to bias (my biological mother included), and that it’s likely all perspectives are “right” and “wrong” in their own ways. I absolutely love my parents; the family that raised me and continues to love and care for me today. This is not a critical review or attack on them or any adoptive parent, adoptive family, the adoption institution, foster families, orphanages, governments supporting adoption as a practice or similar.
I’m sharing this post because I feel that my biological mother’s perspective is not one that I’ve seen represented in the public space at large. While I’ve come across the occasional NPR “adoption deep dive”, it usually centers around long-lost twins or biological siblings who found each other after being separated, or about the woes of unethical practices surrounding orphans/unwanted or abandoned children in disadvantaged, non-Western countries (Asia, eastern Europe). Up until last year, when my American and Korean agencies made contact with my biological mother, I’d never thought that I could be one of those adoptees with a story that didn’t match what the records showed. I’d never thought that my biological mother’s version of what the adoption experience was like could vary so wildly from what I’d been told or assumed. I’ve since talked with and listened to the stories of many other KADs whom have similar stories to my own in one way or another. Ultimately, I’ve found that I am just one of many adoptees whom has found that their biological family’s perspective or their own adoptee-perspective is missing from the topic of adoption as a whole.
Because this is getting long, I wanted to wrap up this portion of the topic with a poem that my biological mother recently sent me. I have been expressing concern, worry, doubt, anxiety about how she and the rest of her family (my biological grandmother, aunts, uncle, cousins, half-sister) may receive me as a concept and as a person entering their lives. I think that it’s something that expresses her feelings as a biological mother toward her biological child. It’s not a perspective that many adoptees get to see or hear. I realize how lucky I am to have the opportunity to see this perspective.
“너 훌쩍이는 소리가
네 어머니 귀엔
천둥소리라 하더라.
그녀를 닮은 얼굴로
서럽게 울지 마라.
네가 어떤 딸인데
이 글귀가 너한테 가있는 내 마음이다.
다비야 너무 애태우지 마라. 내 마음이 아프다.”
“Your whimper
Sounds like thunder
To your mother’s ears.
Do not sob
With that face that looks just like hers.
You don’t realize what a precious daughter you are to her.”
She followed up the poem by saying “This poem describes how I feel about you. Da-Bee, don’t be anxious. It’s breaking my heart”.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read my blog! Until next time, fellow KADs or those interested in the topic.
여러분 사랑해요! I love you. ❤
Learning to be 한국인 
