NYHOMESTUDY BLOG

By
Katy Robinson

Returning to Korea for the first time since my adoption was a defining moment in my life. It took 20 years to muster the courage to confront the most basic of questions: Who am I? Where did I come from?

These were questions that I did not allow myself to ask while growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah. To broach these topics, it appeared to me, was to point out that I was different from everyone else in my family. I was afraid to seem ungrateful for the amazing new life I had been given, or to hurt my adoptive mother’s feelings by mentioning the mother who gave me birth. It wasn’t as if I was forbidden to talk about my Korean family; it just seemed disloyal.

I did not have the words to explain the empty feeling I sometimes got in my heart during family functions when I realized I did not resemble anyone else in the room. I couldn’t explain the voices from my past, ever-patient and waiting in the background for me to acknowledge them. It seemed easier to erase the past, fit in, and belong the best I could — even if that meant coaxing my long, straight black hair into pink foam rollers or globbing on layers of mascara to make my eyes appear bigger.

I grew up in the 1970s when the language and attitude surrounding adoption was much different from today. As a child, I didn’t know any other adoptees. There were no books, films, artwork, groups or conferences in my life to help express what it meant to be adopted from another country.

The decision, then, to travel alone to Korea in 1997 and search for my birth family must have seemed impulsive to my adoptive family. But somewhere in the back of my mind, other voices were saying, it’s about time.

The emotional preparation for the journey was overwhelming. After all those years of polite silence, the floodgates opened and what poured forth surprised both my adoptive mother and me. Why didn’t my parents encourage me to keep more of my Korean heritage? Why wasn’t I allowed to keep my given name and native language? Why didn’t they have any Korean friends or live someplace more ethnically diverse?

The questions were endless. But with each one, I asserted my right to explore my past. Armed with this new courage, I arrived in front of a red brick building on the outskirts of Seoul and gave a social worker the only two pieces of information I knew: My Korean name, Kim Ji-yun; and the date of my adoption, November 7, 1977.

After digging in an old metal file cabinet, she fished out a folder with my Korean name scrawled across the top.

My hands shook as I opened the folder to discover the document my Korean mother signed, relinquishing all rights to me. As I studied the faded signature, I pictured my mother sitting at the table 20 years earlier and signing the papers that would hand me over to strangers. Surprisingly, the folder also contained a message that my Korean father had come to this same orphanage 10 years earlier looking for me. While he didn’t find me then, my father would knock at my hotel door the day after my visit to the orphanage.

“Ji-yun-ah,” my 70-year-old father called out, his eyes fighting back tears. “I am so sorry I could not do my duties to you as your father. For 21 years, not a single day went by that I did not think of you.”

He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a packet of photographs. For the first time, I saw pictures of myself progressing through the first seven years of my life in Korea. There also was a black and white photograph of my mother and father posed together, obviously in love. With each new image, I began to recognize myself in the face of the man sitting across from me. The shape of our eyes and face mirrored each other.

Then the questions began to rise and catch in my throat. How did he and my mother meet? What happened between them? Why did they give me up?

The search for answers was just beginning. Once I cracked open the door, I wanted to discover everything on the other side. A year after meeting my father, I moved to Seoul to study Korean, get to know my father, and continue the search for other family members.

It was an amazing and turbulent year. I went to Korea thinking that the past was like a puzzle that would neatly lock together once I found all of the missing pieces. But what I found instead was a picture in constant motion, one piece connecting while another falls away.

I did not fill in all of the blanks, and I probably never will. But I came away with a much deeper appreciation for the two families that shaped me intowho I am.

I have the most amazing adoptive mother, who moved to Boise when I was pregnant, then later bought the house next door to us. We look nothing alike (she is Irish with freckled skin that can burn even in the shade), but people know we are mother and daughter by the way we talk, laugh and express ourselves when we’re together.

I’m also lucky enough to have a father who calls me from Korea in the middle of his night to ask if I am healthy and happy. I can answer him in broken Korean and tell him that I love him. I keep in touch with other family in Korea as well: a half-brother and half-sister, a nephew, and sister-in-law.

The discovery of my Korean family not only benefits me, but my husband and our 2-year-old son as well. When Kai turned one, we took him to Korea to celebrate with his Korean relatives.

Today, when I look in the mirror, I no longer see an image I want to change. I see a face with features I got from my Korean family, and expressions I got from my American one. At times, I feel deeply Korean; other times I feel all American. It’s no longer important to be fully one or the other. I have the privilege to move between these two halves, and still feel whole.