Kimchi Mamas

Who Jomama?

Hello!  I've been reading Kimchi Mamas for over a year now, and submitted a guest post last year about My first Christmas Memory.   I was delighted to be invited to join as a regular, even though it took me a month to get my act together for my introduction.

Having been adopted at age 6, I arrived in the US speaking fluent Korean and no English.  I quickly lost my native language, and mastered English to join my first grade class 6 months later with no accent.  It would take me much longer and more effort in college to regain any semblance of fluency in Korean again.  

Basic stats:  I am married to a bek-in (white guy), and we have two hapa boys, Teddy (11) and Barley(8).  Although DH and I both grew up back East, we have migrated westward, until landing in Silicon Valley, where we both attempt to balance work and family life.

I never heard the term "banana" or "twinkie" until I was in college, but instantly related to the term.  Having been raised by white parents in a 99% white community, it was a major research project for me to learn what it meant to be Korean.  I was fortunate to meet a good Korean friend in college, and then spend a year at Yonsei Hanguk Uh-Hakdang, learning to speak, read, and write Korean.  By the end of the year, I was able to defend myself from taxicab drivers who criticized my lack of fluency in the mother tongue.  Phew!

In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee

I had the privilege of watching the film In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival last month. Deann Borshay Liem produced and directed the film and it's sort of a follow up to her first film, First Person Plural, which is a documentary film about her experience as an international adoptee.

The auditorium of the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley was packed for this world premiere. The audience was very diverse and a group of Korean American adoptees were there as well, as an organized event by AKASF.

Research study on Korean adoptees

I recently received an email from my friend Saebom, who is a Korean adoptee doing a research study on the experiences of Korean adoptees.  This is such an under-studied topic, and I think it's so important that Korea adoptees are starting this research.  Please help out if you can, and feel free to pass this information along!

- eliaday, who wants to help out a friend

--

We need your help if you are a Korean adoptee who is:

* Currently 20 years or older
* Went to Korea at age 20 or older
* Went to Korea and RETURNED to pre-Korea life 

Please respond to our independent research study! 

There are only 49 questions, and it should take 20-30 minutes. Email us for the password  at 2curiouskads [at] gmail com, and then proceed to this link: http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=BIDNH_636365b6. Be sure to enable cookies before you start so you can go back  later on if you need to.

Some of these questions might seem personal, but the more open and honest you can be the more helpful your responses will be for other adoptees. Please know that your responses are generated anonymously. 

Feel free to post this message on your own blog or copy, paste and email it to anyone who might be interested in participating. Or simply email us at 2curiouskads [at] gmail com, with a list of emails, and we'll be happy to send out the information.

Here’s some info on us. We are Korean adoptees, 32 and 35 years old, who've been Korea 2-3 times. After we returned from Korea last year we felt isolated. Displaced. Confused. Unable to ease back into our pre-Korea lives. We wondered if other adoptees felt the same way. More importantly, if they didn't, what had they done to prevent these feelings from manifesting? What sort of foundations, behaviors, life circumstances did they have in place that enabled them to feel rooted and connected when they returned? And how could this information offer support to other adoptees? 

This is where you come in. If we get enough responses we will develop the results into a presentation for the IKAA Gathering in Seoul this summer so that your responses will help others just like you. 

Much appreciation,
Rae Anne and Saebom
2curiouskads [at] gmail com

My first Christmas memory

Guest post from the lovely Jomama.

Picture a little girl, about 5 or 6 years old, supposedly.  It's hard to believe that can be accurate, since she is so small stepping off the plane that has just brought her from Korea to New York's bustling airport (Kennedy or LaGuardia?  I'm not sure)

Two people are waiting for her--both Caucasian.  One is a plump middle-aged woman, with curly brown hair in a styled hairdo--freshened up at the salon she visits every week.  The other is a tall thin man, and the little girl has to crane her neck to see his face.  They both embrace her, taking her from the greeter who relieved the chaperone that flew across the Pacific Ocean with her to bring her to her new family.  This will be the last time for a while that she will be able to speak to anyone, as she does not yet understand any English words.  The small bag that was packed for her by the orphanage was lost somewhere along the flight.  All she has is the clothing she is wearing, which include rubber shoes (kudus) that are too big, and held on her feet by rubber bands.  She is clutching the papers she drew on to occupy her during the flight.  The lines make no sense to her new parents, since they are the beginnings of hangul, Korean writing.  No loops or curves are visible as you would see in Roman letters.

Unwed Mothers in the Motherland

Yesterday, the New York Times published a story profiling the trials of the South Korean single mother.  It is truly heartbreaking to read what these women sacrificed in order to raise their own children.  Even when faced with a declining birthrate, it is more acceptable to have an illegal abortion or to give up a baby for adoption than to live as a single mom.  It is especially infuriating, considering how much pressure is put on Korean mothers in general to be the sole caregivers, that these women are roundly shunned when they should be applauded for taking full responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children.

Sadly, my family has some personal experience with this cultural stigma.  My cousin's husband was tragically killed in a car accident when their daughter was only 8 months old.  She tried to raise her daughter alone, but eventually word got out to her daycare provider that there wasn't a father at home (her employer already knew because she was employed both before and after the accident).  They confronted her quite rudely, and when she explained with great pain what had happened, they had the gall to call her a liar (as in "Of COURSE you're going to say that your husband is dead, that's what they all say").  Because of this and similar experiences, she eventually moved to the United States.  If widows get this sort of treatment in the motherland, I am not surprised that straight-up single moms get it much worse.

That said, I applaud the 40 women who have joined the unwed mothers association thus far, and hope that as South Korea further establishes itself as a modern nation, these last few shameful vestiges of pigheaded bigotry can be laid to rest.

Julie

We found your birth father! Oops, no we didnt.

My fellow Los Angeles mom blogger Amy Anderson flew back to Korea yesterday for the first time since she left thirty-six years ago as an infant. She was selected to go as part of Overseas Koreans Foundation's "First Trip Home" project. She is a Korean adoptee.

Amy's a comedian, but her recent post about the lead-up to her trip brought me to tears (and not from laughing). Long story short: she was sent an e-mail from a social worker saying they had found her birth father and he wanted to meet her during her trip, but then she was sent another e-mail a little over an hour later saying that that previous e-mail had been sent to the wrong person.

- Nina Moon

Alternatives

The dreaded has occurred. I spent the past two months fearing it, guarding against it, shutting myself off from hoping too much, from imagining the face of the little thing. Then it happened, and I stand helpless in the face of it. I was pregnant for the past three months, and now I am not. And there is nothing I can do about it.

In the face of this loss and this feeling of helplessness, I wonder what I should do. I could wallow, cry, rant that it's not fair, and cry some more. I have done some of that already. But I don't want to be buried in it. I am sure it will drown me like quicksand, slowly sucking me in and absorbing me, even though I may not feel the changing depth minute by minute. I know grief can consume me, and I'm not ready to befriend it so quickly.

Hanging on by a thread

I thought this might be a good time to re-introduce myself to everyone since I’ve enjoyed reading the introduction posts by our new Kimchi Mamas and the re-introductions by some of the other KM’s. I went back through the archives and discovered that I’d never really written an introduction post when I first joined the blog, so here goes!

I am a mama to two hapa kids, a daughter who is 14 and a 10-year old son. I’m a social worker, and currently work at a non-profit agency. I will soon be re-entering the university as a Ph.D. candidate in Social Work at the “seasoned” age of 40! I joke that I’m making up for time, as I spent most of my 20s and half of my 30s starting and dropping out of college and 8 years of being a stay-at-home mom. Oh, do I wish I’d had a Kimchi Mama-type group back then!

I can only guess as to my origins of birth – I know it was likely somewhere in the Daegu area of South Korea, sometime probably in 1968. The reasons for my unknown birth information is that I was found abandoned on the Daegu City Hall steps in a box, wrapped in quilts, in February of 1970 and I appeared to be about a year old. According to the city hall records, I had a note with my name and birthdate pinned inside my jacket which would have made me 14 months if accurate. I was immediately whisked off to White Lily Orphanage, run by the Catholic Church, in the city. I lived at the orphanage for 5 months before being transferred to another orphanage in Ilsan (closer to Seoul) where I stayed just over a year before I was placed on an airplane and flown to Minneapolis, Minnesota where I was picked up by my adoptive parents. I was just under 3 years old.

Small Size, Big Voice

Last week, I caught this news story and interview on my local NPR show. Mayda Miller performed at the AKConnection (a local Korean adoptee social network) annual party and I have her disk Elphine. I'm thrilled to see her gaining a following!  I love how much she informs her art with the consciousness of bing a Korean adoptee. -- Jae Ran

Mayda Miller is a St. Paul pop rocker with a new cd, "Stereotype." (Photo courtesy of Michael Bland, Sonic Matrimony)

Small Size, Big Voice

by Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio
December 14, 2007

If you're a songwriter, being a Korean adoptee, a woman and only four-feet-ten inches tall gives you a lot to talk about. St. Paul musician Mayda's big sound belies her diminutive size.

St. Paul, Minn. — In a crowd, it's easy to overlook Mayda. But on stage, it is hard not to notice her.

"Just look at me," she says. "There's not a whole lotta Korean artists out there playing and writing their own material. And I'm teeny."

But while she may stand out in an ocean of white rappers and indie rockers, Mayda also has to resist being pigeon-holed. She thinks Korean adoptees tend to be typecast as American culture-obsessed, submissive and studious.

"When people look at me they think 'oh, she probably plays violin, classical piano or whatever,' and I don't," she says.

Mayda battles those preconceived notions in the title track of her new cd, "Stereotype."

Mayda is a St. Paul Central and University of Minnesota graduate. Over the years she has evolved from a guitarist and occasional back-up singer in an all female high school rock band to a solo artist and songwriter with a controlled, yet powerful voice.

"I feel like music just comes so easy," she says. "I have to do it. I don't have a choice."

"It's in my DNA," Mayda says, referring to her Korean background and the parents she's never met. It's not something she addresses directly in her music, but letting go or giving up something is a recurring theme, such as on the song "Quick as a Dove."

Last year, Mayda traveled to South Korea and played some shows for a Korean adoptee organization. She says it allowed her to claim her heritage while accepting the cultural gulf between her and all the natives who looked like her.

"It made me really proud," she says. "It really solidified who I am and who I'm trying to be. It definitely helped complete me, as corny as that sounds."

Listen to the podcast and read the rest of the transcript here.

Mayda's myspace page here.

Even After 40 Years, It's Not Too Late

* I decided to cross post this from my other blog, Harlow's Monkey, to add some perspective about the dissolved adoption of Jade from her Dutch adoptive parents and because my comment on yesterday's post would have been too long for a comment box. One of the things that has been bantered about in the international adoptee circles is the neglect of the Poeterays to obtain citizenship for Jade. Another thing being discussed a lot is that Jade is "better off" without parents that clearly felt abandoning her again was appropriate. In this post, I discuss adoption disruptions and dissolutions based on my professional and personal experiences. --Jae Ran

People all over the world are talking about the return of an adopted Korean child by a Dutch diplomat and his wife. I've written about disruptions and dissolutions before, namely here and here. I think one of the aspects of this case that is alarming people is the fact that the girl was 4 months old at the time of the adoption and had lived with her adoptive parents for 7 years.

A disruption is when the child is returned before the adoption is finalized. Disruptions often happen after a child is placed in the home a few months, but sometimes in the case of international adoption, it can occur when the family meets the child and decides not to go through with the adoption.

Once an adoption has been finalized, if the parents "return" a child it is called a dissolution. Dissolutions always occur after the legal status of parent and child has been established in a court of law. In the United States, for parents to dissolve an adoption they have to voluntarily terminate their parental rights in court.

We often think of disruptions or dissolutions as being something that happens fairly soon after the adoption, perhaps within months or a few years. It's rare that we hear about an adoption dissolving 7 years later. But in my line of work, that's not unusual. I have on my case load two siblings who were in foster care, adopted, and re-entered care six years after the finalization. We hear about the disruptions that happen in China or Guatemala because with other prospective families traveling in groups together, it's going to be known. I want to know how many kids were adopted internationally and then years later when kids turn into teenagers (and normally get ornery and rebel), how many of those families dissolve with no one watching?

One of my frustrations has always been finding reliable statistical data on disruptions and dissolutions. In my earlier post "And even more about adoption disruptions and dissolutions" I asked for anyone who had reliable numbers to contact me. It turns out that the Department of Health and Human Services actually did keep track of the number of international adoption "disruptions" in 2006. According to this Newsweek article, "When Adoption Goes Wrong" there were 81 international adoption disruptions or dissolutions from 14 different states last year. Of course, we still don't know how many international adoptions have dissolved over the 50+ years of international adoption to the United States. Anecdotally, I know of several adult Korean adoptees who spent time in foster care.