Adoptees return to land of birth
Some want to improve things; some want to reunite with their families.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
SEOUL, South Korea -- In a tiny neighborhood restaurant south of the Han River, Yun Jin Carson tackled a bowl of cold noodles with a pair of scissors.
"That's how Koreans do it," said Carson, 24, deftly cutting into the naeng mien, a traditional dish on hot summer nights. She paused.
"I still can't say we do it."
Carson wants to belong in this place that is home but not home at all.
Home was 5,600 miles away in Northern California until she spent the summer two years ago in Seoul, a city she did not remember, searching for the birth mother she never knew. Now, she is back to reclaim her cultural birthright.
A reversal
Seoul is home to a vibrant community of adoptees who have reversed the overseas crossing made by more than 150,000 children in the past half-century, the world's first and largest wave of international adoptions. Many are coming to immerse themselves in their ancestral culture or reunite with their birth families.
Some are here on a mission: to change the society they were born into but were forced to leave as children. They run nonprofit organizations to help one another, make political art and punk music together, and rally for their rights. There's even a new movement that seeks to end international adoption from South Korea.
Carson delights in her newfound half-sister (they have the same chunky hands), in Korean food (Korean sushi, gimbap, is better than Japanese because the seaweed is softer and tastier, she says) and in Korean friends (baristas from the cafe where she studied Korean). Since she moved here last fall, her life in Seoul has come to include adoptee support group meetings, Korean classes and work as an English teacher.
Birth mother
But she struggles to forgive her birth mother, with whom she was reunited in 2003. When she sees how well her mother knows her other children and she hears them speak the same language, Carson is pained and angry that she must build that connection from nothing.
"I really want to speak Korean, to communicate. Relationships are the most important thing," said Carson, who grew up in the California cities of Danville and Chico. "If I can't speak Korean, I'll never understand my mother or my family."
About 2,000 South Korean children are adopted outside the country each year, behind only China and Russia. Since the 1950s, American families have adopted about 110,000 South Korean children, the other 40,000 or so scattered worldwide.