Korean adoptees (1950s- ), or KADs as they are called, are children from Korea who were adopted and grew up overseas. There are more than 150,000 of them, most of them in America, though a surprising number are found in Scandinavia. You see them in other Western countries too.
Most of those in America were placed with white families and were brought up white. They talk white, act white, have white friends, go to a white school, have white parents and may even have a white name.
And yet they do not look white.
Because of white racism it means that they are stereotyped by whites, that growing up they get called names, that white children, those darlings, pull up the corner of their eyes at them. It means whites will never truly accept them as they are. If they are girls, it means they do not look like what America sees as beautiful.
And so, many do not feel like they belong, they feel out of place in America.
Some go to Korea, to the country where they were born, where everyone looks like them. But most do not feel like they fit in there either. While Korea feels bad about sending so many of its children away, the KADs are too American to be Korean.
So they become lost souls, many of them, white on the inside, yellow on the outside, caught between two worlds, never truly belonging to either.
There are three main ways they deal with this:
- They try not to think about it and try to fit in as honorary whites.
- They learn about Korea. It helps but it does not become a part of their daily life.
- They seek out other KADs, people who understand them. They come to see themselves as KADs, as something neither white American nor Korean but something new.
In the 1950s Korea started sending children overseas to be adopted. Back then it was torn apart by war and very poor. But even as late as the 1980s one Korean child in 100 was being sent overseas. And even now in the 2000s, as rich as South Korea is and with South Korean women having only 1.2 children on average, even now one in 200 is sent overseas. Only China and Russia, much bigger countries, send more children.
South Korea is not proud of this and wants to stop the practice completely by 2015.
In America white parents at first were told to bring up their Korean children in a completely colour-blind fashion, just as if they were white. But that meant these children faced white racism completely unprepared and with no one to turn to who understood. Often they were the only Asian person at school or in town!
The common wisdom now is to teach the children as much about Korea as possible. Not sure where that leaves the racism bit, but it has to help to know where you are from and be proud of it.
See also:
Thanks for talking about Korean adoptees. They may be adopted more by nonblack Americans, they aren’t fully accepted in mainstream society. Sure, they may get some privileges that Black American children don’t get, but still aren’t treated as equals in this society.
Steph
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I am working on a post about blacks adopted by white parents. I found out about Korean adoptees along the way – there is way more about them on the Internet it seems.
I found it interesting how KADs are about as white as you can be short of being physically white and yet they are not accepted. It shows you where whites have drawn their lines, that it is not as tra-la-la as some white commenters on this blog would have you believe.
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Every parent around the world, well not every, as we are not using absolutes, but a good majority of them send them to America because the education and opportunities here are pretty much unmatched in the rest of the world.
Koreans, or any other race of people that immigrates here, are not acting “White,” they are acting American.
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South Korea does not have much in the way of foster care or orphanages and few Koreans adopt. All that gets out-sourced to America and other willing countries. So if a woman abandons her baby knowing the police will send it off to America, it creates a moral hazard.
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Almost anyone brought up in a white family in a white part of town is going to act white, white American. There is no “American” in the sense you seem to mean it. Everyone is something-American: white American, black American, Cuban American and all the rest. I think KADs prove it.
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Hello! My name is Kim Bomin from Korea Maritime University.
First of all, i’m so sorry for my terrible English…
I’m studying Korean network for communication between Korean and overseas Koreans.
I ask your help! If you don’t mind, please tell me your ideas about the emigration and overseas residence.
If you have resided for over 15 years in overseas, answer the question below. 🙂
Q1. Name/sex/age/occupation/academic background (If you don’t want to answer, skip it)
Q2. What qualification or specific character should be requested to be recognized as Korean? Please tell me your opinion.
Q3. Are you proud of being a Korean? When do you feel it?
Q4 What benefits or disadvantages are caused at your work because of the fact that you are a Korean?
Q5. Is there any difficulty to live abroad?
Q6. Do you think that Korean people in your region are helping each other?
Q7. Are you joining groups or meetings that are operated by overseas Korean? Then what is the purpose of the activities?
Q8. What things should the Korean government and Korean people do for overseas Koreans?
Tell me your ideas.
Q9. Do you want to recommend emigration to people who are living in Korea?
Q10. What do you think about the problem of the Korean race(한민족) and the future of it?
Please send me the answer to qhalskim@yahoo.co.kr
Thank you so much for your help!
I wish for your happy life in overseas. 🙂
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Then maybe people other than whites should adopt the Koreans, since they’d give better advice on how to deal with racism than white people could.
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Thanks for bumping this, dee. It’s a good example of Abagond’s way of thinking. The topic of the post is the adoption of hundreds of thousands of often starving, orphaned Korean babies by white people, who raised them as their own. Yet Abagond uses this premise to launch into another tirade about what a bunch vile racists white people are! Another typical feature of this post is the complete lack of sources for the many strong claims he makes. It’s also interesting how totally at odds this post is with the idea that race is merely a social construct.
Korean adoptees in the West are an interesting subject for studying the effects of nature and nurture. For example, a Belgian study found that Korean adoptees in Belgium average higher IQs than white Belgians, just like East Asians do everywhere. Yet many of the adoptees were severely malnourished before adoption.
This is another interesting study: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/nature_nurture_.html
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It always amazes me what the Stever Sailor crowd feels is “proof” of their beliefs.
In this case, it’s a right-wing political blog which intentionally mistates a serious scientist’s research. Here’s said scientist’s conclusions:
Overall, this study yields several useful conclusions. First, in a case with random assignment of children to families, family size is still negatively correlated with education and income. Second, there is a strong level effect of family environment on child education and income. However transmission of education and income for adoptees is much less strong than for
non-adoptees. Hence, by definition, either initial endowments or the interaction between family
environment and initial endowments must be driving a large portion of the transmission of income
and education to children. Smoking and drinking habits are transmitted almost equally strongly to
adoptees and non-adoptees. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that parents do not transmit a
tendency for obesity to their adoptees.
In other words, environment is still HEAVILY linked to income and education. Furthermore, when Sacerdote says “initial endowments”, he doesn’t mean only genetics or even biology: these children were not turned over to adoptive parents as blank slates: they could indeed have suffered from abuse, malnourishment, or inadequate early learning. Thirdly, as Sacerdote himself claims, there’s no proof that these results are caused by “initial endowments” alone: environment could equally have a role to play. Sacerdote’s results tell us nothing about this.
But finally – and this is the kicker – our pal Jack’s argument is that somehow these results “prove” Korean intellectual superiority. In fact, they show something of the opposite. The Korean adoptees were LESS likely to be affected by positive environmental factors contributing to wealth and education than the biological children. For example, having a mother with a college education improved an adoptee’s chances of getting a the same by 7% while it improved biological children’s chances by 28%.
What this means is that, on the whole, FEWER Korean adoptee babies were going to college than biological babies.
If there were thus a biological factor at play here, it’s one that makes Koreans stupider in relation to native-born Americans.
However, there’s a much more simpler and biologically sound hypothesis possible here: to wit, adoptive parents do not invest as much in their adopted children as they do their biological children. What we already know about evolution and human culture would tend to indicate this as a much more viable hypothesis than some sort of genetic factor.
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In this case, it’s a right-wing political blog which intentionally mistates a serious scientist’s research.
He misstates nothing. You simply do not understand the study.
But finally – and this is the kicker – our pal Jack’s argument is that somehow these results “prove” Korean intellectual superiority. In fact, they show something of the opposite. The Korean adoptees were LESS likely to be affected by positive environmental factors contributing to wealth and education than the biological children. For example, having a mother with a college education improved an adoptee’s chances of getting a the same by 7% while it improved biological children’s chances by 28%.
What this means is that, on the whole, FEWER Korean adoptee babies were going to college than biological babies.
The Korean adoptees in the sample had, on average, more education and higher incomes than white Americans in general. This was true regardless of the income level of the adoptive parents (who were disproportionately upper-middle class but included also poor people). In other words, the socio-economic status of the parents had a strong effect on the eventual education and income levels of their biological children, but little effect on those of their adoptive children.
Adopted Koreans had similar education and income outcomes whether they were raised by poor or rich adoptive parents. They had better outcomes than the biological children of poor parents, but worse than the biological children of rich parents. This is not fully reflected in Tabarrok’s graph because the adoptees were, on average, six years younger than the biological children (income and the amount of education tend to increase with age). If you controlled for age, the adoptee line in the graph would go up. See here: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/nature_and_nurt.html
What is your explanation for the fact that parental SES has a large effect on biological children but not on adoptees?
If there were thus a biological factor at play here, it’s one that makes Koreans stupider in relation to native-born Americans.
The adopted Koreans had higher average incomes and more education than white Americans on average. How does that make them stupid?
However, there’s a much more simpler and biologically sound hypothesis possible here: to wit, adoptive parents do not invest as much in their adopted children as they do their biological children. What we already know about evolution and human culture would tend to indicate this as a much more viable hypothesis than some sort of genetic factor.
That may have something to it, but this study shows that adoptive parents invest more time and money in adopted children than biological children. However, this may be because adoptees tend to have more behavioral problems.
Note that one study, such as Sacerdote’s, does not prove much, but when it is combined with a hundred others with similar results, one cannot help but conclude that genetic inheritance is perhaps the major factor in explaining different socio-economic outcomes in contemporary Western society.
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Actually, you misstate Sacerdote’s results. It’s pretty clear to me that you didn’t read them, Jack.
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Here’s straight from the horse’s mouth, Jack. Sacerdote, page 13, last paragraph:
Forty eight percent of the adoptees [Korean] have four years of college versus 65 percent for the nonadoptees [non-Korean].
So how do you square that with your comment that the Korean adoptees had MORE education?
Oh, and here’s another thing that you “forget” to mention: only 30% of the adoptees are male as opposed to 60% of the non-adoptees. So even presuming that these differences DO some inborn genetic trait (very unlikely), odds are very good that it could be a SEX-linked trait.
And yet I don’t see you running around crowing that women are “naturally” more intelligent than men, do I? Strange, that… 😀
…but when it is combined with a hundred others with similar results…
BS, Jack. You can’t even accurately report the results of ONE scientific study, yet you want us to believe that there are hundreds more just like this one?
Fail, Jack. Learn to read science papers before you start making extravagant claims! Hint: when you start going way beyond what the scientist himself claims, you’re probably overreaching. 😀 😀
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So how do you square that with your comment that the Korean adoptees had MORE education?
What I wrote was this: “The Korean adoptees in the sample had, on average, more education and higher incomes than white Americans in general. I never said that the adoptees were more successful than the whites in the study.
Look at this chart of race differences in bachelor’s degree attainment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Higher_education_in_the_US_by_race.svg
48% of the Korean adoptees had bachelor’s degrees versus 48.3% of Asians in the general population. In contrast, 65% of the nonadopted whites in the study had bachelor’s degrees versus 30% of whites in the general population. I leave it as homework for you to figure out what this implies about the average socio-economic status of the adoptive parents and the genes they passed on to their biological children.
Oh, and here’s another thing that you “forget” to mention: only 30% of the adoptees are male as opposed to 60% of the non-adoptees. So even presuming that these differences DO some inborn genetic trait (very unlikely), odds are very good that it could be a SEX-linked trait.
Do you honestly think that Sacerdote is such a sloppy researcher that he wouldn’t control for gender? Of course he does! Read the damn study!
However, all that stuff is irrelevant to Tabarrok’s point, namely that the income of biological children increases strongly with parental income but the income of adoptive children is flat [with regard to] parent income. What non-genetic factors explain this? Please tell.
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What I wrote was this: “The Korean adoptees in the sample had, on average, more education and higher incomes than white Americans in general. I never said that the adoptees were more successful than the whites in the study.
And yet the study itself makes NO COMPARISON, WHATSOEVER, between these Korean adoptees and the general population, does it Jack? 😀
Like I said originally: you’re attributing things to this study that simply aren’t there.
However, all that stuff is irrelevant to Tabarrok’s point, namely that the income of biological children increases strongly with parental income but the income of adoptive children is flat [with regard to] parent income. What non-genetic factors explain this? Please tell.
And you think this proves Korean “superiority” do you? What Sacerdote is saying is that adopptees DON’T gain the home court advantage here that biological kids and one hypothesis is quite obvious. I mentioned it above: relative lack of investment in adopted kids.
So what’s the trouble here, Jack?
As for correcting for gender, show me where he does that please, Jack: I don’t see it.
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The study says absolutely nothing about the inferiority or superiority of any race. What’s interesting in it is what it tells us about nature and nurture.
And yet the study itself makes NO COMPARISON, WHATSOEVER, between these Korean adoptees and the general population, does it Jack? 😀.
That’s false. From page 4:
“The adoptees in the sample have educational attainment and family income that is only modestly higher than U.S. averages. The mean years of education for the Holt adoptees is 14.75 years versus 14.11 for Asian-Americans in the NLSY and 13.57 for all other subjects in the NLSY.”
However, for the purposes of Tabarrok’s argument that’s irrelevant.
What Sacerdote is saying is that adopptees DON’T gain the home court advantage here that biological kids and one hypothesis is quite obvious. I mentioned it above: relative lack of investment in adopted kids.
Sacerdote says that adoptees raised in poorer families had larger incomes than their unrelated siblings, whereas the opposite is true for richer families. If what you hypothesize were true, it would imply that poorer parents invest more in their adopted children than their biological children, while richer parents invest relatively more in their biological children. To put it another way, you suggest that parents raise adopted children in an identical manner regardless of their socio-economic status, which means that poorer parents neglect their biological children in favor of adopted children. It does not sound like a good hypothesis. On what page does Sacerdote suggest it, by the way? 😉
Moreover, what exactly does the parental investment that you are suggesting here consist of? I ask this because the nurture component of behavioral variation is a bit of a mystery. Differences in parenting styles, for example, are pretty much irrelevant.
As for correcting for gender, show me where he does that please, Jack: I don’t see it.
He does it in several spots. Search for ‘gender’. But, again, that doesn’t really matter to Tabarrok’s argument.
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The study says absolutely nothing about the inferiority or superiority of any race. What’s interesting in it is what it tells us about nature and nurture.
Ah. So you finally DO admit that you’re reading things into it then. As for “nature vs. nurture”, no it doesn’t tell us much, as the author himself admits. Could be nature. Could be early nurture. Could be later nurture. Most probably its some combination. THIS is his conclusion.
Which you, sir, are too intellectually dishonest to admit.
He does it [correct for gender] in several spots. Search for ‘gender’. But, again, that doesn’t really matter to Tabarrok’s argument.
I already did. I want YOU to show us all where, precisely , he does this. Because I think you are bullshitting completely, Jack, when you say you can read and understand Sacerdote’s argument.
Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is. 😀
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“In America white parents at first were told to bring up their Korean children in a completely colour-blind fashion, just as if they were white.”
“The common wisdom now is to teach the children as much about Korea as possible.”
There is one thing still missing. They also have to learn about being Asian American, or what it means to be of Asian descent in America. Neither raising them as white and nor teaching them about Korea prepares them for that. And if anything, that is what they need the most.
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They also have to learn about being Asian American, or what it means to be of Asian descent in America. Neither raising them as white and nor teaching them about Korea prepares them for that. And if anything, that is what they need the most.”
This is on the money.
Great post. I’m a Korean adoptee and unfortunately was raised in a mostly white community with white parents. It’s jarring and humiliating to turn 7 or 8 and suddenly the white kids who grew up on the same block as you are calling you “chinky” and telling you to go back where you came from. Or their parents asking my adoptive mom “if I’d be able to learn english” (I kid you not. And this was outside of New York). I’m sure it’s no coincidence that all my closest friends were (and still are) other people of color. White parents have NOT A CLUE how to handle race. They don’t understand that just because they bring a child up “white”, white America will never see them that way.
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While I’m not a Korean adoptee, I can relate where Kim is coming from. I mean, as an Asian-Canadian, I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and I had other white children pointing out that I looked different even ridiculing my facial features, or telling me to go home to my own country. I ran home to my mother crying wondering why the kids were very mean and she comforted me by telling me these kids had parents who didn’t teach them very well. Now who can a Korean adoptee or any adopted child of color turn to but to his/her parents?
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Oh, Give it a rest Leigh, Asians parents can’t raise a black child any better. Most Asians are filled with racism and scorn for black people with no idea of what we are going through. “Of colour” yeah…
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@Metsi:
No, YOU give it a rest. Most Korean adoptees are adopted by, who else, white people. And yeah, nice try with the generalizing.
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Kim – I am sorry to hear that. For me personally I turned to my friends. Because luckily even in a predominantly white area, I’m still from NY and was able to connect with the Black, Pakistani, Indian etc kids. What if I had I grown up in say Oklahoma? I honestly don’t know.
Metsi – Why are you discounting leigh204’s experiences growing up? And how many Asian parent’s do you see adopting black children? White people adopt Asian and Latin babies in large numbers and have no idea how to deal with race.
“Most Asians are filled with racism and scorn for black people with no idea of what we are going through.”
I’m sorry this has been your experience.
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sorry at the beginning – i meant leigh!
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@kim:
It’s okay, kim. There weren’t a lot of people of color around me when I was growing up, but I was blessed to have a mother who supported me and she gave me the strength to overcome whatever came my way. I am the person I am today because of her. 🙂
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I found this article regarding a Korean adoptee’s experience. He was adopted by an African-American couple. It’s a great story.
http://iamkoream.com/where-i-come-from/
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Man, where do you get the idea that white people always act like this towards Asians? I come from a small town in New Mexico, that was pretty much just White and Latino(sorry mestizo) except for 3 of these Korean adoptees you’re talking about. I must say, these three dated plenty of white people, and as far as I can recall no one spoke negatively of them, or called them names. In fact whites were very careful to make them feel accepted(no not patronizing, just sensitive) . On the other hand, many mestizos(myself included, sadly) were a whole different story. We called them Chinos sucios(dirty Chinese), jeered at them, and made no end of jokes about their appearance. While I know there are a huge number of whites who engage in the kind of racism against adopted Asians you describe here, I think you’re incorrect when you say they can never be fully accepted. I also think you’re wrong to single out whites with this assertion. While I realize you’re talking about a specific group of adopted Asians, you make it seem as though whites engage in this behavior because of their race, not because of ideas and environment. Do you think Blacks would be any more accepting of them? Or mestizos? I would say not, because in my personal experience, many older Latinos and many Blacks are racist in the open, slur using variety. In your other article you de-emphasized black racism by saying it is mostly directed at themselves. Thats ridiculous, I’ve heard many Blacks complain about “damn greasy spics taking our jobs”, the same as I’ve heard many Latinos talk about “lazy niggers on welfare”. Racism is not a white specific problem, they’re just the most visible because they are the majority, and have the most power. All racism is equally harmful, no matter what color, and while I wholeheartedly agree with most things on your site, I think you’re letting your own experiences with white racism slant your perception of things.
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Hello everyone,
I am a Korean adoptee living in Norway, and I was hoping to contribute to this debate with some first-hand experience.
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First of all: @KIM BOMIN
Q1. Name/sex/age/occupation/academic background (If you don’t want to answer, skip it)
A1. Male, 24, Entrepreneur, college education
Q2. What qualification or specific character should be requested to be recognized as Korean? Please tell me your opinion.
A2. I’d say being born in Korea to Korean citizens should qualify.
Q3. Are you proud of being a Korean? When do you feel it?
A3. Not particularly. Only in recent years through Korean entertainment becoming increasingly popular in the west have I felt any kind of pride in my heritage.
Q4 What benefits or disadvantages are caused at your work because of the fact that you are a Korean?
A4. I can’t say I have noticed any benefits as a Korean at work, at least not in Norway. On the contrary, I have had quite a hard time finding work even after college. I do get a lot of interviews, but I think my Norwegian name puts me at a disadvantage since I’m not what they expect me to be when I arrive for the interview. (Although I have no concrete proof of this, maybe I have just had bad luck.) This is also the reason why I chose to start my own businesses.
Q5. Is there any difficulty to live abroad?
A5. I have been to Korea, but I have never lived there. So it’s difficult for me to compare the two.
Q6. Do you think that Korean people in your region are helping each other?
A6. I don’t think so. I know quite a few korean adoptees, but we barely have any contact. Some of them are very into korean culture and travel to Korea a lot, others like my sister, see themselves as Norwegian.
Q7. Are you joining groups or meetings that are operated by overseas Korean? Then what is the purpose of the activities?
A7. I am a member of a few organizations, but we never meet. I also tried to learn Korean through these organizations, but it was hard, so I only know how to read hangul.
Q8. What things should the Korean government and Korean people do for overseas Koreans?
A8. I am honestly not sure, but I guess it would be nice to see my mother. I feel like many adoptees share this sentiment.
Q9. Do you want to recommend emigration to people who are living in Korea?
A9. No, I would not.
Q10. What do you think about the problem of the Korean race(한민족) and the future of it?
A10. The tensions between North Korea and South Korea scares me, to be honest. Although I have never met them, I still don’t wish for my parents and my birthplace to be destroyed.
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@Abagond
Thank you very much for writing this article. I have been reading your blog for the past days, and you are giving words to many feelings I have had but been able to communicate.
It’s rare that this issue is brought up, and I am thankful for an opportunity to tell my story if you are interested. Unfortunately, my analytical and rhetorical skills are far below that of most of the people who post here, so I will abstain from entering a debate on right or wrong, this is merely my own perspective:
I was adopted from Korea to Norway when I was 8 months old to white middle class parents. I was sometimes teased for being Asian, so I knew I was different from other kids, but I didn’t let it bother me much until my teenage years.
When I was about 15 years old, I fell in love with a white girl who seemed nice, and I confessed to her, but was rejected. She then went on to tell everyone who would listen about my confession, and made some pretty cruel racial jokes which other kids soon picked up on. (Penis size, ching-chong, me so horny, me love her long time etc. So funny.)
I became the laughing stock of the school that year, and one day when I tried to stand up for myself a group of boys beat me up pretty bad. I got really depressed after that and suicidal, feeling my foreign appearance was the cause of all my grief. My mother had drop out of high school and had me locked up in a mental hospital and medicated for a year. It was not a good place to be.
My parents divorced around that time as well, and resenting my mother for the treatment I received in the hospital, I cut off all contact with her and haven’t spoken to her since.
I then went on to finish high school and college, and luckily this was around the time where japanese culture like manga and anime enjoyed increased popularity, so I felt more accepted. I even got girlfriends, both Asians and Whites, but I never felt like they truly understood me. To the asian girls I was different due to them being the children of immigrants, and to the whites I felt like I was a replacement for the japanese idols they were into.
After my education was done, I tried to apply for jobs, but I only succeeded in landing minimum wage jobs despite my education, maybe it was because I looked different from what they expected when they heard me talk on the phone and saw my Norwegian name on paper, or maybe it was because I wasn’t outgoing enough during interviews. I don’t really know.
In any case, I eventually decided to start my own businesses over the internet, and I am doing pretty well today. I still feel out of place though. Even when visiting Korea and Japan. It’s funny, white people think you are chinese all your life, then when you go to Korea they think you are chinese too.
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Thank you for sharing your story.
Do you find yourself gravitating to a certain subset of friends? What people do you feel most comfortable around?
It will always be difficult for other people to understand you (except maybe for other Korean adoptees). Still, I think it will help you to learn more about the Korean-Norwegian community. Although they might be children of Korean immigrants and raised by ethnic Korean parents, they still have to navigate being Korean-looking while accommodating themselves to Norwegian society. Their problems will be different from yours, but there is some overlap, and they might know some coping skills that you can learn from too.
Wonder what people think you are if you go to China. Probably NOT Chinese.
I have a different, but perhaps related problem. My parents were an interracial couple and I was an accidental pregnancy. I have learned that I must somehow look “ethnically ambiguous” to others, and neither of my parents’ families or ethnic groups think I look like I should be related to their ethnic groups. And people from completely unrelated ethnic backgrounds wonder if I share an ethnic background with them. It is difficult to attach to any ethnic group as I will be basically be rejected by all of them. There is always the option growing up to try to be an “honorary white” in the USA (regardless of what you actually look like), but that option did not work for me. I think it is partly due to having too many problems with my white side. But the other options don’t really work well either.
But you can also see if you can somehow take advantage of not really fitting into a certain label.
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Since Korean adoptees learned their racial coping skills from their white family & white school, I really don’t expect them to stand up to white racist behavior. What is more likely is that they have to dissociate themselves from the object of that racism.
White people need to take Asian american studies.
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The racism has now evolved into “cultural appropriation.” When you see whites dressed in Korean “costumes” as they like to call it and decorate their homes like a nightmare museum of tourism trinkets, or better yet, send their KADs out on Halloween dressed in Korean costumes, I want to hurl White consumerism stops at nothing short of self-respect.
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oops, meant to say nothing short of the lack of self respect.
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The common wisdom now is to teach the children as much about Korea as possible. Not sure where that leaves the racism bit,
Abagond, you say “common wisdom”. From where did this “common wisdom” come from? America’s psychologists?
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This:
(http://youtu.be/Qz4e6PQUhxY)
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And this: (much happier)
(http://youtu.be/uBEAlUOEjFc)
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@ Legion
Here is an excerpt of Frank H. Wu’s comment from the same movie you linked above. Based on what I have seen about transracial adoption, I agree that for transracially adopted Asian kids, what they need to learn is how to navigate life as an Asian-American, not being fed pre-packaged fake Asian culture.
I disagree that the best thing to do is to teach them as much as possible about their Asian birth country (ie, Abagond’s common wisdom above). I also disagree that they should raise them as colour blind either. Neither of those help them adapt to being an Asian in America, and only teach them that there is something WRONG with them.
(http://youtu.be/uR6qkYC_H0M)
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I do not agree that the following is the answer
(http://youtu.be/FHTcQpJvohA)
The kids depicted here are still young. Wait until they get old enough to date or look for jobs or housing. Is taking them to watch Lion dances at Chinese New Year parades going to help them with that? A balance between white American and Chinese culture? What they need to learn about also is how to handle Asian American stereotypes.
Don’t get me wrong. I went to watch the Lion dances at Chinese New Year parades in Washington, DC when I was a child too. But what they need to learn is something they will never get from their parents, or their parents’ friends.
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Interesting comment here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/decades-korean-adoptions-dwindle-identity-issues-remain-n217631
This more or less supports my point – what Korean adoptees need to learn is how to navigate the racial minefield of what is America, which neither raising them as white nor exposing them to Korea and Korean culture will tell them.
But as numbers of new Korean Adoptees in the 21st century dwindle, will this phenomenon just disappear into a forgotten chapter of US history?
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A Korean adoptee who is now a father of 4 is being deported because his abusive adopted parents didn’t finish his paperwork. They gave him to the state and he was adopted by another family that physically and sexually abused him:
“#KeepAdamHome: Stop Adam Crapser’s Deportation Now”
http://action.18mr.org/crapser/?source=direct_link&referrer=cayden-mak
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“Deportation hearing begins for adopted man whose parents didn’t seek his citizenship”
http://www.oregonlive.com/clark-county/index.ssf/2015/04/deportation_hearing_begins_ver.html
“”Abandoned” S. Korean adoptee faces judge as deportation looms”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korean-adoptee-adam-crapser-faces-judge-as-deportation-looms/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
“Korean adoptee in immigration battle fights to remain in his country — the US”
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/03/adam-crapser-deportation-korean-adoption-system-immigration
“Adam Crapser: Gazillion Voices Radio”
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An update on Adam Crapser, whose plight was described in the comments directly above by Speak Out.
Adam Crapser was deported from the United States to South Korea in 2016, separated from his wife, his four children, and the only homeland he has ever known.
In 2019, he sued both the South Korean government and the private adoption agency that handled his international adoption.
This article goes into some detail about his specific case and the history of intercountry adoptions in South Korea:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/adoptee-deported-by-u-s-sues-south-korea-agency/
Apparently by the 1970s, when Crasper was sent to the U.S. as a toddler, international adoption had become a multi-million dollar business in South Korea. Private agencies often had ties to high-ranking officials in the military governments of that era. Adoption agencies were known for aggressive techniques designed to pressure poor parents into surrendering their babies, and they then falsely categorized those children as being orphaned. Adam Crasper is one such child; the agency was aware that both his mother and father were still living but falsified his records.
As of March 2022, his case is still making its way through the Korean court system:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2022/03/801_326160.html
Every year since 2015, Congress has considered a bill meant to rectify this situation, called the Adoptee Citizenship Act, but so far it hasn’t passed.
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 does guarantee citizenship for adoptees born after 1983. But that still leaves many older adoptees vulnerable to deportation, as well as younger ones whose intercountry adoption was never fully finalized. Right now the U.S. is putting all the burden and the consequences on people who were infants and children at the time of their adoption — for mistakes that were made by their adoptive parents, the adoption agency, or the respective governments.
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“In the 1950s Korea started sending children overseas to be adopted. Back then it was torn apart by war and very poor.”
Another factor: in the first decade of adoptions, beginning in the mid-1950s, over half of the adoptees were mixed-race. Most were the children of U.S. soldiers and Korean mothers.
By the 1980s, the number of mixed-race adoptees had dropped to about one percent.
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