I have been spending some time reading articles on Korean adoptees the past couple of days. I always have a long list of links and posts to read from adoptees or about adoption backed up and when I manage to start reading, I get on a long chain of open tabs and items to read. This was my most recent thread:
When the Seoul, Korea Olympics were held, there was a lot of attention on South Korea and inevitably the issue of adoption was discussed since S. Korea is one of the countries with the highest (if not the highest) number of adoptees in various foreign countries. Back then, the focus was on numbers, stats and reasons.
Over 20 years later, the articles posted began to shift to the viewpoint of adoptees. This is a result of the bulk of adoptees reaching an age where they finally begin to express themselves and the world/society is beginning to take notice.
2010 to 2011 Korean Adoptees article series on Awl by adoptee Sarah Idzik
Part 2 – Being and talking about being adopted
Part 3 – Dating and Asian fetishes
Part 4 – Motherland tours and birth parent searches
What is interesting about this is that while the articles may express the common issues that adoptees struggle with and mostly focusing on Korean adoptees, there is a huge unspoken gap in the unity of voices.
I have been considering how to bring together these voices, but each time I start into a thread it takes me on a long ride of links and readings that run into different threads. It is a ball of yarn connected somehow but so knotted up that it is difficult to see it all as one long piece of yarn….
So, I will try to post here as I pick up threads and hope that somehow the pieces will all come together and I can see how to put the puzzle together…. π
More to come,
-T
