Kickstarter for: Geographies of Kinship – The Korean Adoption Story

Would LOVE to see this project successfully reach completion.  Please help support this very promising endeavor.

About the Project

My name is Deann Borshay Liem and I’m a documentary filmmaker and Korean adoptee. While traveling around the world with my previous films, First Person Plural and In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, I met hundreds of Korean adoptees from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Canada. I’ve had the tremendous privilege of hearing countless stories from adoptees of all ages – sometimes heartbreaking, oftentimes funny and ironic, always inspiring. These stories cover the gamut of life experiences – from stories about searching for identity and belonging; to stories of love, loss, and discovery; to questions about “who am I” and “how did I get here?”

Geographies of Kinship presents a small handful of the amazing stories I’ve heard from around the world. We meet, for example, Estelle Cooke-Sampson, a bi-racial adoptee who revisits the orphanage where she grew up until she was adopted by an African American soldier at the age of seven. She wonders how the nuns felt about having a black child in the 1950s. Emma Anderson is a Swedish adoptee who visits Korea for the first time and unexpectedly reunites with her birth mother, discovering family secrets along the way. Meanwhile, Michael Holloway is in San Francisco when he meets his birth family via webcam on a live television show. He is shocked to discover he has an identical twin. These, and other riveting stories, serve as a springboard for exploring the history of transnational adoptions from Korea, from the 1950s to the present.

We have already started development of the project, collected some archival material and shot some interviews. I was thrilled recently to receive development funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities which is now enabling us to complete archival footage research, write a script, consult with scholars and experts, and edit a fundraising reel. We will be done with these important steps in the Fall.

We are now asking for contributions via Kickstarter so that we can continue our momentum and complete the production (shooting) phase of the film by following our film’s participants on their individual journeys. Your support will help us get all the elements we need for the film so we can actually start editing and make what I know will be a fantastic film.

Continued…

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If we make it difficult enough for you, maybe you’ll just go away

Description:LGA monthly contributor (and mild mannered) Shelise Gieseke talks about her recent, not-so-pleasant and frustrating experience with Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) and Children’s Home Society & Family Services (CHSFS).

Topics Covered: Birth family search, GOA’L, Korea Central Adoption Resource (KCARE), Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS), Children’s Home Society & Family Services (CHSFS), responsibilities of adoption agencies.

Additional Note: A couple of weeks ago we reached out to the Children’s Home Society & Family Services (CHSFS) leadership, offering the agency the opportunity to respond to conversations like this podcast.  Believe it or not, but we here at LGA want to be fair.  The leadership declined the invitation.

It’s so frustrating and discouraging to listen this.  Since my adoptive parents didn’t go through an agency, I’ve never had to deal with them.  Long ago, I use to think it might have made my own search easier if they had.  I guess that just depends, now doesn’t it?  Maybe I’m over-simplifying it, but to me, it’s just common sense that adult adoptees (whether domestic or international) should have access to and control of their own records.  Duh?

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Turning the page to another chapter

It’s been a while, so I guess the first thing I should do is update the identity timeline.  Once again, I find myself laughing and crying  at how many times I’ve had to adjust my personal history.  This year, I took the leap and sent in a sample to FamilyTreeDNA.  I figured at best, I would find a match that might lead me to my birth family.  At the very least, my DNA might tell me whether I was of mixed race or not thus finally, irrefutably revealing which of my adoptive father’s “truths” were true.

But before I continue, let me see if I can break this down:

• Orphan (Vietnamese) – both parents dead

• Possibly not a true orphan (but still Vietnamese) – parents’ deaths never verified

• Biological daughter of adoptive father (Vietnamese-Amerasian) – allegedly adopted to hide that I was his bio daughter

• Daughter of a prostitute (possibly Vietnamese-Amerasian) – supposedly adoptive father was approached by a prostitute who claimed he was the father

• Possible Orphan again (genetic origin unknown) – found in orphanage and purchased for approximately “$1000 dollars in bribes”

Anyone who’s even remotely familiar with my story will know the many times I’ve questioned the accuracy of my personal history and had to change major details.  Each time I pulled out the shovel and uncovered a little more, the story changed.   With each edit, I felt I had to let a part of myself  (and the attached perspective)  die so that the more recent incarnation could take its place.  During the latter half of my identity adventure, the changes happened so quickly, I felt like a T-1000 in its final death throws.   On top of everything, there were more immediate matters to attend.  Exhausted to the core, I felt I had to step away or risk a serious meltdown.

Fast forward a couple of years or so. 

I heard about Operation Reunite and the efforts of Trista Goldberg to assist Vietnamese adoptees in finding their birth families using DNA tests.   I had fought and faltered my way to a half-decent place in my life.  While still hectic, the element of chaos had lessened enough to allow me time to breath and reflect.  Why not dig a little deeper into the mystery?  A couple of cheek scrapings and a trip to the post office didn’t require a lot of effort.  All I had to do was sit back and wait for the results.

I tried to put the test out of my mind, all the while, fighting off those old fantasies of finding my birth family.  Uninvited, they would push themselves into my consciousness while I ate, in the middle of work and into my dreams as I slept.  I was determined that I would not be crushed again and so, tried to keep my expectations extremely low.  But who was I kidding?  I needed this test to be the key to my lost origins.  Time to shift into survival mode.  Using my adoptee superpowers, I turned off the psycho/emotional switch.

After a couple of weeks, I came home from work to find an email stating that my results had been posted:

Matches – 1 remote cousin match

Population finder – 83.95% Lahu; 15.56% Han; a margin of error that roughly equals plus or minus 30-something percent.

Initial response:  WTF?  Does not compute.

I’m still researching and trying to digest what those results could mean.  I sent an email to my remote cousin match in hopes discovering another clue.  I know it’s a long shot, but when it’s all you have, anything can turn into something.  As of yet, I have received no reply.  The test did verify that my adoptive father was not my biological father.  It also told me that I was not Amerasian.

Still the question remains:  Then what am I?

And the search continues…

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NPR Investigative Series: Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families

I’ve been following this series over the last week and applaud NPR’s initiative to go beyond the usual fluff pieces.

 

Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes under questionable circumstances. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is largely failing to place them according to the law. The vast majority of native kids in foster care in South Dakota are in nonnative homes or group homes, according to an NPR analysis of state records.

Years ago, thousands of Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, where the motto of the schools’ founder was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Children lost touch with their culture, traditions and families. Many suffered horrible abuse, leaving entire generations missing from the one place whose future depended on them — their tribes.

In 1978, Congress tried to put a stop to it. They passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which says except in the rarest circumstances, Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes. It also says states must do everything it can to keep native families together.

But 32 states are failing to abide by the act in one way or another, and, an NPR investigation has found, nowhere is that more apparent than in South Dakota.

“Cousins are disappearing; family members are disappearing,” said Peter Lengkeek, a Crow Creek Tribal Council member. “It’s kidnapping. That’s how we see it.”

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Parents take DNA tests to find children lost in war

Vietnamese people whose children were evacuated on flights by the US in April 1975 when the Vietnam War was coming to an end had samples taken for DNA tests on Monday with hopes to find their kids.

continued

For more information, please check out Operation Reunite’s website and please consider donating to this worthy cause.

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Stories of Adult Transnational Adoptees and their American Parents

Charlie (Lisa) posted some info in my comments.  I’m moving it here, plus adding a little from their website.

Thank you for your words!

I am the Vice President of Korean Adoptees of Hawai’i (KAHI).

I am working on a Research Project on transnational adoptees and their American parents. Please visit our website to find out more about this study, access the surveys, or send requests to be interviewed:

http://transnation…al-adoptee-paren…t-study.webs.com/

Or follow us on Facebook:
to http://www.facebook.com/Stories.Adoptee.Parent

Of access our on-line (anonymous) survey for adult transnational adoptee (age 18+) by clicking on:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Stories_Adult_Adoptee.

From their website:

We are a mother-daughter team of researchers. Lisa (daughter) is full Korean by birth; she holds both a BA (American University of Paris) and an MA (University of Washington) in International Studies, with focus on Korean Studies, and currently lives in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. Karen (mother) holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Northwestern University and lives with her second husband (Navajo by birth) in a rural community in the northeast corner of Arizona, on the Navajo Nation.

Our mother-daughter adoptive relationship has been complex. Although we have worked through many of the challenges that have faced us, we’ve done so “by the seat of our pants,” experimenting along the way and often feeling quite lonely and confused in the process. Together, we have become interested in other transnational adoptive family relationships, in part because ours has at times been strained. Like many transnational adoptees, Lisa has needed to explore issues related to her identity as an adoptee, as an Asian, and as a Korean American. Like many white adoptive parents, Karen’s “color-blind” point of view tended to minimize the significance of race and racism in American society; she thought that “love would be enough.” Our differences in perspective have sometimes felt like a major chasm. Until recently, we assumed our experiences were unique, shaped by circumstances particular to us. The research literature suggests, however, that many of the issues that we faced are quite common among families that include children who were adopted transracially and transnationally (e.g., Freundlich and Lieberthal 2000; Pertman 2009). Barb Lee’s poignant film, Adopted (2007), captures the sense of deep loss that both adult transnational adoptees and their adoptive parents feel when this chasm has not been bridged.

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