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This chapter presents the stories of adoptees as they discovered their racial and/or transracial adoptee identities. After awakening to the realization that they were in the midst of two cultures (being part of and distant from White and Korean culture), several adoptees engaged in activities that they believed would make them more culturally Korean, including attending Korean churches and joining the Korean Student Association on college campuses. Others chose to explore their transracial adoptee identities by joining Korean adoptee groups, conducting birth family searches, and questioning their parents about the adoption. The adoptees talked about their explorations as attempts to fill the holes in their lives and to feel whole and complete, because their awakenings led them to see how they lost control of their racial and transracial adoptee identities.

This chapter delves into the many issues that arise when the Korean adoptees explored and reflected on their multiple identities—namely their White cultural, racial, and transracial adoptee identities. The tensions presented themselves in a number of areas, including within the Korean adoptee community and the institution of transracial adoption, and with parents and spouses. The adoptees reflected on how their relationships with parents and spouses became increasingly strained the more they involved themselves in Korean adoptee issues as well as in topics dealing with race, racism, and White privilege. They also discussed the many tensions within the Korean adoptee community, especially regarding the differing philosophies on the institution of transracial adoption.

This chapter explores the moments when the adoptees' views on race and racism were shattered. In particular, the adoptees discuss how they came to realize the contradictions of their colorblind philosophy when their race collided with their culture. They separated from their Korean identities by living in the White middle class, yet the world continued to see them solely as Koreans/Asians. They did not know what it meant to be Korean because the adoptees were in denial about and/or rejected their racial and transracial adoptee identities. The awakening was a time when the Korean adoptees came to view their lives as in the middle of nowhere: they are not White because they are racially Korean, and they are not Korean because they are culturally White. In many ways, during this segment of their journey they were confused about how to identify themselves, since the world, their communities, and families were sending mixed messages. They were being raised to be colorblind in a race-conscious environment. And the more they attempted to run away from their Korean racial identity, the more they were told that they were not recognized as White.

The previous chapters illustrated how the participants' identity journeys ultimately led some to gain empowered identities. This chapter discusses in further detail the characteristics of these empowered identities and, more important, the social justice agendas these adoptees initiated within the transracial adoptee community. By engaging in critical and sustained explorations of their identities, some adoptees were able to take control of them. They no longer felt that their identities were boxed into certain racially defining categories. They neither felt obligated to explain their unique identities nor compelled to adapt them for the sake of others. Rather than believing that they were victims of racism and oppression, the empowered Korean adoptees saw themselves as active agents of change who could directly impact, for example, the institution of transracial adoption and social constructions of race.

Very public transnational, transracial adoptions by celebrities and the inclusion of transnational, transracial adoption in prime-time television sitcoms make this form of family making increasingly visible. Yet the majority of representations privilege the adoptive parent’s point of view. Drawing on two recent Korean-adoptee-created media, the Netflix documentary Twinsters (2015) and NBC Asian America’s docuseries akaSEOUL (2016), this chapter examines how adoptee-centered media converge with and diverge from traditional renderings of transnational adoption. In doing so, these media provide not only new portrayals of transnational, transracial adoptees but also new conceptions of Asian and Korean American racial, ethnic, and familial identities.

This chapter offers an introduction to the present study on the diverse experiences and critical reflections of Korean adoptees. The study's theoretical framework was established from the author's own experiences as a Korean adoptee, his research agenda on racial identity development theory, and his culturally responsive pedagogy. The chapter also sets out the dance of identities theory, which allows the individual to realize that there is no one path in engaging one's cultural, racial, and transracial adoptee identities; the purpose of the study, namely to portray the identity journeys of Korean adoptees from their perspectives; and the research methods used. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This book provides alternative genealogies of Korean adoption and the children involved: the orphan and the adoptee. It locates Korean adoption within the context of U.S. militarization and empire-building projects during the Cold War era in order to illuminate the role that Korean children played in facilitating neocolonial relations between the United States and Korea. It investigates alternative histories of Korean adoption and the subject formation of the orphan and the adoptee, stating that the same forces that produced Korean adoption also produced the figures of Korean orphan and adoptee.

This chapter illustrates how and why Korean adoptees assimilated to a White cultural identity, especially during the childhood and adolescent years. Assimilation came naturally, as the majority was surrounded by Whiteness on a daily basis. Some were filled with the idea that White is “right” and Asian “wrong.” These adoptees developed a negative sense of themselves as Korean/Asian and expressed a desire to be accepted as White. Overall, the majority of the adoptees were happy in this state of “obliviousness.” While there were times when their White cultural identity was challenged, for the most part they were able to gain acceptance as “one of us” (acceptance as an honorary White) at least within their families and communities.

This chapter articulates that the figure of the Korean adoptee—upon entrance into his or her new American family—documents the excesses, limits, and contradictions of Korean adoption as a project of white normativity. The very presence of the adoptee’s body within the adoptive family disrupts the semblance of the all-American nuclear family. Korean adoptee writer Jane Jeong Trenka’s memoir The Language of Blood exposes the violence and trauma that accompanies white normative kinship formation and reveals the nonnormative dimensions of Korean adoption.

This chapter examines the shift in South Korean policies toward Korean adoptees and in public opinion about transnational adoption in the country since 1954. It begins by tracing the history of transnational adoption from Korea, with particular emphasis on the work of one of the four main adoption agencies in South Korea, Holt Children's Services. It then considers how South Korean representations of transnational adoptees changed from negative to positive over time in official discourses owing to the globalization of Korea and the construction of the Korean diaspora. It shows how globalization has paved the way for Korean babies and children, who were sent to transnational adoption on the basis of their invalid family ties that denied them the status of person, to return to their birth country.

This chapter argues that transracial adoptees, parents and adoption agencies, and social justice activists and educators should become more aware of the need to engage in an identity journey. It then describes what can happen during this identity journey and concludes that the identity journeys can eventually lead to empowered identities. This is not to suggest that there is a need for Korean adoptees to “understand and appreciate their Korean identity” or that they should become disgruntled with the institution of transracial adoption; rather, the dance of identity theory allows for adoptees to empower their journeys, to own it for themselves, and to decide what it means to be or not to be a Korean American adoptee. The main difference between the current racial identity development models and the dance of identity theory rests in the belief that there is no one starting place and thus no one ending place; there is no one direct path to empowerment—rather, empowering one's identity comes through engaged explorations and continuous reflections.

The Minneapolis-based taiko group Mu Daiko challenges notions of Minnesota as uniformly white and ideas about Asian America as a coastal phenomenon. The chapter uses ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and performance analysis to argue that taiko outreach (low-tech engagements, often with an educational aim) creates familiar scenarios that reveal pervasive racial attitudes toward Asian Americans. Building on Diana Taylor’s “scenarios of discovery,” the chapter demonstrates the ways taiko outreach sometimes reinforces the idea that Asians are perpetual foreigners, while at other times they create opportunities for meaningful connections between performers and audiences. A focus on the group’s Korean American adoptee members prompts a challenges easy definitions of Asian America and the Midwest and highlights Minnesota as a key site for Asian American cultural production.

The conclusion centers upon the legacies of US empire. The immigration of Korean adoptees and military brides to the United States, now numbering over 250,000 combined, evinces the paths of migration stemming from the war. South Korea also bears the legacies of US intervention, with a current social welfare system that mirrors the Western practice of institutionalization, and has relied upon transnational adoptions as a solution to an array of problems from rapid industrialization to overpopulation. As well, the permanence of a US military force in South Korea and government-sanctioned prostitution near US military bases marks the indefinite place of the US military in South Korea. The chapter closes with a look at how Korean adoptees, mixed-race individuals, and Korean women are creating their own kinship structures and support systems, as well as taking the South Korean government to task for its role in producing their circumstances. The chapter ends with a call to readers to take the United States to task, as well. It urges readers to grapple with the many things left outside of constructed Cold War family frames, and to understand how care and violence became partners in American empire and dare to unravel that union.