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Adoptees’ print and online works provide a critical starting point for other adoptees as they negotiate their multiple, intersecting identities. The autobiographical narrative encourages adoptees’ assertion of what it means to be an adopted person as they create counterstories and engage in narrative repair. This chapter examines how adoptees moved from articulating their collective identities in the earliest published, adult adoptee-edited anthologies, Seeds from a Silent Tree: An Anthology by Korean Adoptees (1997) and Voices From Another Place: A Collection of Works From a Generation Born in Korea and Adopted to Other Countries (1999), to their deployment of social media to connect with one another and members of the broader Korean diaspora through an examination of adoptee hip-hop artist Dan Matthews’ YouTube series asianish (2015-2016).

This chapter examines how South Korean society undertakes symbolic actions to integrate international adoptees as an ambiguous group that stands in between cultures. Focusing on Holt Children's Services' Holt International Summer School (HISS) of 1999–2004, it considers how adoptees' potential positive attributes are maximized and their negative attributes minimized through special education programs and ritualized performances. It also scrutinizes the television program Ach'im madang: kŭ sarami pogosip'ta (Morning talk show: I want to see this person again) to show that transnational adoptees occupy a middle-ground sociological status in Korea. Finally, it explains how transnational adoptees not only become members of the Korean diaspora through initiation and reeducation but also reproduce the diaspora by tacitly approving and taking part in the transnational adoption system.

This chapter gives an overview of the book and explains its framework and key terms. It defines sovereignty as a state’s authority claims over activities within a given political space, and presents the cross-border mobility of Koreans as a challenge to the authority of four governments. It discusses the concept of borderland, specific characteristics of the Tumen borderland, the standardization of legal categories of subjects and aliens as a core project of the modern state, necessity of integrating Northeast Asia into global histories of migration and governance, historiography of Korean diaspora studies in the fields of Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Soviet history, and significance of transnational approaches to the study of this region. Finally, it provides a summary of the ensuing chapters.

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 examines the construction of Korean adoptees as members of the all-encompassing diaspora in relation to everyday life when adoptees encounter South Koreans in the streets. Drawing on a series of impressionistic vignettes, it analyzes the pace of change in transnational adoptees' everyday reactions, opinions, and prejudices relative to political discourses in the national and international spheres. It also considers discourses on all categories of ethnic Koreans that include transnational adoptees, orphans, and emigrants and form a hierarchy based on their degree of Koreanness. Finally, it explores how the positive official discourse about the Korean diaspora is reflected in people's attitudes toward either transnational adoptees or emigrants' children.

After a broad overview, this chapter analyzes two specific instances of North Korea’s authoritarian image management, spanning both the Cold War and post–Cold War eras. First, it focuses on North Korea’s Japan-based efforts to craft an appealing image among Koreans there through Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan). Second, it discusses the loose network of North Korea sympathizer organizations around the world. The chapter draws on primary North Korean media sources, online evidence of friendship group activities, and fieldwork conducted about Chongryon in Japan in 2019. The main argument is that North Korea’s image management efforts have been effective in some respects, but they appear outdated and ill-suited to the contemporary world because the country was slow and hesitant to adapt to new realities. The system was designed for a context of party-to-party relations and Third World solidarity initiatives that eventually faded in relevance.