Who Am I - Really

Part. 2 – Here we go. Again sorry if I am all over the place. Trigger warning ⚠️ there is sensitive subject discussed on the topic on false adoption records. Proof in supported article links.

   Imagine life is going well. You have a business and it’s flourishing and going super well. You absolutely love what you do. You've been putting in a lot of work with yourself and connecting with yourself on a much deeper level. You’re finally finding your way and you think you’ve found your purpose in life too. You are where you belong. You’re just trying to piece together who you are as a person, the authentic person.

   That was me. I was figuring it out and was on a roll. Learning how to unmask myself has been a challenge especially in certain situations. As with much of life it’s a learning experience. I’ve been working on myself and life and creating an image for myself. Also I have little eyes on me too. (No, my health is unchanged, just have fallen off media as I worked on myself)

   Periodically I’ll put my birth parents names into search engines and see if a familiar face looks back at me. Hoping maybe my dad will get a phone, maybe my mom somehow looks like me and not just another Asian face (yeah to me we all look a like, sorry). I’d be able to know right, if she has her name and looks like me, maybe…. Right? I searched in an adoptee group. It was not what I expected at all.

   Honestly, I’m not sure the last time I even cared to look up my bio parents. It was long enough to not realize that there’s been this huge legal battle against the Korean Government and how Korean adoptions were falsified from the 50’s-80's and honestly it seems it was longer than that.

   At first, I was curious on what this was all about. So, I just did a basic search. I sat there in disbelief this was in fact true. Articles talking about how documents were falsified. How Korea obtained children for adoption, and how not only the agencies but families were giving false information. I listened to story after story. I went back to Facebook and stories were sounding more and more similar. The panic starts to kick in and I NEEDED to know more, but I didn’t really want to know more. How could this be true, how is this happening?! Here's the first article I read about how the documents were falsified and how Korea obtained children and placed them in orphanages and adoption: Falsification In Korean Adoption Paperwork

   I sat with all this information for several days before informing my parents about it. It’s not something you can just call and be like “guess what I found today; my adoption might have been falsified”. That’s awful. I didn’t even know what was going through my head. It was such shock. I didn’t even tell my husband until a week or so after I found out all the details to what was going on. My parents sent me images of my records that were given to them so I could research more about the information and anything that I could find myself. They were going to do the same.

   My husband and I would end up exchanging articles back and forth of how other adoptees had their file reopened or they located birth families and found out that their documents were very different from what was originally given. It hurts knowing mine is possibly in the mix of this. It hurts knowing I may not have the real story of how my life began. I may not know my real birth name, date of birth, essentially all the information that makes me, me. It just reopens that hole, that wound I once healed, the one I felt ok enough to close and walk away from. It’s bleeding, and I don’t quite know in what way to fix it, do I want to. What if I’m given another excuse, what if the story is even worse then what I was given originally? What if I truly am better off not ever knowing my birth father.

   I really don’t know how to process all this information. In one article the name given to me was given to someone else who was smuggled out of South Korea shortly after birth. The document was horribly false. She later found out she was smuggled out on papers from a child who had passed away. The photo attached to her file was also not of her own. This is making it so hard for adoptees and birth families to find each other. Because of these false documents, it’s hard to go back and look up if case information isn’t accurate…. Here’s the link: International Adoption Scandal

   Reading this brought so much pain. Seeing my name printed to hearing her story. It made everything so much more real. I couldn’t function, and trying to process what’s going through my head now is a challenge. When you want to make sure you’re not just making it up, this was real life. You read about how birthdays and hometowns are being changed. How someone’s mom also left shortly after birth and the father took them in. The story sounding so familiar again. You’re reminded of the reality in all this. The effects this has on so many others around the world. The pain this causes so many. This is the most recent article I read: Activist Blasts Falsification of Adoptee Birth Records

   It’s hard to think that none of my birth information is true or maybe just parts are false. There’s SO many similar articles to these, to varying degrees of information that was falsified. Every piece of identifying information that I know could be made up. In 2009 due to surveys done in South Korea it was believed that 94% had phones. Currently it’s believed 100% of people have phones. So was I lied to about my bio father not having a phone, was that just some excuse to have me go away. Well, it worked because I never cared to try again. Maybe this is why my sister (also adopted) is so mad at me. My carelessness in wanting to know more about where I come from. I just wanted to live my life and not worry about my birth parents for once. They had consumed so much of my childhood. I wanted to live my adult life, not thinking about them. I guess I understand now what she was trying to say, and I shrugged it off. (I’m really sorry!).

   I was on this journey of connecting with myself, but now I’m on this journey of Who am I. I don’t know if I’ll every truly know. Pieces of me may be grieved over. Things I may never know or understand. Who I am may be who I create myself to be, but our identity starts with our parents. I had long grieved them, only to find out they may not be the one I should have been grieving. Again I don’t know how I feel, writing allows me to process and express what it is I maybe feeling. It allows me to get it out verse internalizing it.

   I get there are many people who have my birth name, but it’s the fact that birth parents were using fake names for the child and themselves and stories at the time of adoption, or the agency was entering in false information. The Korean Government didn’t have the children in their best interest either. There is an abundance of articles and information. Adoptee stories who found their documents were false. Adoptees who have found out their birthdays were false, the stories were so far from the truth, parents who were younger or older then said on their documents, and the lies go on and on.

   If my documents aren’t true, because of the situation my biological parents were going through I don’t hold anyone at fault, or blame anyone. Unless it was done with ill intent by the agency or for the wrong reasons, like for profit. Right now I don’t know if that’s even the case. I’m just trying to process and figure out what to do and where to go from here. I don’t know. I know I should feel some type of way about everything, and the answers should be so crystal clear, but for me it’s not. I want to know the truth, but at what cost? It’s not just me involved in this either. This hurts so many in my life.

   I know as a parent, I’d want to know. I’d want to know the truth about my child. I’d want to know if the information years ago was in fact true. I am processing this from all angles and how to move forward. I don’t do well with my own personal disappointment or uncertainty. I’m giving myself time to think it through. This is why my brain is all over the place and why I can’t focus on anything overly productive at the moment.

   This is why I've decided to take two weeks of personal time off, why my website shows a blank screen. I'll be back! I just can't focus with my brain being where it is right now.

To my fellow adoptees and families I hope you get answers or peace. You're not a lone, I'm so sorry you're a part of this too.