Mirae Kate-hers Rhee, 48, is a transnational, transcultural artist and adopted Korean who uses her socio-political artwork and performance to investigate concepts like identity and belonging.

Audio available July 20, 2024 at 6 pm CST.

Photo: Michael Hurt

(0:00:15) speaker_0: Welcome to Adopted Podcast, Season 7, Episode 23 starts now. This is a podcast that centers the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees.

(0:00:26) speaker_0: Adopted people are the true experts of the lived experience of adoption. I’m Kaomi Lee, and I was adopted from Korea.

(0:00:34) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our own adoptive families and society that expects a feel-good story.

(0:00:48) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. Please listen to our stories.

(0:00:52) speaker_1: This year is, like, the- the big dragon year, and so I came up with this idea of wanting to be, like, a running dragon and wanting to make some sort of, like, long-term peace that could end in this big spectacular event.

(0:01:06) speaker_1:

(0:01:06) speaker_0: This next conversation is with Mirae Kate Hers Lee. She’s an artist, social activist, feminist, and transracial and transnational adopted Korean.

(0:01:17) speaker_0: She was part of a Korean diaspora art exhibition in Incheon a while back, and it was a pleasure to reach her recently in Berlin to learn more about her.

(0:01:26) speaker_0: Now, here’s Mireille.

(0:01:33) speaker_1: Okay. Uh, my name is Mireille Kate Herz Lee, and I have been living in Berlin, Germany for the past, over 15 years, I wanna say now.

(0:01:43) speaker_1: I am, um, 48 years old, so I’m celebrating the Yong Tae, the big dragon year.

(0:01:48) speaker_1: You know, before the big 60th year cycle, like the Hongop in Korea that’s, like, super important in s- in Korea, in Japan, and- and China, Taiwan.

(0:02:00) speaker_1: Um, so, you know, that’s one of the reasons why I was pushing myself to do, you know, uncomfortable or challenging things this year, ’cause they say it’s always gonna be a challenging year.

(0:02:11) speaker_1: One of those, you know, year whe- where you come full circle around and it’s your- your animal year.

(0:02:18) speaker_1: So, that’s one reason why I was interested in doing this talk with you.

(0:02:22) speaker_0: Are you a dragon?

(0:02:24) speaker_1: I am a dragon.

(0:02:25) speaker_0: Okay. I- That makes sense. Is that a fire sign?

(0:02:29) speaker_1: It’s a fire sign.

(0:02:30) speaker_0: Yeah. It makes sense, you’re a fire…

(0:02:32) speaker_1: (laughs).

(0:02:33) speaker_0: (laughs). Um, but tell me a- a little bit about these, um, year groupings ’cause I don’t know about them.

(0:02:41) speaker_1: Okay. So, it’s based off of, you know, the East Asian- E- East Asian lunar calendar. So, you know, every 12 years our animal year comes around.

(0:02:53) speaker_1: And I also have to say, like, I’m not an expert on this, like, whatsoever, so don’t quote me on any of this if some of it’s wrong.

(0:03:01) speaker_1: And it- it follows a kind of- I mean, people like to call it actually the Chinese zodiac, which you’ve probably heard that way.

(0:03:08) speaker_1: I prefer to call it the- the lunar zodiac because there are so many other Asian countries that- that follow this calendar.

(0:03:16) speaker_1: And yeah, sure, maybe it did, um, originate in China, but we don’t call, like, the sun calendar the Gregorian calendar or whatever.

(0:03:25) speaker_1: We just call it, like, the Western calendar or the sun calendar. So, I think it’s actually fairer.

(0:03:31) speaker_1: Even, like, we could say it sort of decolonizes it from just being Chinese to call it the lunar calendar. So, there are 12 animals.

(0:03:38) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:03:38) speaker_1: It comes from, you probably heard of the story that the Buddha had asked all the different animals on the Earth to come to him, and those 12 animals that managed to get there first became the animals of the lunar calendar.

(0:03:53) speaker_1:

(0:03:54) speaker_0: Oh, this is great. I- I didn’t know any of this stuff, so… (laughs).

(0:03:58) speaker_1: Cool.

(0:03:58) speaker_0: Um, so Mireille, M- Mireille is not… I- is your chosen name, correct?

(0:04:05) speaker_1: Yes. Mireille is my chosen name. I chose it in 2016 and I’d been thinking about it for a really long time.

(0:04:14) speaker_1: Um, as you know, like, I went by Kate Herz for a really long time, even as an artist, so it was a really big decision for me to keep adding names or deleting names from my identity.

(0:04:28) speaker_1: But in 2016 I did a durational performance (laughs) called TransKoreanning where I tried to turn Korean (laughs) in three months.

(0:04:39) speaker_1: And, um, of course it’s, like, uh, a bit of a joke, right? I mean, who can completely change themselves-

(0:04:46) speaker_0: Right. Yeah.

(0:04:46) speaker_1: … in three months? So, it was done, like, tongue in cheek, but I think looking back at it, I was also really earnest.

(0:04:53) speaker_1: You know, there was this part of me who really took it seriously.

(0:04:57) speaker_1: And so, I only spoke Korean for three months while I was living in Korea and I was taking classes, and I was conducting myself like I kind of expected, you know, like a proper South Korean citizen woman would conduct her life.

(0:05:15) speaker_1: Um, and then, you know, tried to just go with the flow and see what would happen, and if I would reach some type of Korean language fluency, which I did not.

(0:05:27) speaker_1: Um, but it was based off of a- a project that I did in 2006, like, 10 years earlier, which was called, um, the German Speaking Project or the Das Deutschsprachliche Projekt, uh, where I tried to turn German basically in three months when I first came to Berlin.

(0:05:45) speaker_1: (laughs).

(0:05:46) speaker_0: Oh, interesting. Can you compare the two experiences?

(0:05:50) speaker_1: Sure. I mean, I had never thought about doing the pro- the project in Korea. Uh, until then I had been in Germany for quite a while.

(0:06:00) speaker_1: So, in some ways I think living…… in Germany brought me closer to my Korean heritage.

(0:06:07) speaker_1: I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, but I first was really interested in, um, making a work that critiqued this idea of cultural assimilation or, you know, integration.

(0:06:20) speaker_1: Uh, what does it mean to be German? Uh, what does it mean to speak German?

(0:06:25) speaker_1: Um, what is it like for me being a person of color who, you know, has a very complicated, you know, cultural inside and con- this confrontation that I had with, uh, German folks who didn’t understand, you know, they just saw me from my outside.

(0:06:42) speaker_1: And what was really interesting is I, I learned German, uh, relatively quickly because back then there, w- j- Berlin, you know, was international, but not at the stage that it is now and nobody tried to speak English to me.

(0:06:59) speaker_1: They just assumed I couldn’t speak English. So because of that, you know, it was like practicing on the street.

(0:07:05) speaker_1: I, I just had a lot of opportunity to, to learn German and to practice it with, uh, natives.

(0:07:11) speaker_1: And so I was completely fluent (laughs) at the end of that project.

(0:07:15) speaker_1: I mean, it was a fluent that was a broken German, but, um, I had no inhibitions about making any mistakes.

(0:07:23) speaker_1: And that was a, that was a real, uh, change from, you know, um, my experiences learning Korean because, like, I’m not German, you know?

(0:07:32) speaker_1: Like, I can embrace my foreigner status here in a way that I think is not the same way that I would, like, you know, the kind of foreigner status that Asian-Americans have, like in the US.

(0:07:47) speaker_1: Um, I don’t embrace that, right? (laughs) So it, there’s a, there’s…

(0:07:51) speaker_1: I don’t have the type of, like, I guess, entitlement to say that I’m German, so tha- especially back in 2006 when I was, you know, just coming basically to visit, to do this project.

(0:08:02) speaker_1: And so I didn’t have any of those, like, inhibitions and nobody had any expectations that I should be really good in German anyway.

(0:08:12) speaker_1: And so it was really easy for me to learn.

(0:08:15) speaker_0: Yeah, there’s a lot less pressure.

(0:08:16) speaker_1: Absolutely. And it was fun. I mean, it was the first time that I learned a, a foreign language where I was really having a lot of fun every day.

(0:08:24) speaker_0: And what, what did you go through learning Korean?

(0:08:28) speaker_1: So, (sighs) y-

(0:08:30) speaker_0: Or becoming, trying to, you know, Korean-ize yourself.

(0:08:33) speaker_1: Yeah, I mean, that has a completely different, I think, um, layer on top of that piece that didn’t obviously exist in the German-speaking project.

(0:08:45) speaker_1: Although I do have to, um, give this small caveat that my adoptive father, um, is something like, I think fifth generation German.

(0:08:53) speaker_1: So I don’t know if that was like a kind of unconscious sort of attempt to kind of connect with him or something in a way that, uh, I couldn’t when he was alive because he wasn’t very affectionate, like he was, you know, very stoic type of father.

(0:09:13) speaker_1: I think that’s very, um, typical of that generation ’cause he’s not a boomer, he’s like a, what is it called? Like the silent generation or something.

(0:09:21) speaker_1: So there is some sort of interesting thing that happens, I think with me trying to investigate my cultural backgrounds, so to speak, like even my adoptive family.

(0:09:35) speaker_1: So with Korean, um, yeah, it was totally, as I said, like it was kind of a joke, um, but I was like kind of serious at the same time, and it was a relearning for me.

(0:09:47) speaker_1: So I did learn Korean intensively, uh, when I was about 20.

(0:09:53) speaker_1: I started when I was about 20, I guess, when I first went back to Korea, but I failed like almost every single class I was in.

(0:10:03) speaker_1: So it’s like a, I, it, for a really long time it was a real source of shame for me that, that-

(0:10:10) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:10:10) speaker_1: … I think I just tried to bury and just not think about (laughs) for the longest time. And, um, and now I’m quite open about it.

(0:10:18) speaker_1: I mean, I, like absolutely failed out of like every single course and, um, I just couldn’t learn it.

(0:10:26) speaker_1: So when I’d started to do the trans-Choreionic project, it was like this sort of return, it was this return to this failed attempt.

(0:10:35) speaker_0: And so what did you learn out of the, especially the Korean project, um, at the end of it? Were you…

(0:10:42) speaker_0: I, I, I, I realize that you probably went into it as i- as a bit of a, a, you know, it’s kind of a performative, um…

(0:10:53) speaker_1: Yes. Yeah.

(0:10:54) speaker_1: You know, it was like a persona that I was trying to embody and I was thinking I’m performing on an everyday basis, so there was already, um, certain parameters I had set up for myself that felt really comforting because like I knew what to do.

(0:11:10) speaker_1: (laughs) Uh, it was not easy though, because, because I was only speaking in Korean, um, I couldn’t really connect to people who didn’t speak Korean.

(0:11:20) speaker_1: (laughs) And then my Korean wasn’t very good, so I couldn’t really s- connect to Korean natives very well either, but I ended up having these like really funny and just so lovely conversations with other adopted students who were at the, the, you know, the language school that I was at.

(0:11:43) speaker_1: So they were very, um, they were very welcoming and patient with me, so I ended up (laughs) talking to them a lot, like other Korean adoptees.

(0:11:52) speaker_0: Mm. Okay. Okay. Well, (sighs) you’re an artist. Um, I’ve seen some of your, your visual work.

(0:12:01) speaker_0: Um, what is kind of your sweet spot in terms of the art you create?

(0:12:07) speaker_1: Well, you probably noticed I’m very multi-disciplinary-And, um, I’ve been able now to categorize my work basically in three different mediums.

(0:12:17) speaker_1: So I work heavily in drawing, installation, and social art practice.

(0:12:22) speaker_1: And the social art practice is a little bit more complicated to describe but it m- mostly includes some type of endurance performance and, um, an engagement with the public.

(0:12:35) speaker_1: And even when it’s a social art practice piece, I often will include, you know, drawings that are related to that or, you know, things that can, like, go in an installation that can be represented in a, in a exhibition space later.

(0:12:51) speaker_1: So they all sort of flow into each other.

(0:12:54) speaker_1: Um, the materials that, you know, they often are later, you know, documented, like in photography and video, and then those also become mediums in the pieces that I make but they are really just documentation.

(0:13:10) speaker_1: And I’m, you know, working on, uh, a new piece that’s trying to rethink that way of it not just being documentation but also, like, the medium itself, and that’s a new challenge for me.

(0:13:21) speaker_1: So that’s exciting.

(0:13:22) speaker_0: Yeah, let’s talk more about that. This is, um, Running to, uh, Find My Family?

(0:13:28) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:13:28) speaker_1: This is the Run Towards My Family project that I’m in the midst of creating now and as you know because most of it’s taking place on social media, it’s a real challenge for us Gen, Gen Xers, or at least myself, to be constantly posting on social media.

(0:13:47) speaker_1:

(0:13:47) speaker_0: Yeah, so, uh, what’s it, uh, what’s it entail?

(0:13:51) speaker_1: So I first had the idea of wanting to make a work that integrated my running practice and I only started doing long distance running because of the pandemic.

(0:14:04) speaker_1: 2020, I was quite, um, I was just na- like, beside myself because everything had gotten cancelled that I was working on or my exhibitions got postponed and there was a real sense of, you know, the unknown and a lot of, you know, as you know, I think a lot of people were really stressed out at that time, especially freelancers.

(0:14:28) speaker_1: And I just started running to sort of deal with that stress and over, I guess a year, it started to become more than just, like, a stress reliever.

(0:14:40) speaker_1: It really became, like, full-fledged hobby.

(0:14:43) speaker_1: And I started getting involved in different running groups in Berlin of other people who were, you know, having, they had been doing it for a long time.

(0:14:53) speaker_1: Like, they were, they were more like professional hobbyists. And before that point, I didn’t really exercise.

(0:15:01) speaker_1: I mean, I’d ride my bike pretty often but there was nothing that I did on a kind of regular basis.

(0:15:09) speaker_1: So it was kind of a big deal for me to have something so consistent in my life and then it happened that I had the opportunity to run a 10K.

(0:15:20) speaker_1: So I ran a 10K, it was, like, actually during COVID so it was on my phone on a, um, on an app with the, I think it was, like, the Munich Marathon but they were doing also, like, shorter races.

(0:15:33) speaker_1: And then once I did that, I felt so empowered and then just started, you know, preparing for lo- for longer races.

(0:15:42) speaker_1: And the interesting thing is is like I don’t actually like running when I start running.

(0:15:47) speaker_1: Like, every time I start running, it’s not actually very pleasant but there’s something that happens, like, maybe after about 10 minutes is, you know, it’s a very meditative sort of journey that you take when you’re doing this run.

(0:16:01) speaker_1: And the major reason why I continued was that I, I just was able to have so much relief from my endometriosis which is this chronic illness that I’ve had since I was, like, 14 when I got my period.

(0:16:16) speaker_1: And it was, it’s been literally the only thing that has really mitigated all these horrible symptoms that I’ve been, like, suffering from and that’s why I continue to do it.

(0:16:28) speaker_1: So that’s one of the reasons why I, you know, wanted to make that, um, as another point in, you know, in my project is, is to really talk about like, you know, lack of medical history that adoptees face.

(0:16:42) speaker_1: Like, it’s a cr- this chronic illness is also a genetic illness and I didn’t get it diagnosed until I was 35 because it’s also, you know, hereditary, um, but if I would’ve gotten di- diagnosed earlier then there would’ve been all sort of, you know, all different sorts of treatment that I would’ve been eligible for.

(0:16:59) speaker_1: Um, but in any case, it’s like the running really helped.

(0:17:03) speaker_1: So then all those things sort of came together and, uh, this year is, as I said, is like the Big Dragon Year and so I came up with this idea of wanting to be like a running dragon and wanting to make some sort of, like, long term piece that could end in this big spectacular event, um, because as you know, you know, I have not met my first family despite searching for the last almost 30 years.

(0:17:30) speaker_1: And I thought maybe this is the last chance I have because I’m 48, you know, my parents are probably elderly or they may have already passed away and I thought this might be the last year and then I thought I want to make something, like, really kind of ostentatious, like spectacular, like get their, their, um, attention and maybe give them the courage to come forward and so this project will end with me running the JTBC Seoul Marathon in November.

(0:18:02) speaker_1:

(0:18:04) speaker_0: Oh, you’re running the Seoul Marathon?

(0:18:07) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:18:07) speaker_0: Wow.

(0:18:07) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:18:09) speaker_0: Wow. How do you… That-Have you done a marathon before?

(0:18:15) speaker_1: So my first marathon was, I guess it was, was it last year?

(0:18:18) speaker_1: My first marathon was last year in LA in March, and then my second marathon was last September in Berlin.

(0:18:27) speaker_0: I always have a fear, like, to…

(0:18:29) speaker_0: I mean, I’m not at all marathon ready (laughs), but you know that, okay, the first, you know, 10 miles might be okay, but then my body…

(0:18:38) speaker_0: You know, I have this fear that, “Oh, my body will give out.” But what happens to you?

(0:18:43) speaker_1: It’s really hard. I mean, you have… That’s what the training is there for.

(0:18:47) speaker_1: And what I love about running is, you know, I’m not very fast, um, but I, I know I can finish.

(0:18:53) speaker_1: It’s a, it’s totally, um, like a mental game that you’re playing with yourself when you’re running that far, and I think that’s why long distance running can bring so much, you know, just interest and challenge to all different types of people.

(0:19:09) speaker_1: So when I was running the LA marathon, like, I was so impressed with just, like, the different age groups and the different abilities, um, all the different, like, colors and ethnicities and races that you see out there.

(0:19:22) speaker_1: It’s like, it’s a sport that’s really for everyone, and I saw people also, um, running the marathon in, um, their, their, um… What is it called?

(0:19:32) speaker_1: I’m thinking in German. Um, they were, they were running in their, not a stroller. I’m s-

(0:19:41) speaker_0: Age group? Their age group?

(0:19:42) speaker_1: No, there, there was people who were, who were definitely physically, um, differently abled, and that they, they were still either, you know, walking it with a cane or they were in their, um, wheelchair.

(0:19:55) speaker_1: I’m sorry, wheelchair.

(0:19:56) speaker_1: (laughs) And I, it was just really so inspiring to see people that you wouldn’t think would be able to run a marathon, but then they fi- but they would finish.

(0:20:08) speaker_1: And it’s funny ’cause in my running group we have, like, this joke because there are several of us that are, you know, we’re just a lot slower than the others, and so we say that we represent the slow and sexy pace.

(0:20:18) speaker_1:

(0:20:19) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:20:20) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:20:22) speaker_0: I mean, it’s h- it’s really how you finish, really, right? (laughs)

(0:20:25) speaker_1: Yeah, I think so. It’s really… Like, I don’t have, like, a p- specific time that I usually, at least in the last two.

(0:20:34) speaker_1: I just wanna finish, and I want, um, to be below the time that they allow you to keep running, so I just try to shoot for that.

(0:20:44) speaker_0: You know, I’m finding that kind of interesting now that you’re describing some of these projects that, you know, you really take, you know…

(0:20:53) speaker_0: It’s sort of like your adoptee identity, and then you make it very physical.

(0:20:58) speaker_1: I guess-

(0:21:00) speaker_0: Right?

(0:21:00) speaker_1: …

(0:21:00) speaker_1: I’m always inspired by the personal, and especially with, like, my personal histories, I think it’s always entangled with other histories, um, like, or geopolitical, like, power dynamics or, you know, what, like, especially with other people who are adopted, I, it’s become more evident to me that, as I, like, kind of sat there as this person who was like, “Okay, I’m, like, this only person that I know who’s, who’s adopted, and this is my unique story,” and then when you meet, like, all these other people, then you start to realize that actually our fate is all tied up with each other.

(0:21:46) speaker_1: Like, we’re all really connected.

(0:21:48) speaker_0: Uh, what do you know about your, your origins?

(0:21:54) speaker_1: Well, I don’t know that much because I think…

(0:21:59) speaker_1: So I was adopted in the 1970s, and I think that’s a very different generation than people who were born after 1980 in terms of the amount of inf- information that they often were given or that they took the effort to actually type up for our adoption papers.

(0:22:21) speaker_1: So, my adoption papers were actually quite scarce, um, the information, I mean, that was given.

(0:22:29) speaker_1: But I do know that I was born in a hospital, um, called, uh, what is it called, the Dong Yeon Ha Clinic, which is no longer in the same location, but it was close to Dongdaemun.

(0:22:43) speaker_1: So usually, when I’m in Korea, I try to visit that space.

(0:22:48) speaker_0: Uh, they, d- d- so even though it’s a different location, do they not have records?

(0:22:55) speaker_1: Well, actually, I just found out that they moved locations.

(0:23:00) speaker_1: When I had gone back, I think, in 2000 maybe ’17 or 2014, I’m not exactly sure when I went back just to look again, um, it was a fitness studio, and then I just thought it had closed.

(0:23:13) speaker_1: Like, I just was really sad about not having taken more time to go back again, ’cause I had already been there, like, several times to try to get more information, um, which I can get to in just a minute.

(0:23:27) speaker_1: But recently, you know, through this project, I’m working with, um, an old friend of mine who’s doing a lot of the translations for my work, and so she was confirming the name of the hospital, and she had done some, you know, Google searching, and she said that there’s a new location now.

(0:23:46) speaker_1: So I may try to go to the new location when I’m back this summer just to have a look.

(0:23:51) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:23:51) speaker_1: Um-

(0:23:51) speaker_0: Right.

(0:23:52) speaker_1: …

(0:23:52) speaker_1: but in the original location, so when I was there, I guess I was 21, I had gone back with m- a social worker from Eastern where, you know, that’s my adoption agency, and, um, I had also gone back with Kim Mi Rok Byul.

(0:24:10) speaker_1: So the… We had gone back twice. And in each case they wouldn’t talk to us…. like, we were treated like trash.

(0:24:18) speaker_1: They, we went in to try to talk to the doctor that birthed me, because his name is actually on my paperwork, and he just-

(0:24:26) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:24:26) speaker_1: … yelled at us and told us to leave. Like, he refused to have a conversation with us in both cases.

(0:24:32) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, we were never supposed to come back.

(0:24:38) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah. And then they don’t know how to deal with us when we, when we return, right?

(0:24:43) speaker_1: I, I often find that when we did return, there was always this, like, um, they were, they tried to sort of look at us as though we were, like, the angry adoptees that had returned, so it pathologized, like, our experience and, especially because I went back so early, right, there was this idea of, like, “You should just be grateful for what you have over there and, and not come here anymore.

(0:25:13) speaker_1: “

(0:25:13) speaker_0: Yeah, I, I’ve gotten that same, I’ve had that same experience where you come back and you’re, you’re searching and people are like, um, you know, somehow we’re, we, we’re not following the rules, or we’re not, you know, by asking questions and wanting to know information that we don’t have, um, that somehow we’re, you know, um, we’re doing something wrong.

(0:25:45) speaker_0:

(0:25:45) speaker_1: Yeah, and I think for a lot of Koreans, we are, because it doesn’t really fit into their mindset about how, you know, members of society should be behaving, right?

(0:25:57) speaker_1: Because it is so patriarchal still, and it is so hierarchical, and then you have somebody who’s behaving in this way that they cannot fathom, right?

(0:26:09) speaker_1: Like, asking questions and, um, actually demanding, you know, the right to know.

(0:26:15) speaker_1: And I think that’s really shocking for many of them, especially for older men.

(0:26:21) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:26:21) speaker_1: Right?

(0:26:22) speaker_0: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

(0:26:23) speaker_0: Um, did you, were you given even a, were you given even, you know, quote unquote the story of being le- uh, you know, I guess you were born, you were born in a clinic, um, any thoughts of whether you were trafficked?

(0:26:42) speaker_0:

(0:26:42) speaker_1: Well, so let me tell you what it said in my paperwork. So, uh, you know, obviously there’s, like, two different files, right? You know this-

(0:26:49) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:26:49) speaker_1: … as well as I do, that there are two different files: the files that our adoptive parents get, and then the files that are held by the adoption agency.

(0:26:57) speaker_1: And so I ended up getting more information from the files in my adoption agency, but it’s all sort of hearsay.

(0:27:07) speaker_1: So, the things that it says in there, it really hurt my feelings, um, but again, you know, I, these days, I keep in mind that so many things were falsified that maybe that was just made up.

(0:27:24) speaker_1: And perhaps it was made up so that I wouldn’t ever look, you know-

(0:27:29) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:27:29) speaker_1: … if I do come back.

(0:27:31) speaker_1: So basically, what it said in my file was that, um, I was born at the hospital, and then the doctor called Eastern and referred me to Eastern.

(0:27:42) speaker_1: I mean, back then it wasn’t called Eastern. Back then it was called, um, uh, Korea Crusade (laughs) or something like that.

(0:27:50) speaker_0: Wow, okay.

(0:27:51) speaker_1: I mean, K- I mean, Eastern j- I don’t know if you know this, but Eastern, like, changed their name, like, four times. It’s, like, so suspicious.

(0:27:56) speaker_0: Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay.

(0:27:57) speaker_1: Yeah. First they were, first they were David Livingston Korea, which is, like, um, a f- an affiliation that they wanted to have with.

(0:28:06) speaker_1: David Livingston Tulsa, which later became Dilan, which you’ve probably heard of Dilan, right?

(0:28:12) speaker_0: Mm-hmm, of course.

(0:28:12) speaker_1: Like, ’cause Dilan, Dilan closed recently and they, they’re, like, demanding $50 from each adopted person (laughs) so that they can have their file.

(0:28:19) speaker_1: Yeah, anyway.

(0:28:20) speaker_0: Oh my God.

(0:28:21) speaker_1: So, it was David Livingston Korea, and then they changed their name to, um, (sighs) I think there was another name in between.

(0:28:30) speaker_1: Korea, I think there’s something in between, but then it was, like, Christian Crusade, or I’m sorry, Korea Crusade, or Christian.

(0:28:39) speaker_1: I think it was Korea Christian Crusade, and then after that it was, um, Eastern Child Welfare Society, and then they changed their name again to what it is now, which is, like, Eastern Social Welfare Society.

(0:28:50) speaker_1: And I’m just, like, boggled by that, like, mind-boggling. Like, why go through that work of changing your name in, like, such a short period of time?

(0:29:00) speaker_1: And I think they were just trying to rebrand themselves.

(0:29:02) speaker_0: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

(0:29:04) speaker_1: ‘Cause it’s all the same people, you know? It’s still the same founder and, um, the founder, I think he passed away, but his, his daughter is running Eastern.

(0:29:13) speaker_1:

(0:29:13) speaker_0: Was he, uh, was the, um, the people running Eastern way back, were they military folks?

(0:29:23) speaker_1: They were Christian missionaries.

(0:29:27) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:29:28) speaker_1: But they were, but they were Korean.

(0:29:30) speaker_0: Okay, ’cause I know, like, with Holt, a lot of the executives and people that were, um, you know, were given these positions, um, back in the day were, were actually from the military.

(0:29:44) speaker_0: They were, they were, you know, put in there f- by, you know, Park Chung Hee-

(0:29:51) speaker_1: Park Chung Hee.

(0:29:51) speaker_0: … and, you know, these, the former, you know, dictators of…

(0:29:54) speaker_1: Mm-hmm. I don’t know about that.

(0:29:56) speaker_1: So I don’t know, actually, enough about the history of, um, the different adoption agencies, so I can’t really answer that, but I do know that they were very motivated by Christianity and, and wanting to, you know, save all the brown babies-

(0:30:11) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:30:12) speaker_1: … and to make them Christian. (laughs)

(0:30:15) speaker_0: Got it.So, there, you’ve always kind of lived with this, um, you know, uneasiness of not having really adequate information.

(0:30:27) speaker_1: Oh, right. So let me get back to that. So my paperwork actually says, so I was born, and then two days later, the social worker came to pick me up.

(0:30:37) speaker_1: And so what is in my, in my paperwork is there’s this written note from her in my file, which I also find really strange because she’s…

(0:30:47) speaker_1: And she’s writing in a way that, um, you realize that she’s just writing down what the doctor told her. So she doesn’t actually know. She didn’t know anything.

(0:30:57) speaker_1:

(0:30:57) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:30:59) speaker_1: And what’s very curious about his story, which I find really suspicious, is he…

(0:31:06) speaker_1: So he claims that my parents were married and they already had three daughters and so I was supposed to be a boy.

(0:31:18) speaker_1: And so this was just, uh, a social economic or an economic decision, was that they couldn’t feed four people.

(0:31:25) speaker_1: I mean, if I was a boy, maybe that would have changed things, right?

(0:31:30) speaker_1: And that he apparently, this is what he said, he met with both my parents but separately to make sure that that’s what they wanted to do, was to relinquish me.

(0:31:43) speaker_1:

(0:31:43) speaker_0: And yet there’s no signature, any relinquishment.

(0:31:49) speaker_1: Exactly.

(0:31:50) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:31:50) speaker_1: And that’s the strange thing. So it almost like he said that to cover his ass, like he’s worried that something might-

(0:31:57) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:31:57) speaker_1: … come back in the, in the future.

(0:32:00) speaker_1: And then, and then Kimura, you know, was very, um, I think quite, um, b- be- because of all the experience that, that they had with all the searches, they were quite, um, on the side that he was hiding something from us.

(0:32:17) speaker_1: (laughs) And so I remember when we had gone, like, we were there outside the office and there was a nurse who was actually blocking our way (laughs) to go into the office.

(0:32:30) speaker_1: I think I was like 20 or 21. Totally inexperienced, like completely terrified.

(0:32:36) speaker_1: And then they just like bust on into his office and it’s like, you know, saying, to get the information, and he starts yelling at us, like really mean.

(0:32:47) speaker_1: You know, he’s like using (Korean) with us as well.

(0:32:51) speaker_1: And, um, he’s like saying like, (Korean), like really ugly, like totally unprofessional and just like really traumatizing.

(0:32:59) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:32:59) speaker_1: And, um, and then Kimura I remember said, and at that point like my Korean was a little bit better so I could kind of understand like a couple of things that they said, but they were like, “How many babies did you sell from here, from your hospital?

(0:33:13) speaker_1: ” You know? And he got so angry and yeah. Then in the end like it became obviously really threatening and then we left.

(0:33:22) speaker_0: Hmm. Wow. That’s heavy.

(0:33:24) speaker_0: Um, that’s interesting though that the doctor was so angry that you had come back and were asking questions and i- it does, it is a bit suspect.

(0:33:39) speaker_1: Yeah, because you would think, like, if you’d actually done everything correctly and that was really what happened, that he would’ve, you know, invited us in for a cup of coffee and maybe said to us like, “I’m really sorry, but this is what happened.

(0:33:53) speaker_1: ” Uh, apparently, like all the papers just, like, I don’t know if they got lost or they were, there was a fire.

(0:33:59) speaker_1: It’s like there’s a fire at every single hospital in Korea at that time.

(0:34:03) speaker_0: I think you have kind of a distinct look. I mean, I don’t know if it’s…

(0:34:08) speaker_0: Uh, h- have you, when you’ve been back in Korea, do you, do you kind of do the thing where you’re scanning and looking at women?

(0:34:15) speaker_1: I do. I do. I think I’ve never seen anybody that looks like me.

(0:34:21) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:34:22) speaker_1: I mean, there are like very kind of typical Korean archetypes that you sometimes see, and I don’t think I have any of those. And I don’t know.

(0:34:32) speaker_1: I mean, I’m not really sure what that means.

(0:34:34) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:34:34) speaker_1: Um, but yeah, I think I feel a little bit groundless in some sense, because even when I had returned, which was actually not in, you know, when I first returned in 1997, I actually did not, I was not ready to do any sort of searching for my birth family at that time.

(0:34:53) speaker_1: Um, I still felt like, oh, I don’t look like anybody here.

(0:34:57) speaker_0: I wonder, um, so you’ve been searching for 30 years?

(0:35:09) speaker_1: I guess since like ’98. I think ’98 was the first time I was on TV.

(0:35:13) speaker_0: Obviously you’re, you’re still searching, but have you, you know, where are you in your thought process on that? Have you…

(0:35:22) speaker_0: You know, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s probably, um, you’ve probably concluded that it may not… You m- there’s a possibility you might never find them.

(0:35:33) speaker_0:

(0:35:33) speaker_1: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s what most of us have to deal with, that search, right? Because what is it, like 15% or 16% are successful who search.

(0:35:45) speaker_1: And so I think most of us actually have to deal with that, that unknown. What happens when we can’t have that connection to our ancestry?

(0:35:54) speaker_1: You know, we, we don’t get access to medical history.

(0:35:58) speaker_1: Um, and I’m, I’m n- and I’m not saying that like suddenly you meet your birth family and then you have all access to everything.

(0:36:06) speaker_1: That’s not what I’m, you know, um, fantasizing about.

(0:36:09) speaker_1: I know that doesn’t always happen either, but there does seem to be a little bit more, you know, rootedness, I think, with just……

(0:36:18) speaker_1: sort of the acknowledgment that this is your origin story and this is where you come from.

(0:36:24) speaker_1: So for me, I think I struggle with, um, the idea of how to make family, like what, what is chosen family for me, and then how do I find, like, my belonging or my place in my chosen family.

(0:36:40) speaker_1: I think that’s part of it, and that’s not without challenges either, for sure.

(0:36:45) speaker_0: And have you found, uh, a cho- a, you know, a rootedness or, like, an alternative rootedness?

(0:36:53) speaker_1: I think so. I mean, I…

(0:36:55) speaker_1: So I’ve been here in Berlin, um, 15 years, a little over 15 years, and, you know, I’m actually married to a Korean German, so somebody who’s half Korean and half German.

(0:37:08) speaker_1: And so I’ve been really sort of integrated into, um, his family, and interestingly enough, like, completely accepted (laughs) by, as a Korean person, by his father, which, you know, when we first started dating, it was a real fear, right?

(0:37:29) speaker_1: Because since I’m adopted, there’s this idea that I don’t know where my root is, so often, especially adopted women, you know, we’re, we get rejected often from, like, Korean families.

(0:37:40) speaker_1: Um, I think it’s different for, you know, and I’m speaking, like, specifically in heterosexual re- relationships.

(0:37:49) speaker_1: I think if it’s a adopted man, he often has, um, an easier time becoming accepted by the family, you know, since it’s this patriarchal, um, you know, legacy anyway in Korea.

(0:38:03) speaker_1: Uh, but in the end, it, it… I think my father-in-law was just so happy that I was a Korean person (laughs) in the end.

(0:38:12) speaker_0: Hmm. Okay, and so you had this fear going into the relationship that you would not be accepted.

(0:38:20) speaker_1: I mean, not in… Initially, because we didn’t even think it was gonna, we didn’t even know we were gonna be serious, right?

(0:38:27) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:38:27) speaker_1: We were just hanging out.

(0:38:28) speaker_1: But then after we got serious, there was, on my side, there was this fear that I wouldn’t be accepted as an adopted person, and then it…

(0:38:35) speaker_1: My partner’s fear was that I wouldn’t be accepted as an American. (laughs)

(0:38:40) speaker_0: Oh. (laughs)

(0:38:41) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:38:42) speaker_0: And what was the reality? What happened?

(0:38:44) speaker_1: It’s so funny. Like, my father-in-law doesn’t even see me as being an American. He just sees me as being a Korean person.

(0:38:50) speaker_0: Hmm. Right. Yeah. And they were happy you were Korean?

(0:38:53) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:38:55) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:38:55) speaker_1: But, you know, that’s also interesting, because there’s all sorts of expectations that come with being perceived as a Korean.

(0:39:06) speaker_0: The-

(0:39:06) speaker_1: And often I, I have to remind him that, you know, there are things about the expectations, like, for the myeondari, like the daughter-in-law, right?

(0:39:17) speaker_1: Like, I don’t know that stuff. And, and maybe I do know that stuff, but I’m not gonna do that ’cause I’m a feminist.

(0:39:26) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:39:26) speaker_1: You know? (laughs)

(0:39:28) speaker_0: Right. Oh. Interesting.

(0:39:30) speaker_1: So there’s all sorts of these, like… It’s not just cultural.

(0:39:33) speaker_1: It’s also a generational difference, because he immigrated to Germany as a minor in the 1960s, so he was in the first wave-

(0:39:41) speaker_0: Hmm.

(0:39:41) speaker_1: … that came as guest workers, and then he met my partner’s, um, mother, who was, you know, working at a, uh, at a book shop, and they met in, like, the…

(0:39:51) speaker_1: It’s a very post-industrial, um, city that had a lot of mining back then in the Ruhrgebiet area.

(0:40:00) speaker_1: So even though he’s, like, pretty progressive in a lot of ways, like, I mean, he married, like, outside of a Korean society.

(0:40:10) speaker_1: Um, he still has a lot of beliefs, or his world view comes from, like, 1960s Kore- South Korea (laughs) when he left.

(0:40:19) speaker_1: And I think that’s really the case for a lot of the Korean diaspora, especially also in the United States.

(0:40:27) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(0:40:28) speaker_1: And, I mean, we, I think people talk about that often, that, like, people who live in Korea are often more progressive than the Koreans who left and are in the diaspora, but they, in that time that they left, they sort of…

(0:40:42) speaker_1: That, that has sort of been frozen for them.

(0:40:44) speaker_0: You know, that’s true… Ha! You know, I think that happens with a lot of different groups.

(0:40:50) speaker_0: Like, I, I remember when I lived in Michigan, that, you know, there was just, um…

(0:40:55) speaker_0: You heard about the Christian Reformed Dutch that came over, and they came over at a specific period of time where Netherlands was becoming too liberal.

(0:41:05) speaker_0:

(0:41:05) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:41:06) speaker_0: And they, uh…

(0:41:07) speaker_0: A lot of them were farmers and from the, the more conservative areas, and they wanted (laughs), uh, conservatism, and, and they are very conservative.

(0:41:18) speaker_0: They’re in the western part of the state.

(0:41:20) speaker_1: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh.

(0:41:21) speaker_0: And, uh, and it’s very interesting because the…

(0:41:25) speaker_0: They’re very differe- I mean, eh, you know, this is all total gene- generalization, but, you know, the time, um, you know, like, they, for example, they celebrate, like, Tulip Time, and they’ve got the sweeping of the streets and the wooden shoes.

(0:41:41) speaker_0: And I remember, ’cause I lived there for a time, I remember there were, there were Dutch tourists there, that, like-

(0:41:47) speaker_1: Wow.

(0:41:47) speaker_0: …

(0:41:47) speaker_0: came for the f- you know, they were, mm, at the festival, and they actually thought it was pretty ridiculous because (laughs) they were like, “This is very old-timey, uh, you know, Dutch custom,” that they don’t really celebrate it now.

(0:42:04) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:42:04) speaker_1: Right.

(0:42:04) speaker_0: And, and then-

(0:42:05) speaker_1: So there’s a, there’s… It must see- seem to them like a very-

(0:42:08) speaker_0: Like trapped in time.

(0:42:09) speaker_1: … sort of weird, weird nostalgia, right? That they’ve, like-

(0:42:12) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:42:13) speaker_1: … modernized since then.

(0:42:14) speaker_0: And us, you know, in the US, we’re like, “Oh, this is Dutch. This is what it means, you know, as culture.”

(0:42:19) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:42:19) speaker_0: And you actually have, like, modern Dutch people that were observing this and thinking it was very, like-… an o- like a time capsule. (laughs)

(0:42:28) speaker_1: Mm. Mm.

(0:42:29) speaker_0: History. So-

(0:42:30) speaker_1: That’s true.

(0:42:31) speaker_0: But, um, uh, I wanted to get back to…

(0:42:34) speaker_0: What- what’s an example of something that your father-in-law may have expected, uh, you know, a traditional s- uh, daughter-in-law, that you refused to do because of your feminism?

(0:42:45) speaker_0:

(0:42:45) speaker_1: Well, I don’t know if I can name anything specific, but there were certainly, there were certainly times when I really was lacking nunchi.

(0:42:53) speaker_1: I don’t know if… Do you know what-

(0:42:55) speaker_0: No.

(0:42:55) speaker_1: … nunchi is?

(0:42:55) speaker_0: Yeah. Do you wanna explain it for our listeners?

(0:42:57) speaker_1: Sure. So nunchi. I mean, I guess we could call it in English like akumen, right? It’s just like awareness of… But I- it means so much more-

(0:43:06) speaker_0: Understand.

(0:43:06) speaker_1: … in Korean, of course.

(0:43:08) speaker_1: It’s like an awareness of, um, how people are feeling, your relationship to the people, your h- like where you stand (laughs) in the hierarchy.

(0:43:16) speaker_1: And it’s a very, I think… At least nunchi is a very specific Korean, I think, um, phenomenon that you can’t just describe in an English word.

(0:43:28) speaker_1: Um, but there are certain things that like I don’t know because I don’t understand the signals that he’s sending me of things, like when he wants something or when he’s upset about something.

(0:43:40) speaker_1: Like sometimes I’m totally, um, bamboozled by it all because I didn’t grow up that way, and so there were some times where there, there were like some hardcore like cultural differences that we were really struggling with.

(0:43:56) speaker_1: And I mean, there’s one thing that he, he really likes it, like he loves it when I speak Korean to him and, um, you know, my Korean is, is very lacking but I think I’m quite good with, um, chonbae mal.

(0:44:15) speaker_1: Like I’m quite good with the different ways that you can even be more polite in like these very hierarchical ways. I can do that but-

(0:44:26) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:44:27) speaker_1: … um, and he loves that.

(0:44:28) speaker_1: But then when we’re having these moments where it’s like really difficult for us to communicate and I’m feeling like maybe he’s imposing certain values on me that, you know, I wouldn’t naturally do by myself then I t- I switch to en- to…

(0:44:42) speaker_1: I mean, I switch to German.

(0:44:44) speaker_1: So German is actually our, our common language and that’s the language that, that I, um, I s- met him in, so it feels more comfortable for me and his German is better than mine because he’s like been here longer than I have, um, but he also feels like there’s a, like a gap, you know, be- between how he can express himself so of course he like prefers to just speak in Korean.

(0:45:11) speaker_1:

(0:45:11) speaker_0: Well, he’s got the upper hand in both languages.

(0:45:15) speaker_1: (laughs) Exactly. Exactly. So… But I do have to say that, um, English and German are much more similar than, you know, Korean and German for example.

(0:45:25) speaker_1: So I did learn German a lot faster probably than he did, but he’s still better than I am.

(0:45:31) speaker_1: I mean, especially with like reading comprehension and, um, and listening.

(0:45:37) speaker_0: Well, is it, um, a much more direct language like English is?

(0:45:40) speaker_1: It, it is but it isn’t. I mean, Germans are direct but only to a certain extent. I think…

(0:45:48) speaker_1: I would say I think Americans are more, more direct in certain ways. There’s a… I think there’s a tendency in German for…

(0:45:57) speaker_1: Americans are just kind of like direct all the time but I feel like Germans are direct only in certain situations and so other times, like if things are sort of sensitive they’ll like talk around the issue.

(0:46:10) speaker_1:

(0:46:11) speaker_0: Mm. Okay. And what about your partner? He’s… Is it he, he’s or-

(0:46:17) speaker_1: He’s, he’s half Korean, yeah, half, half German.

(0:46:21) speaker_1: So, uh, as I mentioned his father’s Korean, his mother’s German and, um, he’s a trained physicist but he’s, you know, now working in a, in a tech firm and we, (laughs) we actually met, um, through, uh, another Korean-German friend who kind of fixed us up without letting us know.

(0:46:43) speaker_1: (laughs) So it’s really… Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(0:46:49) speaker_0: Uh, does he f- similarly f- somet-… I mean, not similarly because he’s not adopted or American-

(0:46:56) speaker_1: Right.

(0:46:56) speaker_0: Does he f- often does he feel like he has expectations of him from his Korean father to be a Korean male or does he somehow get a pass from all that because he’s…

(0:47:10) speaker_0:

(0:47:10) speaker_1: Well, I… You know, I’m not sure-

(0:47:12) speaker_0: Um…

(0:47:12) speaker_1: … how his father feels about the situation now but I can only imagine that he feels a little bit, um, remorseful for not speaking Korean to his kids.

(0:47:25) speaker_1: So when my father-in-law came to Germany and, you know, especially when he was…

(0:47:30) speaker_1: He, he served as a minor for, I don’t know what it was, like the agreement was like seven years or something and then you could go to college after that and he was just so busy trying to integrate into German culture that he stopped speaking Korean to his kids and there’s two of them.

(0:47:47) speaker_1: There’s two brothers.

(0:47:47) speaker_0: Mm.

(0:47:47) speaker_2: Yes.

(0:47:48) speaker_1: And he-

(0:47:49) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:47:49) speaker_1: …

(0:47:49) speaker_1: didn’t really express his emotions about that but I think he regrets that very much because my partner doesn’t speak hardly any Korean except for like he knows like all the food names and things like that (laughs).

(0:48:04) speaker_1:

(0:48:04) speaker_0: Mm.

(0:48:04) speaker_1: And he’s actually a really good cook-

(0:48:05) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:48:05) speaker_1: … so I really benefit from really good Korean food even though, you know, we’re not in Korea. He’s just a very good cook in general. Um, yeah.

(0:48:15) speaker_0: You… I, I have a question about this. This is kind of my own kind of… But i- are you connected with the Korean-German adoptee community?

(0:48:25) speaker_1: Yeah. So, you know, most of them are actually located like in central, like western, or the southern, uh-…

(0:48:31) speaker_1: area of Germany, so I don’t, I haven’t met, like, the majority of them because they’re located somewhere else.

(0:48:39) speaker_1: But I think I know probably a good number, like, 15, 20 that I can come into contact with that live in Berlin.

(0:48:48) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Okay.

(0:48:49) speaker_1: And they’re pretty active.

(0:48:51) speaker_1: I mean, they’re less active than the other European groups, for sure, um, in terms of, like, their political activism and their education, sort of, like, trying to disperse out, like, information about what’s going on in Korea, but it’s starting.

(0:49:08) speaker_1: I mean, I totally have seen this transformation that has happened since I’ve been here, because when I first came, there wer- there weren’t any, I think, organized groups yet.

(0:49:16) speaker_1:

(0:49:18) speaker_0: Okay. Um…

(0:49:19) speaker_1: (sighs) Sure.

(0:49:21) speaker_0: Nidhi, I, uh, I, you know, I know you told me earlier that you are a sexual abuse survivor, like myself.

(0:49:30) speaker_1: Oh, I, I’m, I’m a, I’m an emotional abuse survivor. I’m not a sexual abuse survivor.

(0:49:36) speaker_0: Oh, okay, okay. Okay, I see.

(0:49:38) speaker_1: I mean, I mean… Okay, I, are you talking about, like, from a family member?

(0:49:42) speaker_0: Yes.

(0:49:43) speaker_1: Okay. I mean, I was, I mean, I’ll be hon- I was raped before, but I wouldn’t call that sexual abuse from my family. It was from somebody else that I knew.

(0:49:52) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:49:53) speaker_0: A non-family member?

(0:49:54) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:49:54) speaker_0: Okay. Um, so in keeping with the theme of the, the dragon…

(0:50:02) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:50:02) speaker_0: Um, you wanted to challenge yourself and, um, maybe talk about some hard topics.

(0:50:09) speaker_0: Is there something that you wanted to talk about here about your childhood or the way you were, you know, you were raised, your family?

(0:50:18) speaker_1: Yeah, let’s talk about that. I think I’m ready to talk about it.

(0:50:22) speaker_1: I feel like I’ve been silenced (laughs) for so long about my family issues, and I think I’ve had, like, so much shame around it that, um, it’s been really hard for me to, to be present with other adoptees.

(0:50:38) speaker_1: Um, one thing that maybe I can also say that I think is kind of interesting as I’ve sort of come back into our community, because I was really active when I first went to Korea in the early 2000s and met many of the, you know, people who had returned around that time, but then kind of receded into the background for quite a long time to do some, you know, personal healing.

(0:51:03) speaker_1: And I wonder if it’s, um, possible to deal with, or at least in my experience, like, I think I was really focused on dealing with my Korean identity, but I didn’t give myself the space to think about my adopted identity.

(0:51:25) speaker_1: I don’t even know if that’s possible, but that’s what it really feels like for me-

(0:51:29) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:51:29) speaker_1: … is that I almost split those two in half.

(0:51:33) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:51:33) speaker_1: And that’s why I probably had a lot of problems in some ways. Like, you can’t sort of separate them. It was like, for me-

(0:51:43) speaker_0: That makes sense.

(0:51:43) speaker_1: …

(0:51:44) speaker_1: it had to be totally two separate things, so, so which is why, you know, I have so many Korean American second generation and also Korean German second generation friends, but I don’t have as many adoptive friends.

(0:51:58) speaker_1: You know, m- maybe for some reason I didn’t allow myself to be close to them.

(0:52:03) speaker_1: Like, I can count probably on one hand people who are adopted that I’m friends with.

(0:52:09) speaker_1: But, like, in terms of, like, Korean second generation, I probably have, l- like, at least 20 friends.

(0:52:16) speaker_0: Hmm.

(0:52:17) speaker_1: S- so that’s something that I think I’m thinking a lot about, like, processing that now.

(0:52:22) speaker_1: Um, but in terms of, like, this idea of being silenced, I think I mentioned to you before that, you know, first of all, when I was really little, I had a speech impediment, so nobody could understand me.

(0:52:34) speaker_1: (laughs) Nobody understood what I was trying to say for the longest time, and everyone just assumed that I was speaking Korean.

(0:52:43) speaker_1: I mean, I was, like, six years old, s- like, with my adoptive parents. People just thought I was speaking in Korean. (laughs)

(0:52:50) speaker_0: Oh, wow. (laughs) Where did you grow up?

(0:52:52) speaker_1: I grew up, um, outside of Detroit, like, in a Detroit suburb in Michigan.

(0:52:56) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:52:59) speaker_1: I, for the longest time, I had wished I had grown up in Minn- Min- Minnesota.

(0:53:04) speaker_0: Oh, because of all the adoptees?

(0:53:06) speaker_1: Yes. I did- I think I just never met somebody really until I went to… I never met a Korean person until I went to college.

(0:53:15) speaker_0: But, you know, um, you know, we’re similar age and, uh, you know, timeframe that we grew up, 70s and 80s, and I, I grew up in Minnesota, and I, I didn’t have one adoptee friend.

(0:53:30) speaker_0: I mean, I did when I was very young for a brief time-

(0:53:34) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:53:34) speaker_0: … but it’s not like… I- i- it’s ve- it’s… I don’t know how to explain it, but there are a lot per capita of adoptees here-

(0:53:43) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:53:44) speaker_0: … or that were adopted here.

(0:53:45) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:53:46) speaker_0: But a lot of us are very isolated because we’re, you know, we’re, we land in these very kind of all white kind of rural towns, a lot of us, and-

(0:53:57) speaker_1: That’s true.

(0:53:57) speaker_0: … we’re very insulated from each other. We don’t have resources. We don’t have… We- we grow up-

(0:54:03) speaker_1: Right. Yeah.

(0:54:04) speaker_0: … wanting to repel each other, you know, not wanting to connect with other adoptees, you know, the parts that we might feel ambivalent about ourselves.

(0:54:13) speaker_0:

(0:54:13) speaker_1: I thought there were camps though in-

(0:54:16) speaker_0: There, there-

(0:54:17) speaker_1: … in Minnesota.

(0:54:17) speaker_0: Yeah. There are camps, but I think these, those came online, I feel like, in the 80s, and, you know, um, by that time, you know, ’89…

(0:54:30) speaker_1: We were probably… We had, like, aged out-

(0:54:32) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:54:32) speaker_1: … by that time.

(0:54:32) speaker_0: Right.

(0:54:32) speaker_1: Like, it wasn’t, it wasn’t age appropriate for us-

(0:54:35) speaker_0: ’89-

(0:54:35) speaker_1: … at that point.

(0:54:35) speaker_0: … ’89 I graduated from high school, so, you know…

(0:54:40) speaker_1: Right. Yeah, yeah.

(0:54:40) speaker_0: I think maybe the generation just sort of next, maybe they really benefited from the camps being known.

(0:54:47) speaker_0: But of course, you know, my parents, we lived in small towns and they were not connected to other adoptive parents even.

(0:54:56) speaker_1: Hmm. Okay. I guess it’s just my fantasy. (laughs)

(0:55:01) speaker_0: (laughs) Yeah. 10,000-

(0:55:02) speaker_1: 10,000-

(0:55:03) speaker_0: Sorry.

(0:55:03) speaker_1: … 10,000 adoptees and 10,000 lakes.

(0:55:04) speaker_0: Sorry to burst your bubble here about your fantasy.

(0:55:06) speaker_1: (laughs) Okay.

(0:55:07) speaker_1: Yeah, so I grew up in Detroit and, um, that’s one really, one thing that I noticed that I felt quite different when I first started connecting with, um, other Korean adoptees is, you know, like I never thought I was white.

(0:55:21) speaker_1: And I think it’s because I grew up in Detroit because from the time I can remember, like, probably being five years old, like, I was made fun of so badly by white kids and Black kids.

(0:55:34) speaker_1: And so I knew there’s something different about me from the very beginning. I didn’t sort of fit into either camp.

(0:55:44) speaker_1: And, um, not that there were, like, so many Black kids that went to my school, but there were certainly some.

(0:55:52) speaker_1: And then being in proximity to the city, right, where there was so much palpable, like, racial tension, I think I just sort of internalized that growing up.

(0:56:05) speaker_1: I mean, people knew that I was adopted, um, in my school for sure.

(0:56:10) speaker_1: I think my mother tried to really protect me in that way, but she didn’t really know how to. Does that make sense?

(0:56:18) speaker_1: Like, her way of protecting me was just sort of denying that I was even different.

(0:56:24) speaker_1: Um, and then when I had, like, the speech impediment and I had to go to, like, these special needs, like, um, classes, like, she was really angry.

(0:56:35) speaker_1: Like, I remember that. Like, she didn’t want me to be treated differently and, um, I think she was embarrassed actually.

(0:56:43) speaker_1: (laughs) Um, but I just had a problem, I think, pronouncing words and, uh, that maybe was another cause for, like, maybe a- a little bit of an inferiority complex that, like, came out later.

(0:56:58) speaker_1: And I also was, like, a very talkative child, so it was really funny because I would be talking all the time and then my older sister, who’s, um, we’re not- we’re not biologically related but she’s also, you know, adopted from Korea.

(0:57:11) speaker_1: She’s the- she’s my, um, my second sister. She could understand me just because we’d grown up together.

(0:57:19) speaker_1: And so people literally thought that we were speaking in Korean and that (laughs) my sister was translating for me.

(0:57:27) speaker_1: It was ridi- it was just ridiculous, you know? Even though, like, everybody even knew that we were adopted, like, from the time we were babies.

(0:57:34) speaker_0: Wait, your sister’s white?

(0:57:36) speaker_1: No, no, no. My sister’s also adopted from Korea. My second sister.

(0:57:39) speaker_0: Oh, okay. Okay.

(0:57:41) speaker_1: And it was just, like, funny because everybody knew that we were adopted from the time that we were really little, but they still thought we were speaking in Korean.

(0:57:49) speaker_1:

(0:57:49) speaker_0: You know, it’s interesting because as you, as I’m listening to you now, you have a very precise way of talking. Like, you have very precise English.

(0:57:57) speaker_1: Oh.

(0:57:57) speaker_0: I think.

(0:57:58) speaker_1: Thank you. (laughs)

(0:57:59) speaker_0: You think?

(0:58:01) speaker_1: I mean, I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it’s from learning all those languages.

(0:58:05) speaker_0: I don’t know, but I wondered if that was something that you felt, like, subconsciously.

(0:58:09) speaker_1: Oh, that’s probably true because of all these- these speech classes I had to take-

(0:58:14) speaker_0: Right, and-

(0:58:14) speaker_1: … because people… (laughs)

(0:58:15) speaker_0: … and, like, whether, like, um, that you felt like something, that that was something you had to overcome or that you had to, like-

(0:58:26) speaker_1: Probably.

(0:58:26) speaker_0: … prove yourself to be even better than the, someone without an im- natural impediment.

(0:58:31) speaker_1: That’s probably true, and, you know, and I also had this, and I think I mentioned to you before, like, it’s a very unfortunate first memory, but my first memory o- of my father was- was he was taunting me, um, because I was talking too much.

(0:58:46) speaker_1: And you know, it’s like you’re a little kid and you’re just, like, constantly asking questions and just being, like, all around, like, annoying ’cause you’re just curious and you say anything that comes into your unfiltered mind, right?

(0:58:58) speaker_1: Uh, but he as somebody who was obviously, like, really emotionally stunted, um, didn’t know how to deal with that.

(0:59:06) speaker_1: And so I became sort of a- an emotional sort of punching bag for them, so they used to tease me and tell me to stop talking and, like, so my kind of nickname was Motor Mouth-

(0:59:18) speaker_0: Oh.

(0:59:18) speaker_1: … at that time.

(0:59:19) speaker_1: And everybody called me that, so my mom called me that, my sister called me that, and he was really sort of nas- the most nasty about it.

(0:59:30) speaker_1: And, um, it’s funny because that memory came back actually when I was going through therapy about, maybe, like, about 10 years ago, and then that’s why I realized why I have sometimes a lot of public speaking fear.

(0:59:44) speaker_1: I mean, now it’s so much better than it used to be ’cause I, like, force myself to give all these artist talks, but when I first desired to be, like, talking about my work on more of a, you know, public stage, I really had to work through a lot of trauma from my childhood, and that was one of the first things that I- I think I had to confront.

(1:00:05) speaker_1:

(1:00:05) speaker_0: Of course, of course. What would you say, um, how would you characterize your relationship with your dad?

(1:00:14) speaker_1: Well, he passed away in, um, 2000… When did he pass away? In 2019. Uh, we had already been estranged for quite a while.

(1:00:26) speaker_1: Uh, I’m continuing, I, unfortunately, I’m continuing to be estranged (laughs) from my adoptive family, um, but I have…

(1:00:35) speaker_1: It’s funny, I’m not sure which y- word to use, but I’ve united or, I mean, I can’t say reunited because I had never met her before, but I’ve met and-…

(1:00:49) speaker_1: you know, um, started a relationship with my first sister and it’s quite a complicated family dynamic.

(1:01:00) speaker_1: So my first sister is, um, not Korean and she’s not adopted, but she is half Taiwanese and half White, so half- basically half German American.

(1:01:15) speaker_1: And she’s the- the biological daughter of my adoptive father, who I didn’t grow up with.

(1:01:24) speaker_0: Oh, okay. So when you say first sister, you mean that your- it’s your adoptive father’s child?

(1:01:34) speaker_1: Biological daughter, yes.

(1:01:35) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:01:36) speaker_1: Yes.

(1:01:36) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:01:38) speaker_1: And he was apparently, you know… And you have to, um, understand that I didn’t get any inf- much of information about her from him.

(1:01:47) speaker_1: It’s much of what I’ve learned about what happened is really through her.

(1:01:53) speaker_1: So, he was married to her mother when he was in the military stationed in Taiwan, and, um, basically at two years old he left them and I’m not sure exactly what happened.

(1:02:09) speaker_1: I think, like, back in the day was much…

(1:02:11) speaker_1: It’s not like it is now where you can just call people up on, you know, WhatsApp or something and have conversations with people by Zoom.

(1:02:19) speaker_1: I think it was really difficult.

(1:02:21) speaker_1: I don’t know what c- there was definitely a fight between them and then it was sort of decided that, you know, he would continue and go back to the US and that she would stay in Taiwan with their daughter, who’s my sister.

(1:02:36) speaker_1: And my sister then when she was 17, her mother made it possible for her to move to the US so that she wouldn’t lose her US citizenship.

(1:02:52) speaker_0: And how did you find each other?

(1:02:56) speaker_1: I found her through Facebook. (laughs)

(1:02:58) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:03:00) speaker_1: I know, it’s just like, how did I know that she existed? I mean-

(1:03:02) speaker_0: So your parents- your parents told you about her?

(1:03:06) speaker_1: They had to. I mean, I think they felt really trapped.

(1:03:11) speaker_1: So, what happened was, um, my sister, Mia, she, you know, was living in the US by that point and she knew obviously about my father, and then she decided to try to make contact.

(1:03:28) speaker_1: And she tried to make contact several times, but she always was blocked. She couldn’t, she could never, she would leave messages.

(1:03:37) speaker_1: I don’t know if the messages were just not getting to him, um, but nobody ever called her back.

(1:03:43) speaker_1: She would even- she would call the house, um, it was always like, “He’s not here.

(1:03:50) speaker_1: ” And so she finally decided just to drive out to Michigan to see if she could meet him in person, like as her sort of last chance, and it was when her mother was dying.

(1:04:02) speaker_1: So I think that was another sort of reason for thinking about, you know, family and where she had come from.

(1:04:12) speaker_1: And, um, the- the visit didn’t go over very well. I- I wasn’t at my parents’ house at that time, but basically she was rejected-

(1:04:24) speaker_0: Wow.

(1:04:24) speaker_1: … from my adoptive parents. I think it was e- it was extremely painful, and, um, actually it makes me really sad to even just talk about it.

(1:04:33) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:04:35) speaker_1: Because like as an adopted person, right? Like, that…

(1:04:40) speaker_1: I just think like that they- they couldn’t open their hearts, like even after they had adopted two children, right?

(1:04:48) speaker_1: That they couldn’t open their hearts to, you know, be- be there and to be even like- to be open to meeting someone from the past. Like it just…

(1:05:03) speaker_1: It- it just…

(1:05:05) speaker_0: Mm.

(1:05:06) speaker_1: I don’t know. I mean, it just makes me feel like just so in despair for myself. (laughs)

(1:05:12) speaker_0: Sounds like your- your parents were complicated people.

(1:05:17) speaker_1: Yeah, I mean both of them were married before they married each other.

(1:05:22) speaker_1: Um, again like a lot of family secrets because I didn’t find that out until much later as an adult.

(1:05:30) speaker_1: Um, I think they both had a- really traumatic experiences as well, so they weren’t emotionally able to- to deal with things in a way I think that would have been more harmonious for us all.

(1:05:47) speaker_1: So my sister was rejected and then she, you know, ended up, like for her it was, you know, she’d sort of closed the- the chapter on that part of her life and she ended up, you know, um, going back home to California and she never contacted him again.

(1:06:08) speaker_1: And I- you know, so I found out and there is something really painful that came out of that which my- my mother, um, you know, I think she felt very threatened.

(1:06:27) speaker_1: Um, she couldn’t deal with… I’m sure she gave him an ultimatum. I’m just imagining, right?

(1:06:35) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:06:35) speaker_1: That sh- it was just really difficult for her to-

(1:06:38) speaker_0: Somehow it was very open to have-

(1:06:40) speaker_1: … her heart.

(1:06:43) speaker_0: … your s- to have s- you know, your sister come.

(1:06:45) speaker_1: Right. And I’m also, you know, trying to be compassionate to that but…

(1:06:51) speaker_1: What’s so disappointing about the situation is that, um, my mother told me that her mother was a prostitute (laughs) and it couldn’t…

(1:07:02) speaker_1: That she couldn’t possibly be my father’s daughter because this prostitute had tried to pin this on all of the men that were stationed there.

(1:07:18) speaker_1: And I just, I think, you know, it just continues to perpetuate this very racist and sexist perception of, you know, Asian women that we’re all prostitutes, right?

(1:07:34) speaker_1: I mean, my parents also told me that, you know, if they hadn’t have saved me, that I would’ve been a prostitute like my mother.

(1:07:46) speaker_1: So this tends to be, I think, this kind of narrative that keeps getting told, especially in my experience of listening to other people’s, you know, um, adoption experiences, that was, I don’t know, maybe told to them by the adoption agencies.

(1:08:03) speaker_1: Um, also just like the kind of prevalent mentality of, you know, of Amer- what Americans thought about Asia because of the military occupation and all the racist and sexist films that were produced at that time.

(1:08:21) speaker_1:

(1:08:23) speaker_0: Well, it just boggles my mind too that your, your, your father and your mother, um, you know, harbored these kind of racis- these racist attitudes about Asian women and, you know, being sexualized or, you know, prostitutes.

(1:08:43) speaker_0: And your father w- had been in the military (laughs) and, and then they would adopt daughters from Asia.

(1:08:54) speaker_1: I mean, I think that’s part of it though, right?

(1:08:56) speaker_1: Because, so they were very motivated, you know, not just because of the infertility, right, that, that my, I’m assuming that my mother experienced.

(1:09:06) speaker_1: Um, but it was really driven by this Christian savior mentality. I mean, I was going to church like three times a week when I was a kid.

(1:09:15) speaker_0: Wow, okay. That’s-

(1:09:19) speaker_1: And I had a really hard time with Christianity, with the religion, you know, when I was in my early 20s where I would, I just would even just be triggered by going to a church.

(1:09:30) speaker_1:

(1:09:33) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:09:33) speaker_1: I mean, that’s really common though. I think specifically in our generation, there were a lot of parents who were motivated by their Christian values.

(1:09:47) speaker_1: And as you know, you know, nowadays like people are talking a lot about, um, in the media, uh, the, the price of, of like buying a Korean baby at that time or even now.

(1:09:59) speaker_1: But back then, like I, I cost $400 because my parents were too poor to pay a proper adoption fee.

(1:10:08) speaker_1: But the only thing that mattered was that they were Christian.

(1:10:13) speaker_0: So was it, was it subsidized by the church somehow or?

(1:10:18) speaker_1: No, it was subsidized by the adoption agency and then they, uh, were able to get, uh, social welfare and tax benefits.

(1:10:28) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Okay.

(1:10:32) speaker_1: So that’s often not discussed, I find.

(1:10:35) speaker_1: Um, I think a lot of people who are adopted, certainly they end up in like really affluent and wealthy families, but there’s a large number of us who went to very, very poor families, who had actually no business, you know, raising “orphans” from, you know, orphans I say with, with quotation marks, um, from, from overseas.

(1:10:59) speaker_1:

(1:10:59) speaker_0: Yeah. And I think that, um, you know, maybe the costs of raising children were different, you know, also, um, then.

(1:11:09) speaker_0: But yeah, they’re more, you know, older adoptees, I think it’s more common to hear that people were adopted into, you know, uh, lower to middle class families and not necessarily affluent-

(1:11:26) speaker_1: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

(1:11:26) speaker_0: … families that pushed for adoptees, you know, Millennials and younger, you know, s- um-

(1:11:32) speaker_1: Right.

(1:11:33) speaker_0: …

(1:11:33) speaker_0: I think specifically like Chinese adoptees too, they oftentimes, you know, because of the, when they were being adopted and the fees and everything that, that, you know, mo- more likely the families were affluent.

(1:11:51) speaker_0:

(1:11:51) speaker_1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(1:11:52) speaker_1: Well, that’s something that I think it became much more, um, part of my consciousness when I moved to Germany because almost everyone that I’ve met…

(1:12:05) speaker_1: I mean, nobody I have met came from a poor family.

(1:12:09) speaker_1: And almost everyone I’ve met came from a family of like civil servant or a professor or, you know, a lawyer, like people who are, you know, in the upper, like economic brackets, right?

(1:12:23) speaker_1:

(1:12:23) speaker_0: You mean Korean adoptees in Germany?

(1:12:24) speaker_1: Yes.

(1:12:26) speaker_0: Oh.

(1:12:26) speaker_1: And so that’s what I noticed almost immediately that I found, um, for me, really eye-opening.

(1:12:32) speaker_1: And then talking to people, especially when, you know, we, there was this whole conversation about, you know, adoption costs.

(1:12:40) speaker_1: I’ve had like some, you know, just very personal conversations with people about, um, how much did their parents pay and sometimes they’ve gotten really, um, angry about the costs.

(1:12:53) speaker_1: And then I found out that around the time that I was adopted, um, the cost to……

(1:13:00) speaker_1: to adopt from Korea was about the same, the fee was about the same amount of money that my parents made in one year.

(1:13:11) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:13:16) speaker_1: So I really think that this, like, the missionary and the, you know, the Christian missionary influence, um, it, it really affected the families w- how, you know, like, how those families were chosen or how we were placed or maybe, you know, how we were maybe, the background checks weren’t really done properly.

(1:13:36) speaker_1:

(1:13:38) speaker_0: Have you, have you made peace with the fact that, with your, um, estrangement with your parents?

(1:13:44) speaker_1: I think it’s an ongoing maybe conundrum, right?

(1:13:50) speaker_1: Or I mean, I think that when I decided to break contact with them, um, it was, it was pretty contentious with a lot of people.

(1:14:02) speaker_1: Like, I think a lot of people did not approve of that. People even, you know, that, that I’m close to here.

(1:14:13) speaker_1: But actually, I have been doing so much better since I cut contact from my adoptive family.

(1:14:25) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:14:25) speaker_0: Well, um, Marai, we’re, we’re, um, getting kind of to the hour and a half mark, so (laughs) why don’t we just, um, w- um, how can folks follow you in your latest project?

(1:14:41) speaker_0:

(1:14:41) speaker_1: Oh, so I have the social media account Run Towards My Family on Instagram and TikTok, Threads.

(1:14:51) speaker_1: And you can also follow a secondary account which is just in the Korean language (laughs) which is a, uh, an account that I, that I had to make, um, separately to try to beat the algorithm so that I would come out more on Korean language accounts which is runtowardsmyfamily_korean.

(1:15:12) speaker_1: And then of course, you know, I’m, I’m working on the website, runtowardsmyfamily.

(1:15:18) speaker_1: com, and hopefully there’ll be, you know, a lot more information that’ll be ramped up, uh, towards the marathon that’s coming up.

(1:15:28) speaker_1: So I’ll be in Korea, um, coming up very soon, at the end of the summer, to do some more, uh, PR work.

(1:15:35) speaker_0: Oh, okay. So you’re really gonna make a big sort of campaign in Korea.

(1:15:40) speaker_1: Yeah, and you know, uh, maybe if I could touch on one part of the component that I think really changed the way that I’ve been thinking about search.

(1:15:52) speaker_1: So I wanted to do something as well for other people, and I saw this, um, animation by Eunha Lovell, who, you know, made this, like, draw-ed, drawing animation of like a, she calls it the Foster Ajumma.

(1:16:10) speaker_1: And it’s very cute, and there’s this, like, ajumma who’s, like, has all these Korean adoptees or Korean orphans, right?

(1:16:17) speaker_1: Orphaned to adoptees, like, on her back, and she’s carrying them, and it’s just a loop.

(1:16:22) speaker_1: And I thought about that, and I was like, “I want to be the Foster Ajumma.

(1:16:26) speaker_1: ” (laughs) And so part of the project now is also I’m running for other people who are searching because our, our search stories are completely linked up with each other because of the system of how we were sent away.

(1:16:40) speaker_1: And so I’m making bibs for all the people who submitted their information to me, uh, with their case numbers, and I’m going to bundle that on my back when I do the actual marathon, and so basically, like, symbolically, like, carry them through the Seoul Marathon to the finish line.

(1:17:01) speaker_1:

(1:17:01) speaker_0: You’re gonna wear, like, a b- a pack on your, on your back with…

(1:17:05) speaker_1: Yes. Of all the bibs, of all their case numbers.

(1:17:08) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(1:17:09) speaker_1: And I wanna, you know, part of it is also, like, I need to get publicity for them too, not just for me, because we, again, I’m like, our cases are so linked to each other, and it needs to be bigger than just my story.

(1:17:24) speaker_1:

(1:17:25) speaker_0: Okay, and will you be, are you fundraising for this project?

(1:17:29) speaker_1: So I did the initial fundraiser with the crowdfunding, um, that was successful.

(1:17:36) speaker_0: Oh, congratulations, that’s great.

(1:17:38) speaker_1: And then… Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah, so that we finished, I think, already in April. That was, like, right at the beginning of the project.

(1:17:45) speaker_1: Um, the nice thing is about Crowdfunder is that the, the site is still open, so I can still accept donations. So if people are interested-

(1:17:54) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:17:54) speaker_1: …

(1:17:54) speaker_1: in continuing to support the project, that would be so great because, (laughs) you know, I’ve, I’ve basically spent all of the money already, you know, on content creation and design and, um-

(1:18:08) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:18:08) speaker_1: … you know, just the videos that I’m creating every day.

(1:18:12) speaker_0: And was it, was that a GoFundMe?

(1:18:14) speaker_1: It wasn’t a GoFundMe, it was a, it’s called Crowdfunder.

(1:18:18) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:18:19) speaker_1: It’s a C- I think it’s a Canadian entity, and I think it’s Crowdfunder without an E at the end.com or.org. Wait, what is it? It’s, yeah, it’s crowdfunder.

(1:18:33) speaker_1: com, RunTowardsMyFamily, and it’s still available.

(1:18:36) speaker_1: So, you know, if people are interested, I’m very, of course, like, pleased if people wanna continue to support the project.

(1:18:44) speaker_1: There are some, like, different rewards that people can also get when they, you know, sign on.

(1:18:50) speaker_1: And they can just follow if people are just interested in also just, like, following the project even if they can’t really donate, um, you know….

(1:19:00) speaker_1: they can check, you know, my, my, of course, the Instagram, but I’m also making some updates there as well.

(1:19:06) speaker_1: And, you know, it’s, like, $2, $2 or €2, it’s actually €2 is the minimum amount to donate.

(1:19:11) speaker_1: So I know a lot of people just donated because they wanted to be part of it, and I’m really grateful for that too.

(1:19:17) speaker_0: Yeah. Is there, is there a level for you, you actually carrying somebody o- on, on your back? (laughs) I’m just…

(1:19:26) speaker_1: Oh, maybe I should do that.

(1:19:28) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:19:28) speaker_1: I mean, maybe that’s, like, the next reward-

(1:19:30) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:19:30) speaker_1: … is, um, I can carry somebody on my back this summer, s- like, over the street. I’ll just take them across the street. (laughs)

(1:19:38) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:19:40) speaker_1: And actually those streets in Korea are really, uh, I mean, in Seoul are very wide, so that’s a pretty long walk for me. I’m pretty strong. I can try that.

(1:19:49) speaker_1:

(1:19:49) speaker_0: (laughs) Well, Mireille, this is, uh, amazing.

(1:19:53) speaker_0: Uh, thank you so much for, for speaking today and for coming on the podcast and, um, yeah, I really appreciate you.

(1:20:03) speaker_1: Yeah, thank you so much.

(1:20:03) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:20:04) speaker_1: I feel very honored that, you know, I know you asked me, like, a while ago and I, uh, it took me a really long time to be ready, so thank you so much for being patient.

(1:20:13) speaker_1:

(1:20:13) speaker_0: No, uh-

(1:20:14) speaker_1: But it’s, you know?

(1:20:14) speaker_0: Thank you for being ready. This is amazing. I feel like so many things are aligning for you right now, so…

(1:20:21) speaker_1: Thank you so much, Kayomi. And, um, you know, I’ll keep you updated on the run. I’m, I’m thinking of also doing a live, doing a live on Instagram.

(1:20:30) speaker_0: Oh, wow. That would be great, yeah.

(1:20:31) speaker_1: Yeah, if there’s a possibility I’ll let you in the, uh, you know, I’ll keep you in the know.

(1:20:35) speaker_3: (music)

(1:20:39) speaker_0: Thank you, Mirae. I am looking forward to hearing more about your experience in Running Towards My Family.

(1:20:53) speaker_0: Thank you to all our Patreon supporters who have helped keep this podcast going. Yoonki Jun is our volunteer Korean translator. I’m Kaomi Lee.

(1:21:05) speaker_0: We are nearing the end of the podcast with just two more episodes left.

(1:21:09) speaker_0: I’m always a little surprised when some of you say you’ve only just discovered this pioneering podcast, which started in 2016 at a time where there weren’t many other Korean-adoptive podcasts out there.

(1:21:22) speaker_0: I’m glad you found us, and you can find the entire archive of stories at adaptedpodcast.com. See you next time.

(1:21:30) speaker_3: (music)