ADAPTED PODCAST explores the experiences of Korean adoptees, from post-reunion stories, living in Korea as adults, identity and belonging and more. Since the 1950s,  an estimated 200,000 Korean children were sent overseas for adoption to about a dozen countries. This transnational movement of children from Korea set a global precedent in intercountry adoption. But for decades, what was known about adoption was written and spoken about by non-adopted researchers and adoptive parents. These narratives not only failed to center the voices of adult adoptees, they presented intercountry and transracial adoption from the perspectives of parents who who didn’t understand the complicated racial complexities for adopted children of color in transracial families or the trauma of losing one’s first family and having been severed from one’s native country, culture and language. Now, 70 years since intercountry adoption began, adult adoptees have reclaimed the narrative and established themselves as the experts on their own experience. Every story is personal and different. The common thread of transracial and intercountry adoption links us. 

 

KAOMI GOETZ is a Korean adoptee and TV journalist with Twin Cities PBS.  In 2016-7 she was a Fulbright senior scholar on a journalism grant to Seoul, South Korea. The podcast was started during that time. It’s now now in its fourth season and has been downloaded nearly 100,000  times. In late 2020, she successfully ran a Kickstarter crowdfund campaign to translate one season into Korean. Kaomi is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Saint Olaf College. In her free time, she studies Korean and Japanese.

 

From July 2016 – April 2017, this podcast was funded by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), under the Fulbright Program, with support from the Korean-American Educational Commission. It is now funded via Patreon.