The "Unknown" Culture Club: Korean Adoptees Worldwide, #1

By Korean Adoptees Worldwide

At last, after sixty years of adoption profiteering, these narratives paint a true portrait of adoption--from the back door--by those most affected. This collection, compiled by Korean adoptees, serves as a tribute to transracially adopted people sent all over the world. It has been hailed to be the first book to give Korean adoptees the opportunity to speak freely since the pioneering of intercountry adoption after the Korean War. If you were adopted, you are not alone. These stories validate the experiences of all those who have been ridiculed or outright abused, but have found the will to survive, thrive and share their tale. Adopted people all over the world are reclaiming the right to truth and access to birth documents. This book is a living testament on why previous "orphans" do not endorse the profitable Evangelical Orphan Movement. Those who work in the human rights field, whistleblowers, or adopted, will see the value of this book.After years of forced "positivity" led by the profiteers, it is time to be real. These are real stories from individuals no longer serving the adoption pioneers' fanciful wishes and advertising campaigns. Read this book before you pay adoption agency fees. These courageous narratives could save you tens of thousands of dollars or prevent you from obtaining a child unethically. Be the first to read these narratives and join the ever-expanding Adoption Truth and Transparency Worldwide Network. It's never too late to walk in awareness!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Against Child Trafficking USA
• Release date: Oct 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393700852

Book preview

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The UNKNOWN

CULTURE CLUB

Korean Adoptees,

Then and Now

––––––––

Curated by

THE VANCE TWINS

This book is sponsored by

KoreanAdopteesWorldwide.net

VanceTwins.com

AdoptionHistory.org

Book Designer: JanineVance.com

© 2015 Adoption Truth & Transparency Worldwide Network

Disclaimer: Although the authors have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the authors, editors, and publishers do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, including loss of business, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. All rights reserved.

airplane image DEDICATION

For Joseph Han Holt (1952-1984)

The Korean-born adopted son of Harry and Bertha Holt committed suicide in 1984 at the age of 32 by hanging himself in the Holt’s Creswell home.

And for all families-of-loss, adopted people,

and supporters.

You are not alone. You have a right to speak.

You have a right to be heard. Your past matters.

airplane image GRATITUDE

We would like to extend appreciation to the contributors for granting reprint permission. We give special thanks to this updated edition’s cover artist, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. Cover Graphic Designer, Janine Vance; and Acquisitions Editor, Katherine Kim.

airplane image 70 YEARS OF ADOPTION

FROM SOUTH KOREA: Findings from Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated in 2023 that adoptions from the past were illegal and a serious human rights violation. The research report’s summary can be found at the end of this compilation.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

AN UPDATE ON LIFE SWAPS

1956: ALREADY HAVING TROUBLE FINDING LITTLE ONES

JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES

THE PASTOR'S KID

OUTSIDE, LOOKING IN

DEPORTED

BEHIND THE SMILE

PART TWO: UNKNOWN CULTURE

THE BLIND GIRL

FINDING A FAMILY

GOING BACK

LETTER FROM GRANDMOTHER

REMEMBER ME

SOME SCARS ARE WORN ON THE INSIDE

THIS IS MY BIRTH FATHER

PART THREE: UNKNOWN CLUB

BECOMING REAL

BURIED ROOTS

KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH NO WORDS

DUALITY

REFLECTIONS OF SEOUL

MESSAGE ON COLORBLIND PARENTING

PART FOUR: UNKNOWN FUTURE

I CAN'T KEEP GOING NOT KNOWING

I TRULY BELIEVED THEY WERE MY REAL FAMILY

I DID NOT EXIST IN THEIR DATA BANK

BORN AT THE AIRPORT

THE WAKE-UP CALL

TO MY BELOVED BABY

ABOUT THE VANCE TWINS

Adoption Books for Adults:

PART ONE: PAST UNKNOWN

airplane image INTRODUCTION

When most of us think about adoption, we see adoring images of lonely children commonly referred to as orphans in the glossy pages of adoption magazines and websites, proud words of wisdom given by devoted adoptive parents, and stories of gratitude. For the past 70 years, the public cannot help but assume there is only one adoption narrative, and all others are bad or negative. This simply is not true. After being directly engaged in the worldwide adoptee community and after listening to thousands of stories for more than a decade, we know the narratives are as diverse as there are people. Adopted children are now elders. They should now be considered old enough to receive truthful and transparent answers. They should now be old enough to tell their own stories.

Where in the world have the adoption agencies sent 200,000 Korean children, and how have these children faired for the last sixty years? After placing us in foreign homes, how many adoption facilitators checked on our status, ensuring our well-being? Has intercountry adoption become a win-win for all? Why can these agencies have access to our origins, but we're forbidden to access that same information? When are we considered old enough to know the truth? Why should strangers (even if they are employees) have more details on our ancestry than any of us? And for those of us with birth siblings, why did employees fail to include (and/or refuse to disclose) this data within our adoption files? At least then, we could have been connected to a blood relative—and not be so segregated.

Intercountry adoption pioneers have led the dialogue, developed policy, and built the child welfare system while the public has followed along, fully trusting these folks with the lives of children. Yet, the adopted children—many reaching retirement age now—are still treated as if they need to be protected from their families of origin, their ancestry—given the run-around when they request their adoption file. This veiling and hiding put them at risk for health issues, too. Come on! How much older do they need to be to know the truth about their origins?

Like all other adopted people, Korean adoptees have many concerns that have yet to be acknowledged by the mainstream in the East and West. Within the pages of this collection—compiled for and by Korean adoptees—these adults, adopted from 1955 and onward, share stories about our unknown status, the culture of adoption, the shock of deportation, traveling back to Korea for the first time, finding Korean families (who do exist), and coming to terms with our ever-changing identities.

If you were in some way abused or not seen for who you truly are, judged by your appearance, treated unfairly, or been the underdog, then this anthology will validate your experiences. You are definitely not the only one who has felt alone and isolated. Thousands of adoptees—not just Korean-born adoptees—have had many challenges to overcome, on top of the treatment they received from bio families, adoptive parents, extended family, strangers, and community. Adoption can create multiple additional burdens.

If you were supposed to be seen and not heard and told, You would have died if you hadn't been adopted, you will probably be able to identify with the contributors in this collection. The public is just now realizing that not all birth families are bad and not all adoptive families are good. It seems obvious now, but seventy years ago, when intercountry adoption was being pioneered in the East by evangelist Harry Holt, most adoption facilitators made racist assumptions about foreign nations and their family dynamics, and few questioned these misinterpretations and misunderstandings. We, the adopted ones, have been forced to live with the consequences.

These experiences were destined to be heard—if not compiled by us, then by someone else. We have found this community to be perceptive, insightful, empathetic, and wanting to correct injustices; now, awareness of the problem is spreading all over the world. We remain rooted in nature—because that's truly who we are and how our interests are related. Welcome to the club.

THE VANCE TWINS

Curators of Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists

airplane image AN UPDATE ON LIFE SWAPS

Rethinking 70 Years of

Harry Holt’s 1954 Adoption Program

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Dear reader, the original intent when compiling this book was to share and swap stories that had to do with the diverse experiences of Korean-born adoptees. Now that it’s been almost ten years since the start of the project, I’ve come to realize this collection has empowered and encouraged not only adoptees from South Korea but also adoptees from other countries.

When my sister and I first started Adoption Truth & Transparency Worldwide Information Network (ATTWIN), we had no idea that the intercountry adoptees’ collaborations would expose and reveal a secretive industry built on myths and draconian laws. If you are adopted, may these stories connect and unite you with us. If you are not adopted, may these narratives provide insight and protection from a lucrative industry that targets children and abandons mothers, fathers, indigenous communities, and nations of the second and third world.

Hi, I am Janine Vance (a.k.a. Janine Myung Ja). I'm the author of The Search for Mother Missing: A Peek Inside International Adoption, editor of Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists, and researcher of a number of other books on overseas adoption, including Adoption History: An Adoptee’s Research. I'm now the Executive Director of Against Child Trafficking in the USA.

Did you know the past 70 years of overseas adoption have been founded on a lie? A lie Harry Holt first told in 1954. The children were not orphans. We came from living and breathing families. Some were poverty-stricken —others were not — but the gist is: Harry Holt's company was able to find a way to legally commodify children — after Korea was ravaged and recovering from war.

Since I first started researching in 2004, I’ve learned that countless children have been ripped off the backs of sobbing mothers, and I learned fifty years since its inception that fathers have died searching for their children. But because of the false advertising throughout history no one knows! Everyone assumes the children were orphaned, abandoned, and rescued! The parents were very much alive, and a good amount searched for their taken children. But, now that most of us are in our 30s to now even 70s, it's too late. Too much time has been lost. Harry Holt exported too many Korean children. And too many babies have died cooped up in the Holt compound. Nothing the company can do will repair the lost time.

As early as 1954, Harry Holt first milked the word orphan for all its worth and got rich while doing so. Religious followers at the highest and lowest levels of government and citizenry were defrauded not only in the United States but also in South Korea. I realized today that if my sister and I had lived in a Korean Camptown in 1954, one of Harry’s trainees would have ripped my niece off my sister's back or manipulated my grandson from me and handed our descendants to rich Western foreigners willing to pay the prices.

We now know Harry first claimed ownership of the Amerasian children and then targeted full-blooded Koreans since the demand for children was so fierce—so insatiable and so profitable. Yet he is still hailed as a hero today.

If you've read my history book, you know that the past child migration schemes have been refined for the last 400 years. You can't make the export of children any prettier than it already is! It’s already been refined, reformed, polished, socialized, normalized, and routinized. I mean, have you seen the adoption websites these days? Glorious. Glamorous! As if adoption facilitators are Easter Bunnies selling decorated eggs. The commodification of children has repeatedly been transformed into the most beautiful act in the world! Overseas adoption does not need any more reform; what it needs is to look back and fix the problems they have generated for decades.

I predict that Holt’s followers will continue to lead a new wave of experts and researchers into the right way to adopt protocol under their version of human rights (every family deserves a child) or, as Bertha said, every child deserves a family. Excuse me! Yes, it was the 1950s, but she dismissed the fact that we are born into families—families living, breathing, walking, talking. But no! They're not supposed to exist so that we can be reduced to a diagnosis and sold to Western saviors as abandoned, orphans, special needs, unwanted, waifs, and whatnot.

We have a decision to make: We can follow the money, or we can follow natural laws, otherwise known as inherent God-given rights to family. Only time will tell what the future will bring and what the people decide. If humans ignore history, they will be bound to repeat it.

Included in the next portion of this book, you’ll find a short history of how the child migration scheme began in 1954, and later a few voices from mothers-of-loss, according to one of Holt’s publishings. You’ll find more than twenty-five diverse yet unified adoptee experiences from being permanently torn from Korea like the first edition of the book, and a short summary from Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after its research.

We need to empower ourselves. To do so, we shouldn’t attempt to fix problems based on the same thinking that caused them. Once you read these experiences you’ll agree that adopted people have additional burdens no other populations are forced to contend with.

JANINE VANCE

The Search for Mother Missing:

A Peek Inside International Adoption

airplane image 1956: ALREADY HAVING TROUBLE FINDING LITTLE ONES

Bertha Marian Holt was born in 1905 to Clifford and Eva Holt. She married Harry Holt, a first cousin (Mark Baker, 2006), on December 31, 1927, and eventually, they had six children together. In 1954, Harry and Bertha Holt were convinced that God had sent them on a mission to obtain and raise eight South Korean-born Amerasian (American-Korean or mixed-race) children, in addition to the Holts own. By the Autumn of 1955, hundreds of fellow Americans visited the Holt farm in Oregon each week, begging for a child. The public’s primary interest was to see what the children look like since they, too, were considering adoption. There was so much media attention that the Holts continued to receive at least 50 daily letters and applications from every state but two. They used this national interest to publicize their loyalty to Christianity. Due to being evangelists and born-again Christians, it was the Holts’ desire and priority to give the Korean-born Amerasian children to Christians only.

The Holts introduced an inexpensive and efficient procedure called Adoption by Proxy, considered (what the Holt’s called) a Christian triumph against the United States Government. The wanting Christian couple would give Harry Holt Power of Attorney. He would then represent their desires and obtain the children under Korean law. The children would finally come to the U.S. as sons and daughters belonging to the wanting applicants. Determined to fill the demand of numerous letters from wanting adopters, the Holts set up a post in Seoul, hoping to get their hands on more children. A famous friend and Reverend, Billy Graham, dedicated their Reception Center. By Christmas of 1955, the Holts receive thousands of letters, including 50 inquiries for children each day for a week.

1956 Having Trouble Finding Little Ones.

Harry mentions how a sobbing mother unable to speak was afraid to give him her baby, and some children were kicking and screaming. He attempted to comfort the mothers by preaching to them his Christian beliefs, leading many to believe that they would be rewarded by God for handing him their children. After Holt had taken the children, he sent them to his compound, labeling and showing them as orphans in the West so he could send them overseas via the Orphan Bill, a process that he and his cohorts introduced to Congress. The Orphan Bill gave the impression that the children were parentless. This was a lie. Early on, Harry had set up a non-profit bank account and called it Orphan Foundation Fund so he could take tax-deductible donations from fellow Americans to help fund the Holt’s desires. Gifts to this account contributed to enlarging what would become their empire.

The American Social Agency denounced proxy adoptions furiously and the Holts perceived opposition or criticisms as devilish schemes, accusing the American agency of printing propaganda against overseas adoption. Bertha even complained in her memoir that due to the long governmental process, some Korean mothers took their children back home even though the Holts had already assigned these children to their American customers. She believed legislatures were shameful for making adoptions so difficult. The Holts earnestly prayed for their way, even saying, "The devil and all his angels can’t keep them [wanting adopters