Hello and welcome! My name is Jane Jeong Trenka and I’m an overseas Korean adoptee (Korea Social Service / Lutheran Social Service). I was born in the Yongsan district in Seoul, which is the American military district. My 4/12 year old sister and I, six months old at the time, were sent to the U.S. in September 1972. Our Korean mother searched for us and found us by Christmas that year. So this happened before we were legally adopted or naturalized as American citizens. However, we did not have an “open” adoption.
We were raised in rural Minnesota on the outskirts of a small farming town with a population of about 1,000 by white American parents. My dad was a sheetmetal worker and my mom worked at a dentist’s office as a secretary. She also did childcare and worked in a potato chip factory for awhile. My grandparents were all farmers. We were raised very conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran — basically Christian fundamentalist. I always felt strange about that because I figured that my Korean family must be Buddhist and I did not want them to burn in hell.
One day in 1988 I got home before anybody else and I found a letter in the mailbox from my Korean mother. So I have had contact with my Korean family by phone or letter since 1988 — there was no internet back then. The important point is that our mother found us.
I had a deep desire to come back to Korea, but I didn’t have any money and I couldn’t figure out even how to buy an airplane ticket. Finally in 1995, after I graduated from college, I found a way. I went on the second Motherland Tour of Children’s Home Society with my brand new credit card that I had gotten as a recent college grad. I spent one week on the tour and one week with my mother. After that, from 1995-2004, I would go back and forth from Korea, ring up my credit card, spend a couple of years paying it off, and then return to Korea and repeat the cycle.
My adopted sister and I are biological sisters, also adopted to the same family. We have two other “whole” sisters, one half brother, and two half sisters, and of course a whole extended family in Korea. They are normal people with jobs and family lives, and no, none of them died from poverty or became prostitutes or beggars or any of that nonsense. I would say we have as a good a relationship as possible under the circumstances.
I learned the Korean alphabet in the hospital. We got a phone call one day from our older Korean sister saying that our mother was dying of brain cancer and that we should come quickly. My sister and I went to Korea, and our mom died after we came back to the U.S. It was 2000. I did not have enough money or vacation time at work to go to Korea again for her funeral. So that’s when I started to write The Language of Blood.
The Language of Blood: A Memoir was first released in Fall 2003. It came out in both an English paperback edition and a Korean edition in 2005. The Language of Blood was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection and a Minnesota Book Award winner. The Korean edition was a Fall 2005 selection in literature by the Korean Publication Ethics Commission.
Co-edited with Sun Yung Shin and Julia Chinyere Oparah, Outsiders Within: Writings on Transracial Adoption was published by South End Press in November 2006. It will be published in Korean in 2012.
Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea was released by Graywolf Press in 2009. It will also be published in Korean in 2012.
I’ve lived in Korea since 2004/2005, and I enjoy it a lot. I worked at Yonhap News Agency for over three years, and I am now a master’s degree student in public policy at Seoul National University. But mostly I volunteer for TRACK. Life in Korea has been challenging and rewarding, and I recommend that adoptees try living here for a year. Whatever happens, I think it will change your life in some way. Certainly you will walk away with a much deeper understanding of Korea, if nothing else.
Jane Jeong Trenka is a citizen of the U.S., and her ghost counterpart Jeong Kyong-Ah has been and always will be a citizen of Korea. I live with two distinct legal identities that never meet. I have never been to “my orphanage” or “my agency,” even though I’ve lived in Korea since 2004/5 and even though I’ve been to many friends’ orphanages and agencies. I seem to have a mental block about that. Maybe someday I will go and find out what it’s like.
Best wishes to you from Seoul.
My heart goes out to you, and all people ripped from their original countries/families! I am a birthmother (and I am white)in reunion! You have expressed your view point dramatically, and it echos my thoughts in many ways. I am only saddened to hear colour mentioned so many times, when I think this important human injustice is not limited to a colour issue. It is a family and human rights and dignity issue. I am impressed that you were able to find your original family! I know that is a difficult task and that the odds were against you.
Thanks for your message. Yes, you are right that adoption is not limited to a race issue. People working in the international adoption industry who are wondering how natural mothers in “foreign” countries feel about having their children taken for adoption would do well to ask a mother of the Baby Scoop living in their own backyard — whether in Canada, the U.S., Australia, or the U.K. Mothers are all mothers, no matter where the live, what language they speak, what their culture is.
However, the adoption system and the way it intersects with other world systems in order to exploit women who have few resources has been especially brutal to women of color ever since the days of the American Indian boarding schools and the “Stolen Generation” in Australia. That is because of the power of global institutionalized racism is getting exercised in addition to the patriarchy and moral police that work together to take mothers’ children away from them.
The brutal practice of taking children away from their mothers and calling it “social service” continues especially in “intercountry” adoption (20,000+ per year to the U.S.) which is usually transracial and transcultural in nature (though not always). I think there is some bonus dehumanizing that happens when the mother of the adoptee is a woman of color; that’s one of the reasons why U.S. family immigration law is as it is and why the international adoption system has been constructed as it has been. So that’s why I am talking about race — because the landscape has literally shifted from white mothers in Western countries as suppliers to “foreign” countries and to women of color as the suppliers of children for adopters.
For a detailed discussion about how institutionalized racism and the international adoption industry work together with other systems to rob women of their children, such as the U.S. prison industrial complex and U.S. military interventions, I hope you’ll check out my anthology “Outsiders Within,” co-edited with Sun Yung Shin and Julia Chinyere Oparah.
Anyway I think we all have a lot to learn from each other and we are all basically in the same boat. The Korean mothers (who are also a racial majority in their own country as you are in yours; it only becomes a transracial situation when their children go to white families and adoptees grow up as racial minorities, often even within their own families) are interested in learning from white mothers about how to make the kinds of changes in society that will help them keep their own children. We are having a Baby Scoop in Korea right now, except that Korean children are being sent not just to different families, but overwhelmingly to completely different countries, to adoptive parents who do not share their race, language, culture, or anything else.
I’m thankful to all the white natural mothers in North America, Australia, and the U.K. who are sharing their stories and organizing, as in this whole world system, your work also benefits the 20,000+ women in Korea, China, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Russia, Vietnam, etc. who lose their children to the U.S. international adoption system every year. Most of those children who will never be found by their families again. The barriers are just too great. (In Korea we are batting less than 2% for reunions. Then we have to learn the Korean language to even communicate with our families if we are lucky enough to find them. Grim. Frustrating.)
I am very lucky because my mother found ME. She passed away 6 years ago, but I hope that I will live to see the day when adoption as it is practiced today is viewed as the archaic, primitive, and exploitative practice that it really is.
Best wishes to all the moms, solidarity –
jane
The brutal practice of taking children away from their mothers and calling it “social service” continues especially in “intercountry” adoption (20,000+ per year to the U.S.) which is usually transracial and transcultural in nature (though not always). I think there is some bonus dehumanizing that goes on when the mother of the adoptee is a woman of color; that’s one of the reasons why U.S. family immigration law is as it is and why the international adoption system has been constructed as it has been. So that’s why I am talking about race — because the landscape has literally shifted from white mothers in Western countries as suppliers “foreign” countries and to women of color as the suppliers of children for adopters.
For a detailed discussion about how institutionalized racism and the international adoption industry work together with other systems to rob women of their children, such as the U.S. prison industrial complex and U.S. military interventions, I hope you’ll check out my anthology “Outsiders Within,” co-edited with Sun Yung Shin and Julia Chinyere Oparah.
Anyway I think we all have a lot to learn from each other and we are all basically in the same boat. The Korean mothers (who are also a racial majority in their own country as you are in yours; it only becomes a transracial situation when their children go to white families) are interested in learning from the white mothers in the U.S. about how to make the kinds of changes in society that will help them keep their own children. We are having a Baby Scoop in Korea right now, except that Korean children are being sent not just to different families, but overwhelmingly to different _countries_ to parents who do not share their race, language, culture, or anything else.
I’m thankful to all the white natural mothers in North America, Australia, and the U.K. who are sharing their stories and organizing, as in this whole world system, your work also benefits the 20,000+ women in Korea, China, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Russia, Vietnam, etc. who lose their children to the U.S. international adoption system every year. Most of those children who will never be found again. (In Korea we are batting less than 2% for reunions. Then we have to learn the Korean language to even communicate with our families if we are lucky enough to find them. Grim.)
I am very lucky because my mother found ME. She is dead now, but I hope that I will live to see the day when adoption as it is practiced today is viewed as the archaic, primitive, and exploitative practice that it really is.
Best wishes to all the moms, solidarity –
jane
Hi Jane,
I thought I’d say hi since I often check your blog, which I’m thankful to have access to for the informative content. I also wanted to express my gratitude as a tra for your dedication to and the hard questions you raise on the subject of transnational adoption.
Hi H/H!
Thanks for reading and thanks for your kind words
Hope to see meet you sometime in Seoul!
Jane
thank you for your work! i’m reading your book language of the blood (?… i got that right i hope)… which i love… you are doing very important work…
i’m also tra… but just learning about it at 51… i’m japanese and cuban… raised in colorado… i hope someday to know more about this and myself!
thanks
Hello Jane ~ I am a First Generation Korean adoptee having been adopted in 1958 by a White American couple. I read your book, The Language of Blood, several years ago and was very touched by your story and the beauty in which you told it.
I started actively seeking my birth family ten years ago and as yet have come up empty handed.
Thank you for your book and for your continued support and advocacy of adoptees of the world. I invite you to visit my little blog http://junemoon.wordpress.com/
my best to you, junemoon
Hi Jane. I’m a KAD who was adopted in Minnesota in 1981. I grew up in Minneapolis and now reside in Los Angeles. I read your beautiful articulation “Language of Blood” a few years ago and often reference it in thought to this day. I admire your perserverance in being truthful with yourself and finding your roots (and yes, also traveling further than North Dakota). That takes a lot of courage and nobility. Transcontinental adoption is a complicated issue and is something I’ve put a lot of thought into. Will continue to read your blog.
Hi Jane,
Happy in-between New Years! I hope you are doing well! I just discovered your blog and have been really enjoying reading it and becoming a more informed human and adoptee! I actually met you very briefly at the Mindullae demonstration during the Gathering– it felt so great to be out there on that rainy day. It felt like I was finally being able to take some action with all of the feelings I have been experiencing over the years.
Anyway, I talked to Kim Park Nelson most recently this past summer about reviving the Koroot book project of transcribed adoptee oral histories. I am currently collecting and transcribing for it, although I have not heard from Kim for the past couple of months. I also have not yet told Reverend Kim since I haven’t wanted to go to him with empty hands. Anyway, I was hoping to talk to you a bit about it since you were the originator of the project!
I am so excited to be contributing something!
Take care Jane! I hope to hear from you!
Sincerely,
Nari
Hello Jane! I just wanted to say that I read your book a year or so ago and I really appreciate you sharing your story with the world. I am also KAD born in Ulsan in 1987. I have returned to Korea to lean Korean and I have been living in Seoul for the past 9 months studying at Yonsei University. I’ve always sorta wanted to run into you or meet you somehow while I’ve been here but I really don’t know what I’d say, haha. I only have two more months left, and I hope to make the best of them.
Wow, I missed a lot of typos in my previous post. Sorry about that.
What is this Koroot project? I would like to participate.
hello Jane,
a question for you … you might have an answer ..? as no one so far has been able to give an answer or developped this question…
is there something that I am missing out in all theses blogs or groups or activities ?
why we ( adoptee ) always “alienate” ourselves ? like if we were “some kind of new races or species”
It seems that after reading all theses messages and talk with others adoptee, my understanding is to be some how recognised by the korean society as part of korean society, but I never saw or hear any activities which gather adoptees and non adoptees sharing same things … always things for adoptee or only for adoptee or things which “force ouselves” to feel some how special and make indirectly the Korean society feel sorry for us ….
I just don t get it … ? as in my opinion it slow the process of being recognised as such and the result obtain with such kind of “politic” is really poor and doesn t really help the adoptee communauty or even the Korean society which will keep on having the same thoughs every time they will encounter an adoptee…
Maybe we adoptee are falling in the same kind of “trap” which is really difficult to get out … which is the feeling of “we deserve some kind of compensation or every thing is due to us ” which I totally disagree and reject, but can see that we most of us did at some point beneficiate ( …including my self in the past )
Any ways nice to read from every one and thank s for your work or research … really interesting .
Sebastien, we are working on formulating educational program for TRACK right now that will help to alleviate that specifically. Let’s be in touch. It would be great for you to be involved.
Hello Jane,
I have lot s of respect for what you are doing
when you said ” The brutal practice of taking children away from their mothers and calling it “social service” continues especially in “intercountry” adoption ” … I think we don t have to forgot that it s the parent s themselves who abandon the kids … which of course is a brutal and painfull experience for any kids … but it sounds like we were kidnapped …??? also I think that race issue in USA is taken soo diffently than in Europe…
I am quite surprise that in all the books or movies or documentaries about adoptee we never talk about the responsability of accepting ourselves as adoptee.
Maybe it s time to stop “torturing ourselves ” with this endless question of which “group” I belong and start to make our own “group” as we will never be entirelly on one side or the other side… we will allways be in the middle … why can we juat accept that and make the middle our own side ?? we do have the luxury to take and reject what we think is the best for ourselves.
Last question is don t any child haven t the right to have a familly where he or she can receive love, education, and all the things that children are entitle to have once he or she come in this world … no matter if his parents are pink, green, or else ??? why can we make any documents or movies or write book about adoptee and family who are happy and had no “problem’ ??? again in my opinion is passing the hot potatoes into someone else hand … more easy to do than accepting that we were once abandoned because various reasons from financial, cultural, or else which is not easy and for some probably still really hurt, but “simply” accept the fact and move on to make our own live the way we wanted insted of being stuck in this kind of feeling which stop us to grow … and make us start to grow and “cultivate ” the bitterness of adoption.
Of course I am aware that there are sad and “bad” case but you don t need to be adopted to have bad parents or family …
There are lots of parents who did and doing more than wonderfull and remarquable “parents job”
for those who doesn t know .. I am an adoptee too and I am against international adoption IN KOREA NOWADAYS since it become an industrial developped country.
Hi Jane,
I happened to be here after googling the title of your book _The Language of Blood_. I appreciate what you have done so far and will support your determination to educate and legalize necessary steps to better adoptees. Recently, I became interested in the question regarding international adoptees. Have you evern read Prof. Min’s article on your book that appears in Social Text? Take care. Best, Mikyung
Hello Jane. Thankyou for writing this blog. I can relate to a lot of it, as I’m also a Korean adoptee. (I just started my own blog, too…) I’m yet to read your book, but I really want to! But it’s nice knowing there are others out there who can relate to things I’ve felt through my life… I suppose it’s nice knowing I’m not alone.
So… thanks.^^
Alexis/윤선
Hi, I’m also the product of a transracial adoption. Good to find your site here. About National Adoption Month:
I thought you’d want to know about my feature in Adoptive Families Magazine http://bit.ly/Second_Chances I’d love to know comments from the community. Is it always possible to come out the other side? You can find me on my Mutts blog or Twitter http://www.twitter.com/deborahdash
Thank you Jane for your courageous book The Language of Blood. I am an adoptee (white, domestic US adoption) and a psychologist. I was very moved by the section in which you were given such poor psychological help. I have found the same thing in my own life, and I want to help other suicidal adoptees. (I too was suicidal and depressed in college.) Very few psychologists understand the trauma piece. Adoption itself is a trauma, and to add the trauma of being stalked and frightened of disrupting your parent’s lives, it is enough to make anyone doubt their right to have existence. Your story is very inspiring, and I hope other adoptees will read it. (I’m from Minnesota too, and went to Augsburg in the 70′s) Best Wishes to you and your future.
So many transracial, international adoptions and the only people to realize and even register the (often isolating and painful) significance are the adoptees themselves. When will mainstream society accept that this mass, formal-on-the-surface (underlying messy) displacement of so many Asian children is a cultural phenomenon worthy of historical recognition?
When I was a little girl I cried for blond hair and blue eyes. I avoided turning my profile to others for fear they would see my flat nose bridge. In a private nursery school, the white kids knew I wasn’t white so they treated me and the very few black kids there like garbage. I thought I must be black too. In grade school boys tormented me about causing Pearl Harbor. I didn’t even know what that meant yet. A fellow classmate told me to jump rope with my ‘own kind’. As an adolescent I could feel my face burn whenever someone asked if I was an exchange student when I was with my (adoptive) family. As a teen I became angry that I was adopted into another race where others were quick to point out I didn’t belong. As a young woman, total strangers have asked me (loudly) ‘how do you like it here in the states?’ or insisted my adoptive name wasn’t my REAL name. I’ve even had complete strangers pull the corners of their eyes back and yell ‘chink’ or jeer at me with that sing-songy chingchong chingchong chant.
Too many well meaning, but completely ignorant and selfish people adopt children of another race for all the wrong reasons. Sadly, they are hardly prepared with the unique set of skills necessary to nurture and support a transracial child. Parenting alone can be daunting enough, therefore even more understanding and competence is necessary to adequately assist such a child with emotional, psychological and cultural issues of identity. Think of the difficulties with domestic adoption of children within the same race. Think of how so many of children ‘fall through the cracks’ of the system or just end up in dysfunctional and/or abusive homes or worse. When will people realize that children are worthy of so much more than a ‘quick fix’? I believe displaced Haitian children will make up the next wave of transracial adoptees with no identity. I only hope that enough has been learned from our experiences that history won’t be doomed to repeat itself. I, for one, am not fully convinced that I am necessarily ‘better off’ with no sense of belonging to anyone or anywhere.
Hi, I read your heart renching letter. I really wished that I could help you. I will pray for your family. I am an Adoptee mother. We have 2 girls from S. Korea. One is 16 and the other 13. We did a search through the Adoption agency and found our 13 year olds mother. She at one point wanted to keep in touch, but then decided not to. We got no info. or pics. either. Our 16 yr. old daughter has severe depression and we found nothing on her birth parents. Grandma and mom were sent certified letters from Korean agency . I really need to find our 16 year old daughters birth mom. She tried to commit suicide in June. I just don’t know how to go about it on my own. She sits in her room in the dark. Likes to be alone, no friends since she was 11 yrs. quit school so now I TRY to homeschool her. They say she has aspergers and Bipolar. No meds. have ever worked. We feel its an adoption depression issue. I also know the pain you are going through.
Thank-you
Shelly Blomberg
Dear Shelly, I’m sorry to hear about this. I think you need to go straight to the Korean agency and be very aggressive and and persistent. As it goes for adoptees as well, sometimes they do not take you seriously until you get to Korea. If that doesn’t work then you need to do a media search on TV or access other adoptee service organizations such as GOAL, InKAS, or KCARE. Kids these days who were born in the hospital ought to have some kind of record somewhere in Korea left of who their Korean families are. Also please read Adoption Healing by Joe Soll. Best wishes to you.
I was adopted… but found my biological family when I was 18… my Korean family is intact, and it’s been very interesting to find three “whole” sisters (especially since I have NONE here.)
And, just last year, my Korean sister married an American. So, this relationship has become complexly simple.
Am really enjoying your blog. I grew up in Missouri and I know MN has so many adoptees… at least you had that going for you!
Take care, Michelle
Hello, I am a korean adoptee who would
like to help Korean birth mothers be able to have the option of keeping their own child. I was a single mom for 20 years to my son and 11 years to my daughter. I was able to raise my kids despite all odds….being disowned by my adopted mother, being on the welfare system etc.I feel like I’m successful, I have a great career and own a couple properties all WITHOUT the help of a man or my adoptive parents. Now I would like to educate and empower adoptees and birth mothers and raise money so birth mothers have the option of raising their own children without shame and guilt. I have my twin sister also (she is the secret to my success..emotionally supporting me and always cheering me on) and we are planning on raising money to support the cause! My sister is a writer also (I think you know her) but I just wanted you to know that help is on the way! Sincerely Jeanette
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