BAM! I finished language school! I didn’t get the best score in the world, but I did go through the whole program without flunking a level. I think the important thing was just to keep going to class even though I had to sit my exhausted butt on the bus for three hours every day …

And here’s the bottom part of my certificate of acceptance into  Seoul National University, “the best” university in Korea. Tomorrow I will start my master’s degree in public policy, with my first class being economic analysis. I have to hear the lecture in Korean and most of the reading is in English, thank goodness. I am only funded through the KGSP scholarship for a master’s, but now that I realize it is a combined master’s and doctorate, tonight it crossed my mind for the first time that maybe I should snap up a PhD just because, um, Korean people would respect me more. And then I can have my way. So it totally makes sense to do a PhD even though I will be like 45 years old when I graduate.

Autumn is here. A new school year is always a good time to set new goals and shape the rest of the year. One year from now, Fugitive Visions and Outsiders Within will be out in Korean editions; I will have half a master’s degree under my belt, and my Korean is pretty much going to rock. I will have moved into a place where the rent is free, so economically I will be better off, and we’ll see how the adoption law amendment is being implemented. So I think it will be a good year.

Now I have to get my school clothes ready for tomorrow. Have a great semester everybody!

Pictured below at 8 and 9 months.

Zachary,

Your Korean father is looking for you.  He did not know that you were sent for adoption and has been looking for you for years. Holt gave him these pictures and your first name, but not your last name.  I have met your dad recently and he’s a really nice guy who works very hard. If this is you, please send an email to jjtrenka@gmail.com and I can translate a message for your dad and also give you more details.

Book recommendations

Seoul National University Textbooks – Easy to learn by yourself, well-organized and laid-out. CDs and workbooks avail. Of the books that I’ve tried, I rank them like this:

1. Seoul National – They are known for being a good program for writing.

2. Sogang – Good, but as a book person, their font kind of bugs me. I know that is a weird hang-up. Sogang is known for being a good program for speaking. I heard it said that they are the first program to drop 느  from 느냐고 when asking a quoted question using a verb, since people don’t say 느 anyway! At Seoul National, we diligently write 느 and get all tongue-tied when trying to say it (which is why people drop it in the first place.)

3. Yonsei – Their new books are nicer than their old ones. Their old ones were just blocks of texts, whereas their new ones visually have too much going on on the page for me.

4. Ewha – dead last. Wow, I really disliked those books. If you missed something once, it was just gone forever. I frankly have not met anyone who likes the Ewha books. I know they are trying to rewrite them.

Korean Grammar for International Learners – This is a Yonsei reference book. Most of your elementary to intermediate grammar questions can be answered in a flash thanks to a good index in Korean and English explanations.

A Guide to Korean Characters – It has a great index for looking up hanja by the Korean syllable. I use this one to complete my homework.

Handbook of Korean Vocabulary – A nice book for perusing hanja words, but the “index” (which consists of the letters of the alphabet, each with a page number)  is totally useless. I use this one as bedtime reading and have many “A-ha!” moments.

And of course, the Naver dictionary is great! You can look up anything on this but use with caution. Sometimes you can tell when some smart-ass foreigner convinced a Korean to write a strange translation because the foreigner thought it was funny.

http://dic.naver.com/

I’ve heard that Daum is better, but now that I know how to get around Naver, I also can’t be bothered to learn a different website.

What Koreans think about the Korean language that I disagree with as an adult language learner

1. Hanja (Chinese) is hard.

In my opinion, hanja is the only thing that makes sense. Hanja is systematic and you can safely stick “하다” to just about anything and make a verb out of it. What is hard to me is pure Korean verbs. Why do they all seem the SAME and so hard to pronounce!?

2. Ethnic Koreans can learn Korean faster than other people.

If they were raised by Korean people who speak Korean and heard it growing up as the language at home, that seems to be the case.  In the case of adoptees, not so much.

3. You can learn hangeul (the Korean writing system) in a day.

Yeah, but can you remember it the next day? I had a lot of trouble with compound vowels for a really long time. BTW hangeul = the writing system. 한국말 is the Korean spoken language. 한국어 is the Korean language language.

4. Hangeul can make any sound

It can make any sound in Korean, but don’t let them tell you that its sounds exactly as it is written. At Seoul National we get pronunciation worksheets in which the correct pronunciation is written below the actual writing. And there is no such thing as “f” or “th” in hanguel, so there.

5. Get a Korean boy/girlfriend and you’ll learn Korean fast!

I suppose, but do you really want to pimp yourself out like that?

6. Go and drink with Koreans and you’ll learn Korean fast!

To a point. After that, you’re just drunk and stupider than before. However, I gotta say, drinking with Koreans can be very fun whether you are practicing your perfect grammar or not.  Then again I am kind of past the age where my liver can take it anymore.

7. You should learn Korean from a Korean.

Just as English speakers can’t necessarily explain their grammar, neither can Koreans. Also, I think in the beginning it was nice for me to learn Korean from people who could speak English well, usually meaning other adoptees or Korean Americans. That’s because if they were English speakers, they could understand how I was thinking and explain in a way that I could understand. Sometimes Koreans who only speak Korean have absolutely no idea why something might be confusing to a non-native Korean speaker. Like coming and going, for instance. I still make a lot of mistakes with this very simple concept. I want to say, “Can I come over to your house?” whereas I guess in Korean I would “go,” not “come,” to my brother’s house.  There is a real reason for this confusion and it is apparently something about the “speaker” and if you are speaking from your current  position in Korean or where you imagine yourself to be in the future in English, but anyway, now my head is turning inside out … and my brother totally doesn’t get it because he only speaks Korean and he does get a little irritated with me about this point.

8. Some grammar or words are hard

I think they’re all equally hard because they are all equally new. A word that is “hard” to a Korean because it is seldom used is, to me, just another word that I’ve NEVER used.  Like people’s names, for instance. Every one is a new vocabulary word, and every one is hard to remember (unless I already know someone with the same name).  Some grammar has multiple parts that have to be used together, so that can be a brain buster, but it turns out that 이/가 은/는, the first grammar that you learn and that you cannot live without, might be the hardest one of all the more complex the language gets. It’s so hard that although they explain the first eight rules, they say that the other 50 are too hard to remember and that we should just guess.

Tool Kit

An electronic dictionary is worth it.

Because my electronic dictionary broke, I tried using the paper dictionary for about a week. It was very, very bad. There were lots of words that weren’t in the dictionary, never mind hanja or particles. Luckily, I got my dictionary fixed for 60,000 won at the Casio A/S center instead of having to put in 300,000+ for a new won.  Mine is a 6-year-old model with neither bells nor whistles.

Flashcards

A lot of people have been telling me about flashcards that you can put on your computer. But I like my old-fashioned paper flashcards that I can just stick in my purse and use while I wait or ride the bus. Plus that, once I make my flashcards, they are already 50% learned. It is so satisfying to sort my flashcards into stacks of ones I know, ones I don’t know, and ones I need to review. Mmmm… project completion. Love that.

Korean stationery

Korean stationery and pens, mechanical pencils, etc. are dirt cheap and cuter than anything and they can bring you much happiness even if you are a boy. You should definitely splurge and tell all those old splurty Bics where to go.

BTW I thought that Japanese bear 리라쿠마 was really cute and I wanted him to be my new favorite character. So I found a comic book and started reading it … and it turns out he is just a lazy bear with a bad attitude who only does what he wants to. Not good for a study companion! Rilakkuma, I’m so disappointed in you! BAD LAZY STUDENT WORTH NO INSPIRATION! I BAN YOU Rilakkuma!!

MP3 Player

I transfer all my CDs to MP3 and do my listening on that and also record myself talking. My player also has a radio function so that I helpful to gauge how much I understand in real life, as opposed to just on my textbook CD or on TV where you have a lot of visuals to help.

Study Tips

There is no shortcut, at least not one that I’ve found. You have to put the time in, just as you would practicing the piano or memorizing your multiplication tables. I should put some time in now!  So I will continue this at a later time …

Fugitive Visions is a lot about my very real emotional struggle for the first years coming to Korea and how that has intersected with my engagement or lack thereof with the Korean language, and how painful and rotten that was for a long time.  I’m not going to barf my guts out and write that all over again here, so I’m going to just talk about some things  here that are working for me now or that worked well for me in the past. I don’t think that I have by any means gotten it all figured out, and there are adoptees I have met whose Korean is far, far better than mine.  I am also in the lucky position of having a good relationship with my Korean family, and never having had to search for them because they found me first. I honestly cannot imagine how difficult it must be to embark on the Korean language learning process if you have not been reunited. Adoptees do it, and I salute them! I really don’t know how they can, but they do. Anyway, in my particular situation, I’ve figured out some things that work for me, and you can take what’s useful to you and leave the rest.

1. Ignore people who interrupt your learning

As an adoptee living in Korea, various situations have come up time and time again with

–white people who speak better Korean than me (nothing like that to make an adoptee clam up in a hurry);

–people who use adoption as a metaphor for their own experience but who have no concrete understanding of adoption as a reality (I had that one today:  ”It’s like I was adopted.” Yeah right. Ha.);

–Korean people insisting on my foreignness or Koreanness and not just letting me be an internationally adopted Korean (“When are you going back to CHINA?” “You have Korean blood — you should be able to learn Korean fast!”);

–people telling me what I am or what my experience has been and then asking for confirmation later, (“Well you’re American … aren’t you?”) etc.

Hurtful conversations have hurt my language learning in the past because my learning would be interrupted by my anger at people’s ignorance and wrong assumptions, my jealousy at those white guys who speak great Korean because they are married to Korean women while people look at adoptees like “What the hell is wrong with you?” or just my overwhelming sadness about not being able to communicate with my own family in a meaningful way — to talk about our experiences, our feelings, our disappointments and our dreams together.  When the use of the phone is a anxiety-provoking event (“Sis!! SLOW DOWN!” “Big brother, your accent is crazy!! I can’t understand a word you’re saying!”), then it means you generally don’t use the phone and even though your family is so close, you are still so far …. How screwed up is that?

Well, I still have the phone frustration (though it’s getting better), but one of the keys that I’ve figured out is just to IGNORE OTHER PEOPLE.  Really. Could it be that simple? It is hard to ignore people when they get under your skin, but if you let them get to you, then you waste a lot of time. Wow, I have wasted a lot of time! There are always going to be annoying jerks in your class or your program, so since you can’t get rid of them and you definitely don’t want to be friends with them, you might as well just ignore them.

1a. Exception: You cannot ignore your Korean language teacher.

Korean language teachers can be just as ignorant about what an adoptee is as anyone else, and can proceed to say whack things about adoptees or adoption treat you in a way you don’t like in class without knowing that they just made you space out of class for the next 45 minutes while you try to hold back tears or anger.  I have unsuccessfully tried to challenge teachers when this has happened to me before, but last semester I was so proud of myself and felt very empowered because I talked with a teacher THREE TIMES and then she finally got it. I guess when you are presented with any new, awkward situation, you have to have some practice at it.

Also, those textbooks are all written for foreigner-foreigners, not adoptees. Especially adoptees who are reunited need to learn certain things like family words and casual language first, not after all the formal language and chatting about the weather as the books teach. So this is a difficult point, and maybe if I master the language one day, I’ll write my own little slim book for adoptees with all that family stuff that we need to know right off the bat. I’m in Level 4 now and there is STILL a lot of language that I’ve just picked up by myself that has never appeared in the book because I am interacting within a Korean family.

2. Have an emotionless stock phrase that you can say in Korean to explain your existence to get people off your back if you want, or to open up conversation further.

I struggled for a long time with my limited Korean trying to figure out how to give Koreans I encountered in everyday life the information they want (to get them off my back) in a way that was also dignified to me.  Now I can spit out my phrase quickly and like a robot and decide, depending on how they respond, whether I want to continue the conversation. I often do because I want to ask them questions about what they think about adoption, etc., and because they usually seem like good people who are just curious, and whose cultural idea of privacy … well, they don’t really have one. Usually I encounter people whose services I need in daily life: the beauty shop lady, the taxi driver, the shoeshine guy, etc. They are all free language tutors. And each time I decide that I want to engage, I have a chance to share ideas with another person.

3. Play mind games with yourself if you need to.

I don’t need to do this anymore, but I used to pretend I was white to get through the learning, since it seems so easy for white people to study Korean as a hobby. (A hobby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IMAGINE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!) I want it to be easy for me too. So you know, for an adoptee raised in rural Minnesota, pretending you’re white is not really a big stretch.

4. No drama, no drama, no drama

This one is hard, but I can really say that since I have taken some steps to decrease the drama in my life, the learning and productivity have increased significantly. There is still the occasional flare-up, but I think I’m getting better at handling things so I have the emotional freedom and space to learn.

5. Talk to supportive adoptees who are studying well

I met a cute little someone who had taken Korean classes for years growing up, and she tested in at Level 4 when she went to the Inje program six years ago. I was so impressed with her that I decided to make my goal Level 4, and happily, I’ve achieved that goal finally this semester! I remember what she said when I complimented her on her Korean, while I was feeling so inadequate. She said:

“Everyone’s Korean sucks. Some people’s Korean just sucks less.”

Another adoptee I met, who has been in Korea for years, speaks pretty great Korean — enough to translate for other adoptees. I asked him what his secret was, and he said:

“Don’t compare yourself to other people in your class. Even if you have to repeat a level, as long as you’ve improved, you’re doing OK.”

Another adoptee who does not live in Korea at all, but who confidently put on her attitude and went to Yongsan with no Korean language skills at all and helped an adoptee who actually lives here purchase a computer, put it like this:

“People who make their living by selling things want to sell things to you. So they make it easy for you.”

Another adoptee who studied her face off for years and who would not come out to play with me often, but in exchange  is now very comfortable speaking Korean, told me:

“You just have to decide that you can do it.”

Off the subject of language learning, another adoptee told me a number of years ago to “Just decide to live in Korea, and your life will be a lot easier.” Unbelievably to me at the time, she was completely right. Once you decide to apply yourself to building a life in Korea and stop wasting your time on indecision that actually doesn’t get you anywhere, you can get a lot of stuff accomplished, including learning Korean. Of course, it is a big decision that you have to take carefully, but I also see that a lot of adoptees have been in Korea for years without actually deciding to live here — it’s just that they haven’t decided to leave. It’s a kind of limbo. Well, I’m not going to judge anyone because everyone’s gotta do what they need to do to stay alive, but for me in my personal experience, it was important to make a conscious and deliberate decision to live here. The minute I did that, life started to open up with opportunities. Specifically, I got a great job and at the end of 3.5 years I had saved about $100,000 by living frugally (which is also great for the environment), and then I got a full-tuition scholarship through NIIED that will give me a master’s degree in public policy and 1 year of Korean language instruction for FREE + 900,000 won (less than $900) a month as a living stipend. It won’t make you rich, but it is enough to live on in Korea if you are frugal and concentrate on your studies instead of partying. (Note: You cannot take advantage of this or other services for “foreigners” if you are a dual citizen.) I’m not saying this to brag, but to encourage other adoptees, because a determined person can do a lot!!! It’s like the method of picking a date in your day planner and writing something down, and then it magically comes true because then you have the vision and the goal. Living in Korea and learning here can be done, it is being done now by other adoptees, and you can too, thanks to the struggles of many adoptees and organizations such as GOAL who have been building infrastructure for us and advocating for us in Korea for years.

To conclude this part, I just want to give a big thanks to those who’ve commented. Yes, Mei Ling, in 1995 my language skills really were that non-existent! Papa2hapa, I totally know the feeling. Toni, props to you for maintaining your son’s family connection.

Happy New Year everybody! If you break your New Year’s resolutions, you have another chance in February for Lunar New Year. We will all get one year older on Lunar New Year. I will be 40 in Korean age. Holy crap.

Next up: Misconceptions Koreans have about how the adoptees learn Korean and some good book recommendations and study techniques.

A lot has been said about how difficult it is for Korean adoptees to learn Korean as compared to other people, such as Korean Americans or even the white partners of Korean adoptees. I think there’s a lot of truth to that, and I have experienced that. However, if you’re a Korean adoptee like myself and you want to take back what is rightfully yours, then you have to find some way to grapple with the emotional issues that come along with learning the language. You  also have to find a way to access the language education, because it’s not like your white mom is going to teach you Korean while she cooks up a hot batch of kimchi chiggae for you. And if you’re an adoptee like myself who was more or less afraid of Korean people until quite  recently, you have to summon up the courage to talk with them.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

A: Trilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

A: Bilingual

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A: American

A little about my language learning: I did not have ANY exposure to the Korean language at any time growing up. The first time I heard the Korean language was the first time I met Koreans, which was when I was 23 years old.  I did a poor job of learning Spanish in high school and German in college, so I have never been wired to be bilingual. So I started from scratch, like probably a lot of other American adoptees. (I think most younger Europeans at least have studied a second language seriously, so they know better how to go about learning a foreign language systematically.)

I was living paycheck to paycheck in the U.S. while I worked in musical non-profit, so I never had enough money to take a Korean class at the university. So, in 1995, when I fell off the airplane in Korea on an adoption agency Motherland Tour,  all I could say was “Hello” to my mother in the most formal way that I had learned from those Barron’s diplomat tapes. Despite trying to study with tapes and so forth by myself, and traveling numerous times back and forth to Korea to visit my family,  my Korean continued to completely suck until I came back to Korea for an adoptee program at Inje University in 2004.

You seem very nice, and I like you, but I don’t want to talk to you

I think I made a smart move at Inje by hanging out mostly with Korean students. I felt it was my last chance to grab the language, so I didn’t want to waste what I thought was going to be my first and last prolonged time in Korea by speaking English with adoptees all the time. (Little did I know I would still be here six years later!) I made some Korean friends, and they took such good care of me in teaching me the basics. They were so patient. My guy friend ate a lot of ice cream with me while teaching me how to say, “I eat.” “I ate.” “I want to eat.” “I will eat.” My female roommate enforced 10 minutes every day in which I was not allowed to communicate in English.  Then she  actually taped a children’s poster of numbers above my bunkbed so I could practice counting before bed. (I had the bottom bunk). At the time I was 32 years old.

Why dramas are no good

A lot of Korean people try to give helpful advice by saying that you should watch dramas to improve your Korean language. I think that maybe that works if you’re a gyopo and you grew up at least seeing Korean faces and hearing Korean language in your home, even if it was only among adults. If you’re an adoptee, I don’t think that is helpful for you until you’re at least Level 3 or 4, which is I suppose the level that a lot of 1.5 or  2nd generation gyopos would test into without even trying (such as my Korean American husband, who tested into Level 4 at Yonsei without even trying.)  I’m now doing Level 4 at Seoul National University, and I think that dramas are still only helpful to me an extent. I have to watch them on my computer and rewind them and listen again and again and again. If you have to learn textbook Korean like most adoptees do, then anything that is not a perfectly grammatical sentence is hard to understand in the lower levels. That means a lot of language used in dramas, movies, comic books, and songs is hard to understand. Just think about it — even in English, we do not use perfect sentences or pronounce everything the “correct” way. If you have no background in Korean, then anything that deviates from what you learned in the textbook is a big “Huh?” And of course, there is the problem of regional dialects. Imagine if you are learning English and suddenly you are supposed to understand a Texas accent, a British accent, and a Minnesota accent. Forget it! Incomprehensible! Same goes for a lot of Korean gangster movies.

I want schnapps. There are no (is no?) schnapps in Korea.

For every Korean word I learn, I think I lose five in English and some grammar rules fly out of my head. Anyway, I have a lot to say about this, so this little thoughtstream on language learning for adoptees will be continued  …  in the meantime, have the happiest of holidays! What I would give for a hot girlie drink with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles!! All of you people who live in the land of peppermint and raspberry schnapps, have some boozy hot cocoa for me!

Next up: How I ignored my emotions and oppression long enough to learn some grammar

- What are the most important things that parents who are adopting transracially and/or transnationally need to know and learn from adult adoptees?

Adult adoptees, as adults, are capable of forming opinions and analyses about the situations that we came from and grew up in. Many adult adoptees are now professors, lawyers, film directors, artists, teachers, journalists, social workers, etc. The best adoptive parents engage in objective, adult dialogue with us. However, many adoptive parents attempt dismiss our analyses with simple name-calling, calling us “angry” or “bitter” or people with “an axe to grind.” The losers, of course, are their own children. If their cute adopted children grow up to be critical thinkers, as we all should be, what will happen if they dare to produce an analysis about their adoptions that is different from the opinion of their adoptive parents?

- In brief, what facets about the current system of international adoption would you most like to see reformed?

International law needs to be enforced, everything has to be more transparent, and prospective adoptive parents need to stop being so naive. Americans in particular need to realize that the way it’s done in the U.S. is not the way it’s done everywhere else. I think in many cases, the adoption process on the sending side is more corrupt than adoptive parents ever imagined. Because they don’t want to imagine that. They are just focused on the child. But people have to wake up and face the facts about what is being done locally in the sending country and how American money fits into that picture.

- Do you believe that there is such a thing as an ethical international adoption?

Sure! For instance, let’s say an American woman who speaks Spanish and who lives in Arizona falls in love with a widower who lives in Mexico. They decide to get married and to make their home in Arizona. After marriage, the woman adopts her new husband’s child from his previous marriage, and they all live happily ever after in Arizona, regularly traveling back and forth across to see the child’s relatives on both sides of the border.

Does that sound exceptional? Yes, that would be. And an ethical international adoption is supposed to be exceptional, for special circumstances. It is not supposed to be a baby factory that provides supply to meet demand or a highly developed network  of unwed mothers’ homes, healthcare providers, government offices and adoption agencies that enables brutal patriarchies to victimize vulnerable women in a systemic way.  Who wants to be complicit in an arrangement of gender inequality as harsh as that?

Click here for gender gap rankings from the World Economic Forum. South Korea ranks 115th in the world, between India (114) and Bahrain (116).  In the  general pattern, I think you can see that countries with high gender equality = “receiving countries,” such as Norway (3), France (18), and the U.S. (31). Countries with low gender equality = “sending countries,” such as Ethiopia (122) and  China (60) and the Russian Federation (51). What does that mean about what women really want for the babies they give birth to? Are women really exercising “choice” when they “give” their children for adoption?

In the case of South Korea, I think that the international adoptions enable the government to avoid making a real social welfare system to support unwed mothers. They also enable the government to fail to create a real culture of ethical domestic adoption. Because of this, we are faced with illegal domestic adoptions that are called “secret” (because not even the adoptee knows), and that is a real problem. Both are huge problems and they government must deal with it. We have been waiting for 60 years!

- What advice would you have for people who want to believe that international adoption is mutually exclusive from global politics and the economic market?

They should try to adopt a child from one of the Axis of Evil countries and let us know how that goes. Or conversely, pretend to be a South Korean and try to adopt a white American or European infant. I tried that and found out that the request is so strange to American and European adoption agencies that they either can’t understand the request or they think it’s illegal. Or, with no money, try to internationally adopt a child through an agency. Just tell them that you have a good home to provide.

In the photo above, Mi Chin is the baby. The other girl is the woman I met today, and the boy is the brother. The woman holding Mi Chin is the mother, and the other woman is the maternal aunt. Here they are taking a vacation at the East Sea (facing Japan).

Today at KoRoot, with Pastor Kim, I met the sister of Kim Mi Chin. She asked that I spread the word about her lost sister amongst adoptees so she and her brother might be able to find her. They have been looking for literally decades.

Mi Chin’s birthdate is April 16, 1965. After the parents divorced and the father remarried, his new wife put the three children in the Jinae orphanage in Paju. All the siblings were in the orphanage from November 1967. They experienced Christmas with American soldiers (They had donuts! chicken! amazing toilets!) etc. while there. Then one day in May 1968, the stepmother suddenly showed up at school, not the orphanage, and picked up the two older kids.  But Mi Chin was not there because she was too young to go to school. For some reason the stepmother left her at the orphanage even though she picked up the other two kids, and when the family came back to get Mi Chin later, she was already adopted and gone.

It appears that Mi Chin was adopted not through an agency, but directly by the adoptive father, who seems to have been a U.S. serviceman.

Kim Mi Chin and the adoptive father left Korea from the Kimpo Airport on a Cathay Pacific flight Sept. 6, 1969 Sept. 15, 1969. The father’s signature on this travel document looks like “Frank M. xxx” The last part is illegible to me. Can you read the name at the bottom? Do you know who this is?

The U.S. passport number is 27887. A friend from the military tried to check this at the State Dept. It is a real passport number connected to a real person, but they wouldn’t give any information on how to reach her.

Mi Sun, the elder sister, has a lot of memories of the orphanage because she was nine years old at the time. Her stories are funny and heartbreaking at the same time. Her feeling of helplessness and sadness as she watched her little sister suffer in the orphanage, and then disappear, has followed her, it seems, throughout her life.  She says she just wants to know how Mi Chin is doing and wants to see her just once before she dies. She is a really wonderful person and I hope that we can find Mi Chin.

If you know anyone who might be Kim Mi Chin, please send me an email at jjtrenka@gmail.com. I will meet the sister again on Monday, and we’ll try to look through some more records here in Korea to find out who “Frank” might be. Mi Chin, they are so eager to hear from you, and they hope that you will welcome contact.

Update:  Mi Chin’s sister sent the picture below with this explanation, which was translated by Emily Cashell. Thanks Emily!

최근에 미진이가 입양갔던 당시의 고아원에 가서 수십년전 귀한 사진을 한장 구했습니다.

I recently went to the orphanage from which MiJin was adopted and found this precious photo from years ago.

저희가 알고있던 미진이 보다는 한 일년 반정도 시간이 흐른때의 모습인것 같고 출국하기 불과 두세달 전이라 추정 되는 사진입니다.-69년 여름으로 추정-한국나이 로 6살이고 서류에 있는 나이로는 다섯살입니다.

The girl in the picture looks about a year and a half older than the MiJin that I knew. I assume it was taken only 2-3 months before she left the country so it would have been around the summer of 1969- Korean age 6, documented age 5.

이 사진에서 왠지 나와 같은 유전자가 느껴집니다.

Looking at this picture, I feel that we have the same genes.

가운데 흑인미군이 두아이를 안고 있는데 그중 아래를 보고 있는 아이가 미진이 인것으로 거의 확신 합니다.

In the middle of the photo is a black soldier embracing two children. I believe that the child who is looking downwards is MiJin.

손목에 시계인지 팔찌인지 를 차고 있는것 같고 그것을 보고 있는듯한 모습니다.

It appears that she is looking at the watch or bracelet that is on her wrist.

당시를 생각하면 미군이 어느 아이를 점찍었다 하면 그 미군은 방문 할때마다 옷, 구두, 장난감 등 그 아이만을 위한 특별한 선물을 가져다 주곤 하였는데 그곳에서는 미군이 보는 앞에서는 그아이에게 입히고 신기고 가지고 놀게 하고미군이 가고나면 다 거두어서 보관 했다가 그 미군이 방문한다 하면 다시 꺼내서 치장을 시키곤 하였지요.

As I recall, the American soldiers would each have a certain child that they would bring clothes, shoes, toys, etc. to when they came to visit. When the soldiers came, the children would be dressed in those clothes and shoes, and they would play with those toys. After the soldiers left, the things would be collected for safekeeping until they came again.

사진에서도 다른 아이들은 단발머리에 고무신인데 반하여 미진이로 추정 되는 아이는 머리에 물발라 가르마 타서 빗어주고 예쁜옷에 카바양말에 구두를 신고 있으며 게다가 손목에도 무엇인가를 차고 있는등 특별하게 치장을 해 놓은것으로 보아 아마도 양부가 신경쓰고 있었던걸로 생각 합니다.

The other children in the picture have cropped hair and rubber shoes, but the girl who I presume is MiJin has had her hair parted and combed. She is wearing pretty clothes, dress shoes, and also has something on her wrist. It looks like she was especially dressed up. (I think her adoptive father must have payed special attention to her. )

아이의 생긴모습이나 또래의 정도나 추정연도나 당시의 상황으로 보았을때 미진이라는 심증이 강하게 느껴집니다.

(I strongly believe that this child’s appearance and age match that of MiJin at the time.)

이사진을 첨부 한다면 미진이가 아마도 이사진은 알마볼수 있을걸로 생각 합니다.

If this picture is posted, maybe MiJin will recognize it.

지금 올려져 있는 사진은  미진이가 기억하지 못하는 아기때의 모습이므로 그것만으로는 자신이라고 확신을 갖기는 어려울것 같습니다.

The picture that is uploaded now is from when MiJin was a baby, so if she sees only that picture, it may be hard for her to confirm that it is her.

지금도 남동생과 저는 미진이 일로 옛 사람들의 연락처를 구하고 연락해보고  만남을 약속하고 진행중에 있습니다.

혹시라도 사진 한장이라도 더 확보할수 있다면 또 첨부 부탁 할께요.

My younger brother and I are in the midst of finding contact information for people from MiJin’s past, contacting them, and setting up meetings. If we come across any other pictures I will send them to you.

미국인이 우리의 사연을 접할수 있게 되었으니 단 1프로의 희망이라도 더 있지 않겠습니까.

If Americans come across our story, I can gain even more hope.

웬지 너무 지치기 전에 미진이를 만날수 있을것 같은 조심스러운 희망이 생깁니다.

I am prudently hoping that I can meet MiJin before I get too worn out.

This job is the reason why I’ve been able to stay in Korea so long — about 6 years now.  The first two years or so, which I wrote about in Fugitive Visions, were pretty rough, and I think if I hadn’t landed the Yonhap job after that, I probably would have left. (It seems that this is the way it goes for people in Korea — either something great happens for you after a couple of years and you stay for much longer than planned, or you’re completely burned out after those two years and run screaming.)

When I get done with school (1 year of language, 2 years of a master’s degree in public policy), I’ll be 41 years old. Achieving your dreams is done better late than never!

One more day left of work! I’ll take a couple of weeks of vacation, and then start studying Korean language in September for one year. Textbooks put me right to sleep, so that means I am actually giving myself one year to sit around and read comic books and watch movies in Korean, and improve my noraebang skills.

I was feeling a little nostalgic about going to work for my last evening shift. (I still have to work in day shift on Monday). Today the garage door worked, so that meant I got to ride my bike to work today and pass by my favorite places. Here you can see that Gwanghwamun is finally visible again after years of restoration. You can see Gyeongbok Palace through the door.

Gwanghwamun is pretty much all new, but there are some historic stone objects that they incorporated. Here’s the animal called “Haetae,” which is used around temples and palaces to protect them from fire. (They should have had more of them around orphanages!)

“Haechi” is the name of the haetae who is Seoul’s mascot. Here’s Haechi in action.

A view of Gwanghwamun from Sejong-ro, which is the main thoroughfare in downtown Seoul. Click here to see wonderful photos of the same area and buildings back in the Joseon Dynasty (before Japanese colonial occupation).

Funny little potted hydro garden in a park, with Gwanghwamun in the background.