Hopes and Dreams no. 2

You can dream of anything you like... But when you do, always remember that some dreams will never come true!

Anonymous

Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Friedrich Nietzsche

친구

/chingoo/

noun (traditional)

a peer born in the exact same year as you.

"technically she is not my chingu because she is older than I am"

noun (universal usage by English-speakers)

anyone you like, regardless of age, sex or social status.

"living in London is much more appealing than Madrid because now I have a group of Korean adoptee chingu to meet up with regularly"

My chingu and I decided to no longer be a hope that waits, but instead to take wings and  fly to the country that was once our home. A home before we were exported and exploited for profit. Before we were caught up in what began as ethnic cleansing for racial purity. Before we became undesirable offspring after divorce or born out of wedlock that one or both parents decided to get rid of. Before we were kidnapped on the streets and dropped off at orphanages to supply the infertile and savior-types doing God's work.

We hoped to find birth family. We dreamt of connection. Both had us longing for acceptance, a homecoming.

I was asked to go down to the park early by the director to install Walls Within before the opening ceremony. Once installed, I sat and walked by myself for hours until the rest of the KADs arrived by bus. All day, local Korean volunteers moved around me but did not invite me to join them or even speak to me. A familiar experience... being excluded and kept apart is not an unfamiliar thing to me. Not only was this a thing with Koreans but also among other KADs.. After traveling to Paju separately and the isolating experience of the day, the feelings of disconnect were compounded upon their arrival, them chatting and laughing from their shared experiences and me not having been a part of any of it. 

Some I met there have become chingu, but not all. Some absolutely insane things happened in the last few days I was there which reminded me that being KADs does not mean same page, same perspective, same hopes and dreams. Connection and acceptance are not a given even in this small community of roughly 200K, because people are people. So, when a not-KAD friend says that they would like to introduce me to their Korean adoptee friend, I am cautiously hopeful that if we do, that human being and I will find some common ground to walk on but no expectations.

South Korean Human Trafficking 101

고아화

/goahwa/

transitive verb (core meaning)

causing a child to lose one or both parents, usually through death, abandonment, or separation.

"the term goahwa is known as 'orphanication' or 'orphanization' in English"

transitive verb (legal usage)

the legal or administrative process of designating a child as an "orphan"—sometimes through legal abandonment classification—to meet criteria for international placement.

"she had been told by her adoptive mother that her adoption came after her Korean father divorced her Korean mother, but had not been told about her own goahwa and she saw the paperwork involved for the first time at the age of forty-seven"

This Extract of Family Register is the translated version of the many legal documents used in the process to facilitate goahwa. It was created after a man presumed to be my birth father relinquished me to Korea Welfare Services (formerly known as the Social Welfare Society) to make me qualify for transnational adoption. The laws in Korea at that time regarding this international adoption required that any child to be adopted abroad must be an orphan.

I was not an orphan.

I had a mother, a father, a grandmother, a sister. I have seen a photo of my grandmother, and a young woman described to me as my "Aunt" but whom I suspect to be my birth mother. This photo sits in a photo album in New Hampshire that I no longer have access to. When I asked for it and my other baby photos, I was told "no".

When I was a child I asked what the process was for my adoption and with a laughing dismissive reply I was told there was not one. I was told there was no process. I was told that she met with my Korean grandmother twice at her home and I was taken with her on the second visit. Made to feel foolish for asking, my elementary school age self accepted this and did not question any of it. Any and all thoughts about my adoption were put in a box on a shelf and ignored until I discovered a KAD Facebook group during COVID times.

I am not an orphan.

I saw this document for the first time last year in January. Last year in January I discovered the date I was adopted for the first time. I was not two and a half years old as I had been told, but only fifteen months old (if my birth date has not been falsified as other adoptees' birth dates have been).

I may be an orphan now.

Since I discovered all of this information so late in life, it's possible that my birth parents are no longer alive. All this information being willfully kept from me by those who adopted me, them actively killing any hope or curiosity I had as a child, a teenager, an adult. It has greatly cost me... years when I could have connected sooner with other KADs and Korea, the autonomy to decide for myself if I wanted to find my birth parents sooner, my legal right to know basic details about my own life. It cost me twelve months in which my brain shut down and I withdrew from the world. It's not easy to throw off the shackles and chains of learned behavior. It was not easy to get past the bitter resentment, rage, sadness and grief I felt about being taught not to question, not to think about my adoption or where I came from, and how this was reinforced the very few times I dared to take that box down off the shelf and peek inside.

El Florero de Camilo Hurtado de Amezaga y Balmeseda

I spoke of Hurtado and his verdejo wine, Limousin, to a friend living in Norway who adores white wines. This sent him on a wild adventure searching for it. He visited and checked with over forty different wine shops over the course of nearly two months before finally finding an online purveyor who could ship him two bottles at a not very reasonable shipping cost. Unable to find the 2023 Gran Vino de Rueda, he settled for the 2024. Of course I was quite nervous when it did finally arrive because it might not suit his taste and he had gone to so much effort to obtain it. With a vinyl album carefully selected to accompany it, he partook and shared his impressions of it with me as he sipped and listened.

I don't believe in coincidences ... somehow the arrival of the wine and receiving this photo happened within the same week.

Recently I met up with a friend who I had  not seen for several months because life. In our message exchanges, she sent me a photo of an old friend keeping her company. One in a series of flower vases made in tribute to a Spanish aristocrat who became a farmer - Camilo Hurtado de Amezaga y Balmeseda. Also known as the Marques do Riscal, a man who became a winemaker that supplied a Spanish king, for which the winery is also named.

That winery still exists today in the village of Elciego, producing both red and white wines.

While visiting the winery last year in April, I was sad to discover that the famous golden netting that Hurtado had created was no longer in use as a part of their sustainability mission. Long ago the netting on his red wine for the king had been made from real gold and needed to be broken to access the contents. It was a seal of authenticity of the wine inside during a time when thieves would replace what they had stolen with another vintage and recork the bottle. Later this famous invention was copied and mimicked with golden wires as a sign of the wine and winemaker's quality. Unless you are a wine connoisseur, this once commonly-known feature has been largely forgotten.

A Hope and a Dream Manifested: memoriam and museum exhibition

Omma Poom Park Peace Museum

15 June 2025 - ongoing

Omma Poom Park and Peace Museum Bongilcheon-ri, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea

"For two days, my series Walls Within was on display in the park during this special event alongside other creations by some of my fellow KADs. The park director, Yong Nam Lee and I decided to extend the exhibition at the conclusion of the grand opening event. Since July 2025, Walls Within has been kept on display in the Peace Museum. I received photos of WW from a fellow KAD friend and Londoner who visited them earlier this year. One more person who now knows Kori Marrone to whom the four lanterns are dedicated to in memoriam."

In September of 2018, the Omma Poom Park in Paju City was formally dedicated at a ceremony attended by local government officials, Korean adoptees from all over the world, birth families, and supporters of the adoptee community. Since the dedication, the work on the park continued, and its formal opening took place this summer of 2025.

The date was set for the grand opening... there was a two-day celebration organized by Me&Korea, a non-profit organization that provides Korean adoptees opportunities to learn about our roots, on the thirteenth and fourteenth of June. I attended this celebration by first traveling to the city I was born in, Seoul, and then to Paju with a fellow KAD, a dear friend who is currently traveling the world solo.

The city of Paju, Korea is located just south of Panmunjeom at the 38th parallel and Demilitarized Zone. Beginning in 2017, Paju began developing a memorial park named Omma Poom, dedicated to the approximately 200,000 children who were sent away to be adopted and raised around the world.

The park’s name, Omma Poom, carries deep significance: "Omma" means "mother" in Korean, and "Poom" evokes the comfort of a mother’s embrace. The park is designed to serve as both a tribute and a space for healing.

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