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Unclassifiedby Alicia WarrenReturning to Korea is a journey that most adoptees submit to take. It begins with a pang of disconnect from family or country, or a twinge of curiosity. Some come to Korea with high expectations of meeting familiar smells, sounds and places. Others come as tabula rasa explorers of the country, looking for new things they can connect to. I went hoping to reach a place I belonged. Finding that place was harder than it seemed. When I stepped off the plane that took me from Korea to the States, I had an eerie sensation that I would never eat rice again. It wasn't an impossible thought since my uneducated foster family told me that Americans didn't have rice or kimchi. And I was just three years old—an age that warranted sleeping in the room with the newborns at home. I wished I were two years older so that I could sleep with the cool kids who were going to school. When I stepped off the plane that took me from the States to Korea for the first time in 18 years, I suspected I might vomit. The garlic tang that wafted from the airport was intense, and I had a feeling I was never going to eat bread again. And when the immigration officer took my passport, she said that I was 22 years old in Korea. I had instantaneously become a year older. 
My search for a guild began in kindergarten, but abruptly ended when a girl asked me why my face was flat and what had happened to my eyes. I tried to explain that I was different because I was from Korea, but being 5 years old she had no idea where it was. Her questions became so persistent that I finally interjected that I was a Korean princess, living in Kansas under the guise that one day I would return to rule the country. I formulated the story as the questions were added together. I needed to learn languages spoken in several countries so that I could talk with other leaders. The court selected Kansas because a large city would attract too much attention from the Korean media. The story expanded as I told it, and justifiably no one believed it. Our Korean adoptee circle was also uninviting. In junior high, rumors spread around the school of a Korean adoptee a year older than me. "She gives great head," I remembered a boy saying while grinning impishly. Another adoptee was 5 years older than me. She was beautiful and brilliant, but soon after she graduated from high school as valedictorian she fled her home and became a stripper in New Orleans. There were two other adoptees in the town that were raised by an adoptee from the end of the Korean War. There were no rumors about them; they kept to themselves. We didn't talk, and we weren't interested in becoming a collective. In university, my parents gave me enough money to fly anywhere in the world I wanted to go. Their hope was that I would fly to Korea to search for my biological parents and find a connection to my native land. The prospect was frightening, especially after being rebuked by the Korean American community because I didn't speak their language. I chose to tag along with my older brother to Japan, where I decided that I wouldn't feel as dejected if I wasn't welcomed with open arms. The moment I landed in Tokyo, I sought the bond I missed in the States. I had two expressions of Japanese in my bank, which included only please and thank you. It worked magnificently until people started stopping me on the street to ask me for directions. "How do you get to Shinjuku Station from here?" a woman asked. "Please," I responded with a confused look on my face. She responded with an equally confused look on her face. Despite the poor communication at the start, I felt at one with the land when I climbed Mt. Fuji. I started the ascent in the evening, hoping to catch the sunrise. Mt Fuji is known for being one of the easiest mountains in the world to reach the summit, but it is still a mountain. When I reached the eighth step, I stopped in a ramen shop stocked with people trying to restore their energy levels. A young Japanese girl in pigtails hovered over a plastic bag and got sick from the altitude. A flock of her friends scuttled to her side and soothed her with water and mints. A young man adorned in a North Face jumpsuit and ski gloves handed his friend a sugar cube. He nudged the woman beside him and handed her one, too. He looked at my brother and me as we were warming our faces with ramen. We wearily shook our heads and smiled with looks that said, 'no thank you.' When I got to the top, I helped other groups take photos and passed tissues around. My brother and I went to the bottom in silence. The sun warmed our bodies and our hearts. I had been living in Japan for two years but still felt like a stranger wandering around a secluded neighborhood. It was a cloudy summer day when I flew into Korea. Typhoon season had just begun and the air was damp with promises of rain. I got onto a bus with a terrible exhaust system. I looked longingly at the cab drivers that were tormenting some Japanese tourists who didn't speak English. I breathed in the fumes and felt a sickness rise in my gut as we pulled away. The Han River was and will probably always be murky brown. Some middle aged-men wore rubber boots and fished in ditches along the river. I watched them with hopeful eyes. A week after moving there I made my way to the adoption agency. I had two goals in mind. The first was to obtain a copy of my family registry so that I could apply for an F-4 visa, reserved for those who are of Korean descent. When I got inside the office, I was already sweating from the heat of the summer. The office was so jumbled that there wasn't a point person for inquiries, which made me sweat more as I anxiously hunted for someone who spoke English. They put me into a small waiting room while they hunted for my papers. As I was fidgeting inside the room, I saw folders from five separate decades of financial documents locked in a case, children's books, knick-knacks from all over the country that were stuffed in corners and on top of other files, and other books in Korean chaotically dispersed. Fifteen minutes later, a woman in her thirties opened the door and sat down with two papers in her hand. "This is a copy of your family registry," she said pleasantly. Then she flipped to the next page and said, "But you will need an official document from the Mapo district office. It takes about 45 minutes to get there by train. This is a map to help you." "...Thank you...This is really helpful," I said, barely believing myself. "Was there any other information in the file? Anything about my mother or father, or even my birth date?" I asked her, realizing that I hadn't restrained the wavering in my voice. "I will check. Please wait here a moment," she said, still smiling. 
Twenty-two minutes later, the door opened again. "I wasn't able to find any information in your file," she said, earnestly this time. She handed me a piece of paper and said, "This was the only other document in your dossier." I looked down at the paper and saw a "pre-flight child report." I quickly opened the mental file I had on my adoption papers my parents had received. I pulled out a copy of my family register, a list of tasks the social workers had written up, a doctor's report, and a background report regarding the circumstances in which I was abandoned. I pushed the pre-flight child report into my bag and thanked the woman for her time. I stepped outside and felt a cool breeze hit my face. Sweat disintegrated from my skin. Three days later, another adoptee told me the story of when he asked them for information on his family. They brought a huge file into the room that to him seemed like it had been created for interrogation. The frail young woman took off her glasses and looked him in the eye. "This is the file of information on your family. But I am not allowed to release it to you. I hope you understand that," the woman said, appearing to be empathetic. He narrowed his eyes as he thanked the woman and began to list the reasons in his head about why the organization decided to tell him that the file existed and why he was restricted access from it. I realized then, that I was given a small treasure. I skimmed over the document that had a solitary paragraph of my dereliction. None of the information was descriptive, save one solitary line: "Abandoned at Ja Mae Women's Center, referred to orphanage, and later a foster home in Guro." On the map, Guro was inconveniently located on the western side of Seoul. Before heading there, I did some research of the area. I found an art gallery that had a photo display of the neighborhood. The gallery was empty, save one pale, slender woman. She had a demure face and wore a grey suit. Her bag was slightly tattered and hung unassumingly across her small frame. Her eyes were empty as she stood in front of a black and white photo. In the photo, Guro's hills were covered with older buildings with black roof tiles and many of them didn't have running water. Some of the residents were getting out of outhouses and washing their clothes in a large basin. Children were holding slices of watermelon and waving at the cameraman. A glint of a memory surfaced. It was a warm fall evening and the mosquitoes were still floating about. The glow of the city was too faint to be seen from my small porch. I stood in front of the outhouse. It was a small building, but ample compared to my scarcely toddler body. The smell of dinner wafted in my direction and I knew that I would have to face the truth and enter the building. I opened the door and peered inside, holding my nose from the smell. I saw a patch of light gazing through the panels and decided I should look through it. The moment I stepped inside, the oracle in my head began to prophesize me stepping into the latrine. I quickly maneuvered my foot to the left to avoid contact with the vile inside the hole, but my short legs had deceived me. My foot landed in the center and I watched as my mouth opened and a piercing sound flew out. I ran back to the porch, slightly hobbling as if my foot were truly wounded from the latrine. "Oh-mo! Yukgi oeppda!" I screamed at the woman and the two boys. The woman ignored me as she stirred the soup that I knew I wouldn't get. The younger boy continued to color as he sang a song I didn't recognize. The older boy walked toward me and looked at my foot. "It's just a little dirty," he said with kindness in his voice. "Let's go wash it off." He took my hand and turned on the hose. The bitter cold water that usually poured out was warm, and he used his hand to wipe off what wouldn't come off. "Oppa, won't your hand smell bad?" I whispered. "It's no matter. I can wash my hands, just as you can wash off your foot." A tear met my cheek as I stood in front of the picture of Guro. Behind me, the lights of Seoul were calling. The beams flashed as if dancing to the music roaring from the stores. The young woman walked by, her clothes and demeanor more aged than her pale face. On the other side of the room, a little girl bolted toward the woman while shouting, "Omma!" The reticence in the woman's face dissipated as she picked up the smiling girl. The two embraced. It was the moment I had been searching for. -AJW |
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