WHAT IS YOUR IMMIGRATION STORY?
My father is an American-born citizen. However, my mom is ethnically Korean. She was adopted from South Korea when she was 14 years old by a family that was based in North Carolina.
WHAT DOES YOUR CURRENT JOURNEY LOOK LIKE?
As it stands today, both of my parents both live in the state that I grew up in, Indiana, along with my twin brothers. As for myself, I live in New Jersey slash New York area, and this has been the first time where I've been able to connect with the greater Korean community. So I've been learning a lot about my heritage while being here and understanding what it means to be a Korean American. We didn't have much access to that while I was growing up and all the places that I've lived since moving after college. I have a Instagram account called @returntojeong. And essentially it was the way to document my experiences living in New York and the New Jersey area and finally connecting with anything Korean essentially. I was going to restaurants, I was going to cultural centers, I was going to concerts, I was meeting people taking language classes. And over time people were also finding my account and reaching out, looking for the same things and it's really formed into this beautiful thing where there's a group of us that meet monthly to just kind of hang out and just be in fellowship with other Koreans to just really reconnect and find a new part of ourselves, if you will. We've also evolved it to where we're now hosting regular card game nights with the game Ghost Off.
REFLECTIONS
What are your hopes for the future?
So going from my family's story and how it's gotten to the point where it is now, obviously we don't have a lot as far as the immigration story. I've taken DNA tests and been trying to find some type of blood connection that way. It's obviously very challenging, especially with the history of adoption in Korea and the lack of paperwork documentation. But now through that social media account, I've been meeting other descendants of Korean adoptees, is what we're called, or DoKADs for short. And we're expanding our community to figuring out resources and speaking up and creating awareness around the rights DoKADs have, whether it's access to medical records or just trying to be in touch with our families. And hopefully that continues to grow and we're able to figure out ways to navigate that political landscape so that we can finally reconnect with our families with less challenges.
