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While researching for my just-posted book review, I came across the website for Overseas Adopted Koreans (OAKs) and was so moved by the description of who they are in their own words.
In turn, the foundation looks to members of the adopted community to actively strengthen the voice of adoptees and create a better understanding of the challenges facing them. Interested parties are encouraged to share their suggestions and form a sense of community amongst worldwide adoptees. The OKF welcomes all OAKs to return and experience the ever-changing Korea of today and hopes to be both friend and guide on their journey.
The most interesting thing to me, a non-adoptee and non-Korean, is the Summer Program. Most interesting? All expenses paid. More over, the positive tone used to describe the experience lightens my heart a little.
The program focuses on Korean culture, history, customs, and language; but these are not the only things the program offers. A great number of opportunities during the program will help adoptees learn about their motherland, enhance awareness of adoption issues, and build bridges among Korean adoptees across the continents.
Vastly interesting and inspiring, isn’t it?
This country is embracing the children that have been adopted out. They are bringing them back, teaching them things about their heritage and putting them in close relation to their birth families. (The site mentions that some do travel specifically to search.) It seems like something to be celebrated, doesn’t it? It seems like they want to accept those children, now adults, who were once not accepted and make them feel as if they do belong.
Wonder why America doesn’t do the same thing with relation to opening records? Intriguing, no? Our adopted children are in our own country… and we tell them that wanting to know about their heritage is wrong and is an insult to their “real” families.
Apparently we could learn a lot from Korea.
