Hello!

안녕하세요!

I’m Kat, a K-Adoptee trying to channel her inner Korean.

K-drama enthusiast who’s trying to learn to speak Korean. It’s a journey… My BTS bias is V, and my bias wrecker is the six other members. I returned to my home country of South Korea in July 2022 for the first time since being adopted at the age of one.

Once upon a time…

A baby girl was sent from South Korea to the U.S. to be adopted…
I was really struck by one of the first scenes in the K-drama *City Hunter*—people working in a field with pointy straw hats. It reminded me of how I’d always imagined my birth mother. Friends (and strangers) constantly used to ask me if I was curious about her. I never was. Because somewhere I’d seen an image of an old Asian woman in a pointy straw hat bent over working in a rice field. I didn’t have anything else to go by, so this was the narrative in my head. Growing up in Iowa as somewhat of a sole minority in my home, school, church (and sometimes the entire town), I wanted nothing to do with that image.
I was made fun of so regularly for my squinty eyes, flat nose, and a non-existent Asian accent that I don’t think a single day went by when I wasn’t reminded I was Korean—different from the vast majority of my family, friends, peers, neighbors, and co-workers. It’s not something I dwelled on, it’s just a simple fact I’m always aware of.
But it’s also the reason I had no curiosity about my birth mom, the country where I came from, or its culture.

Decades later, a global pandemic hit, changing her life forever...

When coronavirus put the world in lockdown, like everyone else, I went searching for content on Netflix. The first thing that caught my eye was Crash Landing On You. Who knew Netflix has K-dramas? They’ve literally changed my life.

When I watch K-dramas, all I see are Koreans. And they aren’t being portrayed as the butt of the joke—they’re playing the leads! It’s the first time I’ve seen Asian roles showcasing everyday people with stories that are rich, interesting, and relatable. Not only that—the actors are handsome, beautiful, cute, and pretty—and they resemble me!

Nowadays, everything Korean seems to be on-trend. K-dramas, K-pop, K-beauty, K-food, K-language—and everyone wants to go to Korea. Including me.

But I don’t want to just visit. I don’t want to be a tourist in my home country. My hope is to live there for (at least) a year so I can experience firsthand what it’s really like. It may have taken a trend for me to finally see myself (and where I come from) in a positive light, but there’s no putting this genie back in the bottle.

And yes, now I would love to meet my birth parents—but I wonder if it’s too late…