It’s rooted in my core, just below my heart. The thickened, tingling tentacles are threatening to burst, demanding to be felt and seen. First came the message from my 이모 (emo, birth mother’s younger sister) then the email from my new lawyer. Tuesday’s the day, the day that district officials decide if my name gets added to my 엄마 (umma, birth mother) and 아빠’s (appa, birth father) family registry in Korea.
2019 was the year that quietly ushered me onto this path. It was the first time I formally stepped into a Korean class since I abandoned them at the start of fourth grade when I went to live with my adoptive parents. That summer, my husband and I also took our first trip together to Korea. And there, standing on brightly lit neon streets, sitting on quiet subway rides, devouring foods of home, and seeing my 엄마 (umma, birth mother), 이모 (emo, maternal aunt), and 아줌마 (ahjumma, the woman who raised me in Korea) for the first time in nearly 30 years, I began rediscovering pieces I thought I’d lost. The pieces were always there, they were always mine, even if some were too flimsy to hold or believe were real.
By 2020, I was feeling out the pieces, fingering the jagged edges, examining the shapes, and still unable to fully hold others. A glimmer of hope ignited, a spark of what might be possible in reclaiming and solidifying the lost parts of me. It was then that I learned about the F-4 visa (a special visa for overseas Koreans) and possible dual nationality, a specific exemption that allows Korean adoptees to bypass the general prohibition for most other Koreans. I learned during this process that Korea had no record of my existence as my birth parents never registered my birth. Just as I was beginning to feel a sense of myself, there was nothing official to show for it. After multiple calls and emails with the regional consulate, with often brusque and confused responses with little guidance and information, I had no greater understanding. Though I discovered G.O.A.’L., a nonprofit and NGO in Korea supporting adoptees, I was struggling to tread water through the pandemic. The complications prompted me to step away. The more precise description is that I let it fall away.
After much contemplation and discussion, my husband and I made the decision for me to take Dragon and Monkey to live in Korea for a few months. The pandemic offered the circumstances. The desire to introduce them to this significant part of themselves in the hopes it wouldn’t feel dubious solidified it. So, in the spring of 2021, I contacted G.O.A.’L in preparation for my trip hoping that it might coincide well with exploring the options available for the F-4 visa or dual nationality. If only it had been that simple. I had many more steps to climb before even being able to determine which was available to me. Because Korea didn’t have record of my birth, that was my first step. Hit with this new complication and the overwhelm of navigating life in Korea with my two children, it faded from the forefront of my mind…again. Instead, I embraced continuing to reclaim pieces of myself while watching with a pained wonder as my children found their own.
After three months, I boarded the plane home with a longing to stay in a place that gave Dragon, Monkey, and me the ease and access to parts of ourselves. Instead, I returned home to the States in July 2021 and promptly stepped into planning for a cross country move. With the renewed opportunity of a new regional consulate, I reached out to see if this time they would validate me. I felt strangely exposed, as though I had just laid down the pieces I barely felt a claim to for others to examine and critique. I wouldn’t hear from them for nearly six weeks despite multiple follow ups and even then it was more doubt about my case. By this point, every time I drafted an email, called, or even researched online, the tingling tentacles would bloom. So exhausted and frustrated, I stepped away, intentionally.
The summer of 2022 introduced a new possibility for relocating to Korea and, with it, new hurdles to jump. The Fulbright Scholars program offered a chance to blend the personal with the professional by attempting to name the full impact on adoptees as a subcategory of Adverse Childhood Experiences. The hope blooming in my chest beat back the lurking tentacles. The Fulbright opportunity prompted reconnecting with G.O.A.’L.. Though I was reluctant to revisit the questions of dual nationality and the F-4 visa, I felt determined to stake my place. My G.O.A.’L. case worker initially expressed optimism in being able to support me through the process. There was a way. After they contacted a local community center, they notified me that it was impossible to register my birth. Desperate for a second opinion, I reached back out to the consulate in another monthlong back and forth with no clearer answer. All the while, hope and rejection tangoed together. While G.O.A.’L. had slammed the door it opened a window to a lawyer in Korea who had worked specifically with adoptees. I contacted the lawyer and was told that though they could assist me in registering my birth in Korea, dual nationality was impossible due to current laws. I was not, in fact, included in the exemption offered to other Korean adoptees as I was foreign born and adopted domestically. While the tentacles made themselves known, I still had the hope of my Fulbright Scholars application that kept my head above water, until mid-December when they settled deep in my core. My application had been denied. Without the help of hope to keep me afloat, the currents pulled me under and this time I didn’t fight it.
I eventually surfaced accepting the pause. 2023 was a quieter year of recovering from life’s battering and bruising while periodically coming up for air. Sometime during the first half of the year, I asked my adoptive mother for my adoption paperwork. It was a necessary document in moving forward with any steps and it lived with her. While depleted, hope still shimmered in the background, it seems. The family had been invited to attend a family wedding in Taiwan over Christmas. What better way than to combine it with our first family trip to Korea together? Planning this trip was when I began taking tentative steps back into the fray. Just prior to purchasing our plane tickets, I reached out to the lawyer to schedule an in-person meeting while there.
We rang in the New Year in Korea. It had been four and a half years for my husband and two and half for Dragon, Monkey, and me. Each trip, each visit with my 엄마 (umma, birth mother), my 삼촌 (samchon, paternal uncle), and 아줌마 (ahjumma, the woman I lived with in Korea), each meal, and each story I gathered about my younger years further defined and solidified the pieces. With every return to Korea, I began to feel a thread that loosely connected these parts.
Just before departing, my friend in Korea accompanied me to the meeting with the lawyer. The lawyer expressed confidence that we could proceed with registering my birth in Korea as long as I could gather all the many documents. When my adoption was legalized, I changed my name to reflect the new family I was now part of but sometime in my adolescent years I changed it yet again. When I first changed my name, at my adoptive mother’s encouragement, I kept the first and last names of my given name as a middle name but begrudgingly. It was a lingering piece of me that didn’t fit in this new life. So when a complication arose several years later, I jumped at the chance to discard this piece of myself I felt kept me from fully realizing this new me. It was this very impulse that blocked me from proving my birth-given identity. When we returned to the States, I set to work to get my hands on all I needed. The thread, tangible in Korea, seemed to fade from reach. While getting my non-certified original birth certificate was uncomplicated, obtaining any documents explaining or showing the second name changed proved near impossible. It was call after call after call, shuttled and directed from state to different state, one local jurisdiction to another. All the while, the tentacles deepened their roots and grew with each task. I was able to secure documents that indirectly supported my name changes by the summer of 2024 but not the full funds to hire the lawyer. A new opportunity came available in October; thus, the work with the lawyer went to the back burner to better channel my energy. But by mid-November, it fell through.
It would be a couple of months before I could come up for air. But when I did it was with a determination that brought back the connecting thread and planning for a summer trip to Korea in 2025 provided the focus. So in late January, I reached back out to the lawyer. I paid the fee and uploaded all the documents I’d gathered for their review. Upon confirmation that the documents appeared complete, I shipped them to their office in Korea. We had a date set, late April 2025. The lawyer coordinated with my 엄마 (umma, birth mother) to accompany her to the district office in her town to register my birth. Hope glistened at the edges pressing toward the tentacles that refused retreat. Sleep sat just out of reach, knowing the morning would bring the decision. I was jolted by my alarm and immediately reached for my phone. There at the top of my inbox was the email from the lawyer. I took a breath attempting to beat back both hope and the tentacles and opened my fate. Rejected. The district official informed the lawyer that my specific case was too complicated and difficult. She couldn’t process it herself. Instead, we needed to try again but in Seoul.
After a few emails, the lawyer and I decided he would visit the district office in Seoul where my 엄마’s birth is registered, as directed by the district official in the town where she lives. The lawyer went to the Seoul district office in May during which new answers and more documents were requested by the officials. Nearly 3 weeks went by with multiple follow ups but no response from him until I was already in Korea with my family. There we decided that my 엄마 (umma, birth mother) and 이모 (emo, maternal aunt) would travel to Seoul to meet the lawyer and me to register my birth. The lawyer had spoken with officials at the office who had reviewed my documents and confirmed registration was possible. So my family traveled the two hours by bus and we went to the district office. In the 45 minutes we were there, confusion seemed the commonality among us all. The tingling threatened to render me rooted to the spot. No matter all the conversations, no matter the documents, there were more questions. Was my 아빠 (appa, birth father) still a Korean national at the time of my birth? Official records in Korea showed this to be the case but the district officials stated they needed proof that he had not obtained U.S. citizenship. I had no such document. We made one last ditch attempt to travel across the city to the district office where my 아빠’s (appa, birth father’s) birth was registered. Even more confusion, more questions, all while the tentacles grew further outward. Unsuccessful, my 엄마 (umma, birth mother) and 이모 (emo, maternal aunt) caught the bus home and I traveled back to our Airbnb alone on the subway. Suddenly, what had once felt like home seemed to have turned its back on me. The pieces that had begun to take shape and become solid all seemed like a lie. Were they really ever mine?
We returned to the U.S. empty handed. I’m still not sure where I found the strength to press forward, fighting against the current and the ever growing tingling in my core. I filed a total of three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the end of 2025 without any meaningful answers. It was at this point that the lawyer began regularly taking longer to respond to my emails. Despite my active efforts to secure documented proof of my father’s status as a Korean national at my birth, he suggested I pivot and petition the court for permission instead. This new step would require another fee. In February 2026 I sat in my living room looking through a box of my 아빠’s (appa, birth father’s) things my 삼촌 (samchon, paternal uncle) had given me on my last trip to Korea. I pulled out his wallet for maybe the twentieth time. There, I stumbled upon his U.S. Green Card. My hands shook and my heart thumped out an allegro. Is this the missing piece that will finally bring recognition? I immediately filed one final FOIA with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. I finally received a document that appeared to provide the evidence needed to prove he never changed citizenship and reached out to inform my lawyer. By early March, I sought confirmation on what I would receive at the end of petitioning the court specific to the question of dual nationality versus the F-4 visa. Six weeks of cold silence followed.
I decided to change counsel and after reviewing my documents, they felt confident they could move forward with my case. I’m depleted. Hope is still here, perhaps no longer shimmering or glistening, it’s there but dimly. I’m waiting, wanting for Tuesday to come with the tingling tentacles rooted in place. Tuesday, officials in one of Korea’s district offices determine if my claim, my identity, my legitimacy are truly mine.
Rediscovering My Seoul 