Adapted Podcast

Korean adoptee Dan Sieling, 30, is on a journey. He shares his story drawing from both great insight and deep vulnerability -- but all necessary in order to reclaim his identity and relationship to his native country and to reconcile the pain from the loss of his biological family and feelings of abandonment. The New Jersey resident also speaks about confronting some uncomfortable truths about adoption and how it has helped him in his own healing. 

Korean adoptee Teri Thomas is a fighter. Adopted from Goyang to the U.S., Thomas survived sexual abuse by her adoptive father soon after arriving at the age of six. Her experiences in a dysfunctional and abusive adoptive home affected how she has felt about her adoption agency Holt Korea, and about the policy of intercountry and transracial adoption. Thomas has cerebral palsy, and while it does limit some of her physical mobility, it doesn't affect her spirit. The 48-year old returned to Korea in 2017 to work on an initiative to fight stigma and improve the opportunities for Korean children with disabilities. 

Note: This story contains themes of child sexual abuse, incest, clergy abuse and physical violence. 

Rachel Kim Tschida, 39, is a Korean adoptee who grew up in Minnesota, ambivalent about her own Asian identity for most of that time. However, she talks about learning to authentically embrace herself after traveling to Asia on business trips for a major American company. Those trips - especially ones back to Korea - helped spark an interest in her own adoption history, and in turn, advocacy for other adoptees as president of the Korean American Coalition of Washington. 

John Park*, 34, is a kinship Korean adoptee. Park is an alias because he does not have legal status in the U.S., despite being brought to the U.S. from Korea as a young child and later adopted by Americans. Adoptee rights advocates estimate there are at least 35,000 foreign-born adopted people in the U.S. who, like Park, never received U.S. citizenship. Efforts to fix an immigration loophole in adoption in 2001 did not address individuals adopted outside the law's restrictions on age and approved arrival visas. Advocates are hoping to change that with a new bill this year, though passage has so far proved politically challenging. Ultimately, Park's adoption story is about survival and circumstance, pain and redemption. And hope. 

Note: This episode contains themes of child sex abuse and violence. 

Greg Norrish, 32, is about to launch a new venture in South Korea with everything he's learned after more than a decade in kitchens in the U.S., and about fourteen months in his native country. The experience of planting himself amidst an exploding foreign food scene in Seoul has also given him a chance to learn more about himself, reflect on his adoption from Korea and understand more about his native country -- including confronting uncomfortable attitudes on gender and violence, which has exposed a darker side of Korean modern society. 

HyoSung Bidol-Lee, 50, is on a quest for healing. Bidol-Lee survived unspeakable tragedy before being adopted to the United States with his twin sister at the age of six years. Raised in the Midwest, he thrived academically and athletically, meeting many conventional benchmarks of academic and career success. But true happiness and peace eluded him. He went back to Korea this year to reflect about his life and to seek answers. 

Warning: This episode includes topics of suicide and homicide. 

Hojung Audenaerde, 45, has navigated identity and displacement her whole life, starting from her intercountry adoption from Korea to Flemish Belgian parents in Italy at the age of two. The family then relocated to the U.S. where she grew up around Americans, but never became one. Later, she went to India to study a specific practice of yoga which she later taught in Europe. But someone happened in 2012; she met her Korean father, which started her down a path of discovery about her own feelings about separation, Korea and of learning to walk alone. 

Sanne Mogensen, 32, is a Korean adoptee in Denmark. She is a leader in her country's Korean adoptee community, and talks about what that has meant to her, what it was like growing up in Denmark, racism, and about her own search for identity. And, being Danish, she sets the record straight about hygge. 

Eric Sharp, 38, is a Korean-American actor and playwright. He was adopted from South Korea at age two. Raised in Des Moines, Sharp talks about finding his professional footing in the Twin Cities within a strong Asian-American acting community, on how being a transracial adoptee influences his politics on casting and auditions; he also shares an evocative account of reuniting with his Korean biological family and what he's learned about himself and them over time. 

Michael Thielmann, 41, is a Korean adoptee who lives in Toronto, Canada. He grew up in Minnesota in a family where his mother, grandparent and siblings were all adopted. It wasn't until meeting his Korean-Canadian wife that he really understand what being part of a Korean family was like. And as he and his wife made the decision to try to adopt themselves, it also opened a door to his own grief.