Adapted Podcast

Karen Lechelt, 50, is a mother, wife and a returned East coaster after two decades in the San Francisco Bay area and a few years in Amsterdam in between. Their childhood in New Jersey was marked with feeling not quite fitting wherever she was, and having to always adapt themself. Because of the loss of their first family, Karen says there's always been a feeling of not being anchored. That changed with the birth of their daughter.

Megan Nyberg, 37, was adopted as an infant from South Korea to parents in Minnesota. But ever since her premature birth, she has struggled with medical conditions that have been constant reminders of the mystery surrounding her origins. Now a licensed therapist, Nyberg gives other grace and more recently, has started to give it to herself too.

Queer Korean adoptee Midnite Townsend, 38, is many things. A large part of her/their past has been as a performer; first training to enter the world of musical theater to realizing her/their real desires were better applied to the art of burlesque and drag king performance. Midnite's throughline has been a quest for authenticity - and the test of whether loved ones around her/them would see her.

Theme music: Jae Jin

Other music appears under license with Blue Dot Sessions

Korean-born French adoptee Laure Badufle's story and search for idenity is now the subject of a new Sony Pictures film, "Return to Seoul." In December of 2021, Badufle, then 37, shared some of that story, including meeting her birth parents in her 20s. The film is now opening to more international audiences this month and is already winning accolades. This is a re-broadcast.

Michael Jessup of Mountain View, California is a father, coach and adopted Korean. But it's only been in the last six years that the 46-year old has explored his feelings about his adoption and faced his pain about being abandoned and given up by presumably his first family at 13 months of age. He opens up about his life, how tennis has carried him through the years, and shares a touching letter to his eomma.

Reunion with biological parents can be complicated for adoptees. Relinquishment or losing a child or parent, language, and culture can be traumatic and represent lifelong grief. But whose story is it? Aneyah Elmore, 56, is a Black and Korean adoptee who is balancing the need to tell her own story and the desire of her biological mother not to.

CW****Child killings, racial genocide, suicide, emotional abuse of a child

Lisa Woolrim Sjöblom, 45, is a Swedish Korean who was adopted at a young age from Korea and grew up in Sweden. The illustrator, comic book artist and adoptee and first families activist shares some deep personal insights about motherhood, attachment and the trauma and grief that is brought up with these life events.

Samantha Kim Lyons, 41, grew up with racial mirrors unlike many other transrcial adoptees. Her late father was white; her mom is a third-generation Japanese-American. Her childhood was spent in Hawai'i and later southern California. But like other Korean adoptees, Lyons finds herself searching for deeper connection to Korea and to her adoptee identity later in life, for the first time.

Edward Pokropski, 39, of New York, NY is an adopted Korean-American who has a new one-man show out unpacking that experience. He talks about why not all audiences are comfortable laughing at jokes about adoption and how he approaches the topic while staying true to himself.

This is the second-half of a recent conversation with Peter Møller of the Danish Korean Rights Group.

The discussion takes place on Dec. 11, 2022 (KST), just days after the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission

decided to start an investigation on Korean adoption by examining an initial 34 cases of the more than 300 submissions.

We also discuss privacy in regards to the Special Adoption Law and threats made by Holt to Møller and other adoptees if they don't

abandon this complaint.