I'm reposting my column from this week because the Courier-Journal archives our work relatively quickly and truth be told I'm not always particularly proud of my writing but this one was okay... or at least the subject matter is important to me. So here you go...
Linda Park is a made up person. I don't mean that I'm not really Linda Park or that you're reading the column of some mythical "Linda Park, Korean in Kentucky." But, Linda Park was born from the imagination of an intake worker at City Baby Hospital in Seoul, Korea and perhaps the unimagination of my adoptive father who named me after his first love... a woman who is not my adoptive mother. Yes, I was off to a classy start but that's another story for another time.
I just finished watching the POV documentary In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee by Korean American adoptee Deann Borshay Liem. It tells the story of Liem, a child brought to America as a child with the name of another orphan that her adoptive parents had been sponsoring. This Cha Jung Hee had been claimed by her father over a year before the Borshay's decided to adopt her. However, unbeknownst to the Borshays. the social worker at the Sun Duck Orphanage continued to send them letters as if Cha Jung Hee was still there looking for her forever home.
In her place they sent Liem, switching her identity, so the girl who'd grown up thus far as Kang Ok Jin became Cha Jung Hee, wearing her shoes and carrying her name on a passport. Though she was told not to reveal her secret, she did try to explain to her new parents but they decided she must be confused.
At the heart of the film is Liem's inner identity crisis and the feeling that she was, perhaps, living someone else's life. Her case may have extreme elements, but I think that feeling of alienation is common amongst adoptees, especially those brought to a country where the culture is vastly different from that of their birth.
It is very easy to say, "Oh, you were saved!" or "You were chosen! You're special!" or any of the platitudes we adoptees hear from a very early age, but I was never exactly sure what I was saved from. If there's an Asian alive who thinks Plano, Texas is salvation, I would like to meet them.
My life is complicated and I think there's a loneliness in me that I may never escape. However, I suspect that's nature. I would love to know, if nothing else, the history of my birth family. Were they prone to depression, too, or did I get that from the circumstances of my childhood? Are they genius and full of wit just like me or did I develop that because you need some defense in this world? Okay, so maybe the genius part is a joke especially as I handily dispel the notion that Asians are fabulous at math and science with my inability to master long division and my refusal to dissect a frog in biology.
I don't like to think about what might have been because talk about your exercise in futility, but I think everyone has questions about who they are and for most the answers may be relatively simple. Sometimes I wish they were for me, but I accept my life and at a certain point you alone are responsible for who you are.
I'm also grateful. Flawed though my upbringing may have been, if I hadn't been through that adversity would I be here right now? Would I have a kickass husband, a nice house and awesome dogs? Cliché but true, there are no wrong steps in life because without the bad we don't get the good.
At the end of In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee we find both the filmmaker and the Cha Jung Hee she's found at peace with their lives. A chance intersection and forty years later, a journey complete.
Over 100,000 Koreans have been shipped from their homeland to points around the world. They say, "Home is where the heart is." My hope for all of us is to find home, wherever that may be.
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