I’m sitting here cramped in an economy seat on the twelve hour and twenty-five-minute United Flight 893 from San Francisco, CA to Incheon, South Korea. The down-graded accommodations will not be the only thing different during my second trip to South Korea this year, but I’m no less intrigued by what we may learn and come away with this time around.
You see, the objective for the May trip was to learn about the place Meghann came from. She was adopted in 1982 from South Korea through the Holt Adoption Agency. Post-adoption, she grew up in a very good family, raised by her parents Bob and Nancy. With her good family situation, she never had a strong urge to reconnect with her birth family, which many adoptees seem to have. In fact, for the May trip, when the form asked whether she would like to initiate a birth search, she was somewhat apathetic with her response, and decided to check it with little expectations that it would result in anything. The little information we did have about her birth family was that her mother was a widow who gave birth to her in her 40s, which would make her in her 70s if she were even still alive.
Leading up to the May trip, we were met with several phone calls from the adoption agency, sometimes saying they had “found something”, then retracting, and changing. Finally, they said that the adoption papers had a name which wasn’t Meghann’s mother, but rather a neighbor that had some information on her birth family and was willing to talk with us.. We would meet with her during the weekend when we would travel to Busan, the city on the south coast where Meghann was born.
Queue us arriving in Busan, being ushered into a little room in a restaurant where we sat on the floor eating Korean barbecue, and suddenly being told the neighbor we were meeting with was on her way to the restaurant (instead of later at the adoption agency). As we step out of the room with the rest of the adoptees, this little old lady waves us down while pointing at Meghann. Our translator comes out of the room after us, and lets us know that the lady says she knows Meghann is the one she is supposed to talk to because she looks like her mother.
Wow! Here we are caught off guard, not expecting to be meeting anyone at this time, to someone recognizing Meghann for looking like her mother. It only got crazier from there.
We proceed to leave the restaurant with our translator Ellie, and Mrs. Kim (the neighbor). Mrs. Kim has no hesitation getting right into sharing information, as we walk down a dingy alley to a car to drive us all to the Holt agency nearby. First off? She handed Meghann a picture from her purse, which contained a picture of several ladies together on the Korean “Parent’s Day” holiday, including her birth mother. Next? She informs Meghann she has three older sisters and an older brother. She gives us a number of other interesting pieces of information, such as that “her mother is healthy like a man” and that her father was sick and passed away shortly before Meghann was born, hence the adoption. Also, her mother was still alive, living on Yeongdo, the island off Busan where Meghann was born. Mrs. Kim had not heard from Meghann’s mother in some time, but seemed absolutely determined to track her down and tell her that she had found the daughter she had given up for adoption 30 years prior. She also said that Meghann’s mother had came to her asking her to help her find her daughter, and even went to Busan to search for her.
The trip to Busan concluded the next day with a trip out to Mrs. Kim’s house where she showed us the spot where Meghann’s mother used to live. Everything ended on a happy note, with a lot more learned about Meghann’s birth family, but no connections actually made. Meghann was happy and somewhat overwhelmed with the information, although not particularly disappointed that we weren’t able to find and biological family members.
Fast forward to October – Meghann receives a call from Holt, informing her that they had been contacted by Meghann’s biological sister, who had heard through a friend at church that Mrs. Kim was looking for her. She had written a letter for Holt to translate as well. The email that Holt forwarded to us, however, had her sister’s email address, and Meghann was able to find her on Facebook shortly after. It’s a very vivid memory for me when Meghann found the picture, as she started yelling for me to come into her office, despite the fact it was 5:30 AM and I was sleeping on the other side of the house. Even at a first glance the resemblance was obvious. From there, we were able to make first contact with her via Facebook message.
Leveraging Google Translator, we were able to exchange some (semi-coherent) emails – it was very exciting. Not only did we receive recent pictures of her entire biological family, we also learned that her birth father was still alive. Her birth parents were divorced. Her father had remarried and was widowed, but not before having a daughter, giving Meghann a younger half-sister.
After weighing a number of factors into the decision, Meghann and I decided we should return to South Korea to meet the rest of her biological family. So here we are, en route to Incheon Airport, with a very exciting and unpredictable week ahead of us.. We are staying in Seoul Sunday night, and then taking the bullet train from Seoul to Busan to stay Monday-Friday. We will return to Seoul on Friday night, and fly back to Phoenix on Saturday. I will be blogging with updates and pictures when I’m able to – stay tuned and wish us luck this week!