ABSTRACT
The relationship between overseas adopted Koreans and “Korea” complexly intertwines the deeply personal realms of identity, including notions of home, family, memory, and belonging, with the starkly impersonal realms of the social and political, spanning categories such as citizenship, nation, history, and culture. This relationship is peculiar and particular to each adoptee; it is simultaneously individual and collective, real and imagined, intimately embodied, distantly remembered, or entirely forgotten. It is also historically specific and sensitive to fluctuations in the economic and political relationships between nations, legislated through policies and structured and managed through programs intended to welcome overseas adoptees back to the “motherland.”
