ABSTRACT
Currently, Korean American adoptees constitute a little less than one percent of the Asian American population. However, despite their minority status within Asian America, Korean adoptees epitomize what it means to be Asian American, in several different ways. Korean adoptees experience many of the same issues of identity and positionality at an individual scale that other Asian Americans experience at a familial or community scale, though the personal histories of Korean adoptees are often different from those of other Asian American populations. Korean adoptees are generally accepted as "culturally White" and often assume roles as racial and cultural bridge-makers that are remarkably similar to the social roles of Asian Americans described by Henry Yu in Thinking Orientals. However, the life histories of Korean adoptees in this research suggest that these classification schemes are not entirely adequate to describe Korean adoptee-identified individuals.
