Birth Is More Than Once: The Inner World of Adopted Korean Children

"Why does my son reject everything Korean?" asked the adoptive father of a 6 year old Korean boy. Although I am Korean, I did not know the answer, but I became very curious to find out why. That's how my interest in adopted Korean children began. What happened to them after they left Korea, the Land of the Morning Calm? Later, I found out why the boy rejected everything Korean. I studied adopted Korean children for my doctoral research in psychology. The answer was not that he was trying to be ungracious or ungrateful but the most important thing to him at the time was to feel like he belonged to his adoptive family. He wanted to be just like his parents instead of being told that he was Korean, that he was different from them. This and other findings from the research are published in my book called "Birth is More than Once: The Inner World of Adopted Korean Children."