Locating Adoptees in Asian America: Jane Jeong Trenka and Deann Borshay Liem

When I arrived in the United States at five months old in 1984, I became one of the thousands of Korean children who were adopted by American families during that decade. Adoption from South Korea began at the end of the Korean War (1950–1953) as a method to provide ostensibly better opportunities for war orphans and mixed race children. Korean adoption flourished as the nation ascended into the developed world and became a global economic leader. International adoption from South Korea peaked in the 1980s, and by the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, the global press criticized the nation,