by Michelle Y. K. Piper adopted from Sth Korea to Australia.
President Moon,
To you, I may be merely a statistic.
A Number.
Name: 86c-1335.
Born: “bastard”
Abandoned by: Bio Mother
These are the words inked into the brittle pages “cataloguing” my birth, 4 ½ months before I was separated from my mother, exiled from my motherland, sold, and sent overseas via the process of “adoption”.
For 34 years, I have carried the burden of shame and humiliation for decisions of which I had no control over, or voice.
For 34yrs, it has been expected of me by society and the world at large to be “grateful” for being adopted; for not being “aborted” or left to languish in poverty raised by a single mother and ostracised by a society that is unaccepting of such a dishonourable and disgraceful existence.
Expected to be “grateful” to have been “chosen” to go to a “better life”.
Tell me President Moon, how many Korean adoptees actually went to a “better life”, do you know?
How many of us were checked upon or followed up on in the years after our adoption?
Any..?
Have you ANY knowledge or understanding of the suffering and trauma so many of your nation’s children were exposed to after going to “better” lives?
Are you cognisant of the fact we are 4 times more at risk of suicide than the average person, due solely to the trauma of relinquishment? Are you aware of how many adoptees have since lost their lives to suicide?
If our own people, the people who govern our nation continue to portray us as disposable, products for export, how do you hypothesise the rest of the world to perceive us? To value us?
To know who we are and where we came from, to be treated with the SAME decency and respect as any other being, for OUR lives to count, to matter, to be valued for more than just the going price of the highest bidder; can you honestly argue this to be such an immense or unreasonable request?
Why do we as adoptee’s continue pay to the price for the mistakes and failures of the elites who governed generations before us?
Why do our nations children continue to pay the price for a deeply flawed and failed system? A system put in place to “protect” and “care”, to safeguard society’s most vulnerable and helpless, to protect those unable to defend themselves or make their suffering known.
A system which has catastrophically failed to fulfill its duty of care time and time again, a system that cataclysmically FAILED in its duty to protect 16 month old Jeong-In.
My status in Korea as a child born out of wedlock to a single mother without consent or approval from the elders of our family, without the approval of society, meant from the day I was born, my life was of no more value to our nation but for the monetary profit that could be gained from the sales transaction of my adoption.
To you, I am a faceless statistic.
Just another number on a piece of paper; a data entry in the government system, an easy money maker used by Korea in its resolve to rise to the advanced economic powerhouse it is today.
To you, I my be a nothing, a nobody, an abhorrent by-product of the highest betrayal to a nation who’s social, political, and legal structures continue to be governed by the principles of Confucianism.
To you, I may be but one number, but I am one that represents over 200,000 of your displaced children throughout the world.
You seal our records, deny us the very basics of human rights.
You have attempted to keep us faceless, to keep our voices from being heard.
You have watched in reticence as we have been sold, trafficked, abused, and murdered.
You have buried our truths and silenced our voices.
Attempted to censor the knowledge and proof of our existence as effortlessly as you have managed to erase our pasts.
You try to placate us with empty words and blanket apologies, yet time and time again Korea has CLEARLY established how little value it truly places upon the wellbeing and lives of its children.
Not only via the tens of thousands of adoptees scattered worldwide, but through the 250 students it left to die onboard the sinking Sewol Ferry.
250 children who could have been saved, weren’t.
Through the way in which obedience and perfection are EXPECTED and DEMANDED of every child; academically, socially, even physically, pushing Korean suicide rates into some of the highest in the world and the leading cause of death nationwide for ages 9 -24 yrs.
These are YOUR children!!!
Our nation’s future!
If it is to have a future.
You seem to show little to no regard for lives of the young, yet death rates now surpass birth rates, leaving the question how much longer will our people endure?
How much time until our race is no more?
The image of Korea that is so carefully projected onto the world stage, is nothing but a farce.
A nation consumed with pride, greed, and ambition revelling in its technological and economic advancements, whilst continuing its long and profound history of human rights abuse. Revelling in the global phenomenon of K-pop, K-dramas, and flawless plastic surgery turning citizens into life-like anime dolls all of which amounts to nothing but superficial, pretty, shiny, plastic distractions; band aids made for minor cuts, but with which Korea uses in attempt to conceal the extensive, critical, and ineffable wounds scarcely “hidden” beneath the surface.
Deliberately refashioning Korea’s image for the fulfilment and pacification for the global arena while remaining steadfast and loyal to a fundamentally flawed, corrupt, and broken system which continues to extort and profit from the separation, suffering and abuse of its people makes those ruling over the South no better than the tyrannical dictatorship oppressing our people in the North.
To you, we may merely be statistics.
But we are no longer voiceless, and we will no longer be silenced!
We are over 200,000 strong, each with a face, a name, and a story.
We had Mothers and Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, Grandparents, Aunties, Uncles, and Cousins.
No matter how hard you may try to dehumanise us, I can promise you, in this you shall not succeed.
I will no longer be silenced. I will remain faceless no more, for I am NOT a thing.
I was born in Haeundae, Busan.
Daughter of- Kim, Yeo Kyeong (Mother) and Jang, Hyeon Soo (Father).
I have endured racism, child sexual abuse and rape on two separate occasions in my “better” life so far.
I have fought with an Eating Disorder for 21 years, made countless attempts to end my life, all of which I have been brought back from.
My arms will forever bear the permanent, grotesque, disfiguring scars from which my life’s blood has so often freely flown, only to be replaced, time and time again in the desperate attempts to save a life that in your eyes, seems of little to no value, and not worth saving at all.
Tell me President Moon, what will you do when there is no longer a population to sustain our race?
When will you and the people who continue to govern our nation admit culpability, take responsibility for their duty to safeguard our people, to protect the vulnerable and the voiceless?
To guard, secure and preserve our nation’s future and the future of its children.
We are NOT objects!
We are NOT inconsequential!
WE are YOUR children!!!
We are NOT COMMODITIES!!!
We are NOT a product to be labelled and packaged for sale!
We are NOT replaceable, exchangeable, refundable goods for export no matter how hard you have tried to dehumanise us.
President Moon, We are NOT THINGS!!!
well said.