I've recently re-realised that i am entitled to an F-4 visa from South Korea. I say re-realised because of a great article Mijoung forwarded to me from Sunday's Chronicle. Two things stood out in my mind, that i've been thinking about a lot lately.
1) The adoptee F-4 visa
i remember a fellow adoptee friend lobbying for this in Seoul years ago. She was working on it when I was there in '96--it came to be in 1999. Apparently this special visa affords me the rights of a native Korean. I can live there indefinitely, buy land, start a business, and get a scholarship to study Korean. Props from the homeland! Though, will i ever feel that Korea is my homeland? What does that even mean, i ask myself.
It's always funny when Korean adoptees long for the "homeland." When i finally got to Seoul (the second time, with luggage for a year...) all i longed for was peanut butter, fresh air, and my grandma's miso soup and oyako donburi. Yet, when i finally settled into my life in Seoul, i experienced times when i felt more at home there than anywhere else i've been in the world.
2) A new art installation, which will appear in the subways of three big cities--the "Awareness Wall" featuring photos of 3000 Korean adoptees who've left Korea.
The article goes on to say..."A small, passionate contingent is challenging international adoption,which they say strips South Korean adoptees of their cultural identity. They compare it to cultural genocide, akin to taking American Indian or aboriginal children from their communities and placing them with white families to "civilize" them."
In my mind, the overseas adoption experience cannot be compared with either the American Indian, nor the aboriginal experience. But that said, i was lucky to have been placed with an Asian family. i embraced the culture of my adopted Hawai'i Japanese-American parents.
Identity, lost identity, multiple identities. It's time i put this all to film. Ever since i was a lowly PA a few years ago in a film by Joyce Lee, i've had this screenplay being written in my head...
Possible titles:
Homeland Bound
Yo Homeland Rocks!
Finding Homeland
Homeland: A True Underdog Story
Bowling for Homeland
The H Word
The Sound of Homeland
i joke, but about the film, i'm not.
1 comment:
oh yeah! being a fellow adoptee, i hear ya'...the quest for a sense of "home" is constant and elusive; like condensation which both creates an enveloping fog around you, and, yet at the same time....always seems to dissipate...
Post a Comment