550 Words on 5/5/22
- TW for Adoptees, Adoptive Parents, Koreans, Korean Americans, the Korean government and anyone tired of me talking about BTS
“What happened to those babies? There were so many things about my mother I never understood. This is the only one I never forgave.” The Joy Luck Club screenplay, based on the novel by Amy Tan
5/5 is Children’s Day in Korea to “reflect the high value that families in Korea place on children and the fact that they are the future leaders of the country.” (Public Holidays Global).
How did my birth country export over 250,000 children for adoption across the world over the last 70 years?
“Yes, I hate you, you left me.
But I never stopped thinking about you, not even a day.
I miss you, honestly, but I’ll erase you.
’Cause it hurts less than to blame you…
I say that I’ll erase you
But I can’t really let you go yet”
BTS, Spring Day
I’m told my birth father kept a picture of me in his wallet, took it out and cried. Why did he bring me to an orphanage and give me away? I’ll never be able to ask him.
It’s been speculated that BTS’s song Spring Day is about the April 16, 2014 Sewol ferry “disaster in which an improperly inspected, overloaded, and unbalanced ferry capsized on an overnight journey. The ship had been loaded with twice the legal limit of cargo on its decks, and the ship’s crew had lied about the boat’s total weight. 304 passengers, the majority of them high school students on the way to a sight-seeing field trip, drowned, as they had been ordered to stay in their cabins until it was too late.” Esquire
“BTS’s 2017 hit “Spring Day” is a reflective, passionate tune about love, loss, and yearning for the past — although the song is unspecific about what exactly the yearning is for.” Esquire
“According to some reports, the South Korean government tried to silence entertainers who spoke out against it.” Esquire
Some are given away. Some are lost. Some are revered. I thought about this while watching the new documentary Cow, showing the daily monotony, unquestioned service and inevitable end of just one dairy cow’s life while we sat in comfort snuggling our family cat and dog.
Maybe someday someone will explain how life throws us where it may, in ways I can understand. I read. I write. I watch movies. And try to absorb others’ experiences. And maybe in that way we can learn to untangle our own.
“The movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” Roger Ebert
I have a good life. A really good life. None of this is to say I don’t or haven’t.
As a wise fellow Korean American Adoptee friend once told me, “adoption is gain, but it’s also loss.”
You can be loved and still lonely. You can be grateful but still bitter.
Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me what to do. Tell me that any of this makes sense.
