(gentle music)
- I am 53 years old, and I was born in '69, maybe,
was raised in the United States
at the age of three and a half,
because before that, I was in Korea,
but I was adopted to a loving family in the United States.
I don't know exactly where,
but I was found at Banyawol Railroad Station, East Daegu.
I was found at about two and a half.
They have to estimate my age because I didn't speak.
They said there was too much trauma,
which is why I probably didn't speak,
so they had to kind of gauge it.
But then later on, I got some correspondence
that says maybe they were off by six months,
so I might be six months younger.
I had a great family.
I think I was very fortunate on how wonderful my family is,
my mom and my dad, and my brothers and sisters.
I have five brothers and sisters.
I never was treated like I was adopted.
I was always treated special, but not like I didn't belong.
I always knew I was Korean,
but I had really no exposure to the culture at all.
I was raised as an American,
I was raised in a white family.
And even when I looked in the mirror,
I always thought my eyes were not squinty,
which I never understood why kids would say that to me.
I'd look in the mirror, I'm like,
but they like, go straight across just like yours.
The environment I had when I was growing up,
we all worked really hard.
There was no special treatment in that regard.
Everyone had their chores.
There were six kids, dogs, other pets,
so there was a lot to maintain.
My dad was a middle school teacher
and my mother was a pediatric nurse.
By the time I came, little bit after, maybe little before,
I don't remember, she basically took care of the house.
There were six kids by that time.
I loved learning.
I loved my teachers.
I can't say the students really loved me,
or at least they didn't necessarily act like it.
I grew up in an Italian town.
Everybody was white.
There might have been one black kid, myself,
and then someone who was half Italian, half Japanese.
That was pretty much my grade school years.
It was a bit rough.
I wish kids were nicer.
I got spat on.
One girl told her boyfriend to run me over with his bike.
My blood was purple, green, you know, everything but red.
It was rough, but I really loved learning,
so I loved being in school,
and the teachers were really good to me.
Like, maybe they saw how hard it was for me
or they just saw that I loved to learn,
so they took care of me in that way.
My brothers and sisters went to school with me too,
so they would always like, kind of look out for me.
The weird thing is
is I was never treated like I was adopted,
so to me, I always belonged.
I always knew that I had family in Korea.
I always said, especially when I was mad,
"I'm going to Korea to find my real family."
But it wasn't possible, I was 12 years old.
But my mom always knew that I wanted to go to Korea.
She supports me now even with that, 'cause I've been here,
even though she wishes I was there back in the States.
In 2018, there was a post about a welcome home program,
and I jumped on that idea, 'cause right at that time
I had seen the movie "Lion."
When he found his family going on Google,
I was like, well, maybe there's something online
that can help me.
And that's when I saw the Facebook group,
Korean American Adoptees,
and I got a free DNA kit through them.
So then I came here for three weeks,
and I absolutely loved it. (laughing)
And I was so happy.
It was very exciting.
The program assigned you a native Korean buddy,
and they do everything together,
and that way you can navigate without feeling like
you're traveling alone in a foreign country.
It was absolutely wonderful.
I toured the week with the program.
We got to do different cultural things.
And then I spent a week in Daegu, which is where I'm from.
And I rode a bike, I walked around,
visited where I was found, shed a ton of tears,
and then I spent a week, I rented a car
and I drove around the peninsula
and visited different areas.
It was a wonderful three weeks.
When I first came to Korea,
I was amazed that there were so many Korean eyes around me.
I had never been, like, that many people that were Korean.
So coming here, just being among Korean people,
I actually felt like I was home.
In the States, because I know I'm different,
because I know I look different and I walk in a room
or walk the street and people see me,
I always felt like my shoulders were up a little bit,
kind of like an unknown tension.
But then when I came to Korea, my shoulders went down.
I was like, whoa, what is this?
There was no, there wasn't the same feeling
as when I was in the United States.
It was very interesting.
I always wanted to find my birth family,
ever since I was little.
I was very conscious that I had somewhere
family here in Korea.
But in 2017, 2018, I took a DNA test,
and it just kinda sits there,
just hoping someone will come in the future and match up.
2019, I got an email from someone saying
through the My Heritage portal, "Are you Korean by birth?"
And I'm like, "Why is someone contact-"
That was the first time someone contacted me.
And I immediately went to the My Heritage website,
and I pull up the page and it says,
full sister, Kim Holland in Belgium.
Freaking out, crying, pacing, I can't believe this.
I cannot believe I have a sister.
And I believed it right away.
Like, science, DNA, DNA doesn't lie.
And my sister's like, her husband's like,
"I don't know, contact her tomorrow.
She's probably a lie." (laughing)
And then I emailed her right back,
"Here's my Facebook, here's my phone number."
And we ended up sending pictures back and forth.
Turns out we both had daughters the same year,
we both had sons the same year.
Who has that kind of connection with somebody?
And we're not twins.
Her husband saw us video chatting,
and remember, he was skeptical,
and once we video chatted, he was like,
"Oh my god, you guys are sisters."
We didn't grow up together at all.
In fact, when we were separated, she was an infant.
So she was probably about three weeks old
if the estimates on birth dates are correct,
so I knew I had a sister.
I mean, your mother can't be pregnant for nine months
and you not know what's coming.
There's gotta be talk about it.
I probably spent about three weeks with her, I guess.
When I came back in 2018,
after trying to look for my family,
it was very emotional for me.
I really thought I was gonna find my family.
So I came back and I had a few weeks,
and I was like crying, and like, now what do I do?
I'm not someone who believes in the cosmos,
or signs, or anything like that thing,
but I had two thoughts that week.
One was my mother's still alive,
and the other one was, I had a sister.
But that was the first time ever I had that thought.
The only time that came back to that
was my mom said that at the airport,
she took a picture of me and another baby.
Remember, I was like three and a half,
so it was me and an infant.
That picture she put on the piano,
and it wasn't anybody I knew,
she wasn't related to me.
And my mom said that when I was 10 years old, I got mad.
And my mom was mad at me,
and I said, "Are you gonna give me away
like you gave my sister away?"
It's like, "Mom, you never told me that I said this."
It's like, where does that come from?
Like, I don't even know what that picture is,
I don't remember that picture.
But at that age, I said I had a sister.
Somewhere inside of me, I feel like,
knew all the time. I had a sister.
And we're so alike it's crazy.
I love my adopted family, they are wonderful,
but I'm not like them, I'm actually like my sister.
It's just really cool.
Our first meeting was actually in Korea.
My Heritage arranged it so that we could have
our first face-to-face meeting at Daegu Railroad Station,
and they recorded the whole thing, and it was phenomenal.
She, of course, being Belgian, isn't crying.
Me, being who I am, is just, you know, a sopping mess.
We spent like, a week together,
and it was absolutely wonderful.
We were singing, and dancing, and eating.
And it was her first time to Korea,
this was now my second time,
so you know, I got to be big sister, which I am anyways,
even though she's taller than me.
And then after that, it felt like when she had left
that I wasn't gonna see her again,
because you know, that was such an emotional time
and then she was leaving Korea before me.
But my business was such that I could travel.
So once a month I would see her, I would go to Belgium,
and I'd spend a little bit less than a week
and I'd hang out with her,
and I met her family, and then COVID came.
With self-reflection, you always say like,
what should I have done, what could I have done?
How would I change things?
I really wish that, even though I was raised in the States,
that I was happy with who I was.
I really wish that I just accepted my limitations
and enjoyed the things that I could do
instead of feeling sorry for myself,
or trying to aspire to what other people thought I should be
or who they were, thinking I had to be like them.
I really wish I thought I was good enough all along
and that I didn't have to try to fit in
or wish I was like them.
I wish I was happy with myself.
And I see that like, a lot of times people downplay
who they are or what they have.
And that's important to be humble,
but at the same time, I really wish that I could have been
just satisfied with who I was.
And I hope that other people,
like when I see young people who wish they were this,
wish they were that, don't like their nose.
When Asian people don't like their eyes, that kills me.
I'm like, your eyes are gorgeous.
Why would you wanna change them?
They're so unique.
There's nothing-
Yeah, people have double eyelids, whatever.
You don't.
It's okay, there's nothing wrong with it.
It's beautiful.
I wish we could all just be happy with ourselves
and just say, you know what, you're beautiful.
It doesn't matter, you're beautiful,
because, inside you're beautiful.
My name is Christine Pennell.
This is my Korean American story.
(gentle music)