Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways adult Korean adoptees negotiate and (re)invent their identities as people whose lives have been shaped by the transnational adoption process. It analyses the ambivalent transitional spaces Korean adoptees occupy in the process of understanding what it means to be a Korean adoptee.

Paper long abstract:

Korean adoptees are often viewed as 'anomalies' in South Korea and their adoptive countries because while Korean adoptees have physical characteristics that superficially categorise them as Korean or simply as Asian, they often identify with the white Western culture in which they were raised rather than South Korea, the country where they were born. Therefore, Korean adoptees can be seen to occupy a liminal space through which they experience their identities as ambivalent and subject to negotiation and contestation. This does not mean that Korean adoptees are necessarily sentenced to a postmodern hyper-existence of uncertainty and confusion, nor are their identities simplified in terms of celebratory postmodernism that glorifies hybridised identities. Based on data gathered from in-depth interviews and ethnographic research conducted in South Korea, this paper will analyse how Korean adoptees enact and (re)invent their identities in transitional spaces on the edge of 'here' and 'there' by focusing specifically on their lived experiences as they negotiate what it means to be a person whose lives were irrevocably altered by transnational adoption. The aim is to contest immutable assumptions about identity and to suggest ways that Korean adoptees experience identity as a process of negotiating transitional spaces, which are always on the verge of change.