I AM KOREAN AMERICAN

Own Words

A young mother arrived at the gate of the Reception Center of World Vision, in YongDongPo, on the southern bank of the Han River just outside Seoul.She had been told, ‘look for the flag of their father’. She had brought her four-year old son and one year old daughter to send them to the land of their father, for what she knew would be a far better life than here.

The young mother knew that her children’s father had been a ‘foreign devil’, and that they were cursed and rejected by her people. Korean people called them “TuiGi”-“dust of the street” or “child of the devil”.

My name is Don Gordon Bell and I was that boy . My sister and I were adopted in the first flights in 1956 and actually  adopted into the same family. I was one of the Holt Adoption Agency’s first orphans to be processed and sent to America in May, 1956 and my sister followed in December on the first Chartered flight of 76 war babies to meet their new families.

Through a simple error in writing Chinese characters on our documents however, we grew up thinking that we had different mothers/fathers. Through a series of events we learned that our Korean mother had tried to keep us but finally in love and great sacrifice, gave us up for adoption, to the land of our American father. I grew up in suburban Southern California, served in the Vietnam war, studied psychology, acted in B-movies filmed in the Philippines, a real jack-of-all-trades. Through DNA testing I recently discovered my birth father’s roots and at 58 years old I am still working through my Adoption Identity. I am proud of all my ethnic and by adoption roots.

I have lived back in Seoul since 1995, teaching English, very involved in This Thing of Ours-Adoption. A charter member of GOA’L in 1997 I have helped other adoptees who have come to our motherland, seeking their own Adoption Identity. I have a blog, KoreanWarBaby that focuses on the present conditions of Adoption both Domestically in Korea and overseas. I believe in a balanced multi-tiered solution must be continued as Korea slowly adapts and modernizes. Drop by and leave a comment. We all can learn from each others’ experiences in the complex plethora of stories.