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Edited by Elaine Ramirez (elaine@groovekorea.com) COvER STORy www.groovekorea.com / September 2014 34 Story by Deva Lee / Illustrations by Pat Volz and Darren Farrell Korean adoptees fight uphill battle to find their roots H am Myung-nan picked up a baby, clothed only in blankets, from the pavement. It was June 16, 1984, and the baby girl was assumed to only be a couple days old. Ham took her to a police box in Mia-dong, Seoul, and she was then placed in a private adoption agency called the Social Welfare Society, ad- opted to Canada about nine months later and given the name Sarah Ishida. Growing up, Ishida had no exposure to Ko- rean language or culture. Her parents “just never thought that was important,” she says. She grew up observing Jewish holidays and learned the importance of remembering the Holocaust. For Ishida to revisit her own histo- ry, she would need to confront some uncom- fortable truths. It wasn’t until her late 20s that she was ready to look into her past. “There was some- thing blocking me from moving forward in my life,” she says. “(My adoption) was something that I’d never really addressed.” Although she had thought about her biological mother be- fore, it wasn’t until the summer of 2011 when she started thinking more seriously about her adoption and looking for her family. Ishida began her search by contacting the Canadian public agency that worked with Ko- rea’s SWS. After getting almost no support from them, she contacted Korea Adoption Services, the government’s adoption author- ity. But with 5,000 miles, a 17-hour time dif- ference and a language barrier between her and Seoul, it would be impossible to continue her search without returning to Korea. “(In the past) I would always deny having a desire to look for my birth family,” she says, but she finally decided “it would be better to be honest and to try.” On Feb. 12, 2012, she packed through the night and got on a plane. T r a c i n g a n u n k n o w n p a s T