This week I’ve been waking up at all hours, pacing my flat.
Looking at the photo of Kim Sook Ja and myself over and over. Reading my posts about adoption over and over.
Overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the task ahead of me, of the near impossibility of finding her and asking for her help to uncover the truth.
Sitting at the window, staring out at the Supreme Court building’s logo of justice, balancing her scales.
There is no justice. There are only companies like Holt holding all the cards, playing God with lives. Does Holt sleep at night? Btstormb is right. They could still help, it is within their power. It is the right thing to do. But they’re heartless bastards.
Do you hear me, Molly? Molly Holt? It’s not too late to make up for the past. But soon it will be, judgement day is just around the corner, and you know it.
Hello Korea ! 
Not sure Holt will wake up and smell the coffee. Good luck in the search for truth. I stumbled here via bloglines.
Yeah, why should they when they can get away with it?
Well, they’re not going to silence me. If I go down, I’m taking them with me.
Trust me. They have been getting away with it for a long time. Scary thing is that even adoptees work for them in pretty high-up positions.
Yes. They want to believe all adoptions are savior stories like theirs, and REFUSE to see anything to the contrary. Because their myth is delicate, and one broken thread is the start of a chain which will run unchecked, rendering their stockings useless.
I think it’s some amoral cost/benefit rationalization like I learned in college: curved roads cost less to build, even though the increase in death toll can be calculated. But because there’s no dollar value (or rather, the insurance industry’s value for human life) is so much less than the investment in time and cost of the excavation required to build a straight road, they make the decision to go with the curved road, even though they know people will die.
More traffic, quicker to build, less expensive…
So what if there are a few casualties along the way?
But there are the unmeasured tragedies as well. Even one of Harry Holt’s own adopted children killed himself. Now tell me that death had nothing to do with being torn from your native land to be adopted to a foreign country to live with a zealot?
I’ve talked extensively with Steve Kalb. I’ve gotten email from Susan Cox. I’ve nearly thrown up when I read the opening address from Holt’s new KAD CEO.
I may have expended way too much of my energy the past year digging for the truth, but they’ve devoted their adult lives and careers to perpetuating this lie for self validation. So actually, they’re far more pathetic than I’ll ever be.
Thank you for bringing them up. I feel much better now!
Not every adoptees working for Holt have savior stories.
The first KAD I met during my family search was working at Holt Korea. The little bit of what she told me about her was far from being a saviour story. Listening to her was like listening to myself.
My story is also far from being a savior story, but I’ve been thinking for many years Holt to be saint despite my anger at them. I didn’t work for Holt, but I brought gifts for the residants of Holt Ilsan Center. Then once in Korea, I even went to work as volunteer and I also lived at Molly Holt’s house for the rest of my stay(which was arraged by the KAD I met there).
After I came back here, despite knowing that Holt never contacted my father before putting me up for adoption, I praised them to all my friends for their work at Ilsan Center.
It took me a second trip there, to open my eyes and understand their evil actions. Then, I came back here I cursed the name of Holt.
It’s called brainwashing/unbrainwashing.
If the dead could speak, Myung Sook, if the dead could speak.
I just wish the living would speak…
The latest infuriating thing that drives me to bang my head on the walls is the argument that we must be denied access to our identities to protect the birth mothers.
OK. I’m a foundling. How the hell does that justify denying me any of my records?
And even if that logic was true in most cases, has the contacting of any mothers asking them if they want contact ruined any lives?
NO.
After 18 or more years, most birth mothers are eaten up by guilt, dying from curiosity about their child’s fate, and looking for some kind of resolution. The mother who rejects reunion is the exception, rather than the rule.
The mother whose search was frustrated by the adoption agency in the documentary and who is reuniting now with her daughter from the Netherlands was callously told by the adoption agency, (paraphrasing) “You did nothing for years, so what’s your hurry now?”
I am so sick of people blaming the victim.
As a subject of manipulation all my childhood, I can tell you that we are made to feel responsible for the actions we are coerced into doing. And as we become cognizant of our own participation in our crimes against ourselves, we feel shame for our powerlessness. It is true birthmoms are silent and want to hide their shame. But to be locked into silence long after they have learned to value and empower themselves is excessively cruel punishment.
Giving up your baby is applauded as an event. But experiencing the trauma of living with the absence of that child extends far beyond that one event. Any unhappiness about that decision is penalized and vilified. The rationale that this is what mothers want are the words of an exploiter. There is nobody the adoption agencies are protecting except themselves.
Identifying information should be open and accessible when a child legally becomes an adult. It is no less difficult to stipulate this at relinquishment than it is to stipulate termination of parental rights forever. Forever is a ludicrous contract term.