A web search on “Korean adoption” or “inter country adoption” takes you to adoption agency sites for prospective adoptive parents. Searching for content that offers critical examination of this subject—examination that includes adoptee experiences—is more challenging. The reason is simple: There are far more searches by prospective adoptive parents, far less content content featuring critical examination and research, and little indication of how to identify quality content.

At Side by Side, we’ve been researching this subject for decades, and engaging with a network of leading scholars, researchers, educators, and professionals for 10+ years. We offer our best 3 ideas for researching this topic—one idea that is far superior to a Google search, one idea that provides a deep and empathetic dive, and one idea that focuses on adoptee experiences and stories.

Website: Harlow’s Monkey

A revered place to start a quality online search

Few adoptee scholars have critically examined adoption—especially inter-country adoption—longer and with greater distinction than JaeRan Kim, PhD, MSW, at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Her website is the record of a laudable career. Her publications are a marriage of thought leadership and advocacy. Her reading lists are both exhaustive and well considered. And her stature and involvement in the adoption scholar community means this website is the deepest of dives.

Book: Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism

A deeply empathetic and engrossing read

At this book’s heart, I think, is memoir. Or, I should say, 60 memoirs—the life stories of 60 adult Koreans adopted to the U.S. as infants and children—movingly woven by Kim Park Nelson, PhD, into a very specific examination of loss and race. The faces we, as Korean adoptees, see in the mirror—Korean faces, Asian American faces—are often at odds with our identities and our everyday lives, not to mention easily overlooked by non-adopted Asian Americans. The importance of loss and race in the life experiences of Korean adoptees cannot be understated.

Films: Side by Side

An emotionally intimate eye-to-eye encounter with 100 Korean adults, now living in 7 countries and speaking 6 languages

100 unedited oral histories — The personal memories and experiences of abandonment, relinquishment, orphanages, aging out, and inter-country adoption from South Korea.

38-minute award-winning documentary film — Streaming on Kanopy and licensed by New Day Films. Watch the trailer here.

10 thematic short films — providing a curated and excerpted tour through all 100 stories.