CROWDFUNDING LAUNCH LUNAR NEW YEAR OF THE DRAGON!

Welcome to my project, Run Towards My Family, a Birth Family Search (BFS), a social art intervention, and a marathon running challenge in the form of a durational endurance performance where you can follow my journey as I literally run to find my first family.

L: Recent run at Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, 2024, photo: Aleks Slota
R: Sexy Girl performance, 2001, photo: 박지혁

My name is Mirae kate-hers RHEE, and I am known for working in social practice, performance, and installation. I’ve conducted many social interventions in Seoul and Berlin over the last two decades. These performative works deal with issues of identity, gender and racial discrimination, ethnic solidarity, and using language learning, food and cuisine, cultural artifacts, and social media to critique and celebrate. In fact, one of my past social interventions was successfully funded through Kickstarter, which you can check out here if you're interested. 

Upper L: infant photo at 3 months old in a South Korean orphanage 
Upper R: toddler photo at 2-3 years old in the US
Lower L: middle school track team as a 12 year old 
Lower R: playing 풓물 (poogmul) with Loose Roots, University of Chicago drumming group in my twenties

I was transracially adopted from South Korea to the United States, but I have been living in Berlin, Germany for the last 15 years. I speak both fluent broken German and Korean with a serious Detroit accent, where I grew up. Just kidding, but I have a funny midwestern accent, I do know that.

My interest in my heritage was quite precocious and I returned to South Korea for the first time to study Korean traditional music and dance in the late nineties when I started searching for my first family. I have been the focus of numerous newspaper articles and was on television three times: once on MBC and twice on KBS but with no luck. I even conducted a search as an art project in 2004 called the Missing Persons Project, where I posted up missing persons posters of myself in the neighborhood where I was born.

L: Missing Persons Poster, 2004 
R: Missing Persons Project Photo, 2004

In the past few years, I reluctantly did several DNA tests in Seoul and in the United States, because I was desperate for any connection to a close relative. As I am now middle aged, the chances increase that my South Korean parents have passed. I hope to reunite with them before one of us dies. I believe that knowing one’s roots and one’s medical history is a human right.

Over twenty years ago when I conducted my first BFS, the situation was vastly different. We were pathologized and demonized by adoption institutions, adoptive parents, and the society at large. Any interest shown in our birth family was considered ungrateful and many of us who looked critically at the burgeoning adoption industry were considered angry adoptees. It was a painful and challenging time to be an overseas adopted Korean (OAK) looking for answers. I am happy that newer generations of OAKs are getting more support with navigating BFS and their reclamation of culture and language is seemingly compassionate and accessible. I lacked sufficient post-adoptive resources from my adoptive country, as well as South Korea and those adoptee-run organizations had yet to be established. One could count on one hand, the ones run by South Korean nationals.

In fact, I believe that for the most part the South Korean society was ignorant about our existence until we started returning in droves. Despite the current supportive organizations, I have exhausted all the means necessary to conduct my BFS. I hope through this project my first family will see me and come forward. I feel vulnerable and this project is scary for me, but I want to be courageous and “run towards the danger,” as Sarah Polley does in her eponymous memoir.

Short film made for Inventing Genealogies, 2021

OAKs have come of age and the stories of return and reunion are numerous, emotional, and at times heart-wrenching. I want to use my experience of overcoming my despair and depression with running to inspire, build community, and empower others. While my ultimate goal is to reunite with my first family, I also find it important to add to an increasing awareness of the existence and challenges that OAKs navigate in their lives, being separated from not only our biological families but also our native land, language, culture and sense of belonging. We are over 200,000 sent into exile from our birthland to 15 different countries in Europe, the United States and Australia.

Many of us were stolen from our first families by overzealous social workers looking to fill the demands of the West. Many of our mothers were pressured to relinquish us. Poor families had no access to social welfare services in order to keep their children because none were available. The post-war South Korean government saved money with the overseas transfer of "unwanted" children. In fact, most of our paperwork was fabricated by the adoption agencies to expedite our adoptions to the West. Ethnic studies professor Kim Park Nelson goes on to report that even in 2001, transnational adoption had brought South Korea an estimated 15-20 million dollars, which doesn’t even take into consideration how much money they spent avoiding social welfare and institutional care costs.[1]

I, like many of my fellow adopted cohorts, was not adopted into a wealthy, privileged, and educated family, the overwhelming belief when one is transferred from a developing country to a western one. Rather I was adopted to working-class parents who could not have children of their own and were offered social welfare and tax incentives to adopt internationally. Critical Adoption Studies scholars have shown that the beginnings of intercountry adoption in the United States was founded on the Christian saviour complex and the widespread belief that such a humanitarian gesture could “rescue, Christianize and civilize the children of Korea.” [2]

[1] Park Nelson, Kim. “Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace,” Outsiders Within. Writings on Transracial Adoption, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Et al., South End Press, 2006, pp. 89-104.

[2] Hübinette, Tobias. Comforting an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture, Jimoondang, 2006.

Running to Overcome a Chronic Illness
As an adopted person, I don’t have the right or privilege to have access to family medical history. Even if my record contained my parents' names, I wouldn't be given an anonymous medical history document. The system continues to treat adopted people as property, putting the rights of parents, adoption agencies, and adoptive parents before us. Thus, I know how important it is to keep fit and healthy now to prevent and prepare for any future unforeseen medical developments.

I have suffered from endometriosis since I was a teen but I only got diagnosed when I moved to Berlin in my thirties, when a doctor took my painful symptoms seriously and sent me to a medical specialist. Endometriosis is, in fact, genetic, and knowing early my propensity to becoming ill would have urged me to get the right treatment. Instead, this undiagnosed illness caused my infertility. 

Running was my COVID hobby. As an older runner, I had no delusions to try to be an athlete. I was just trying to stave off my anxiety during the pandemic. Interestingly, as my running practice became more intense and the distances I attempted became longer, I found immense relief from this chronic disease, an illness that has no cure. Unfortunately, we know so little about endometriosis because women’s health research is shamefully underfunded. Endometriosis is considered a disability in extreme cases. My situation would have certainly been so diagnosed because of the debilitating symptoms I endured over two decades, but I wasn't taken seriously by the medical establishment. Endometriosis prevented me from taking on tough challenges because of the condition of my mental health, including depression and anxiety, of which I have often struggled with, until I started running long-distance. Through my project I want to bring attention to adoptee's lack of genetic medical history and the illnesses that affect us most pointedly when we aren't diagnosed in time.  

What Your Support Pays for: 
This is currently a DIY project. Generous friends and acquaintances have already donated their time with assistance, but I also need to hire professionals to shoot photo and video, to do social media consulting, and very importantly to translate materials into the Korean language. In addition, I would like to hire a social media assistant to help me edit videos and digital assets for my TikTok and Instagram accounts as I post my progress for 40 weeks, the average time of a baby's gestation in the womb until the Seoul Marathon in November. In order to reach the largest audience as possible in order to find my family, I would like to hire consultants to help me create a project pitch for corporate partnerships, like the sponsor of the Seoul Marathon.

What My Story Says About Us:
While my specific search for “authentic” self is unique, it resonates not only with the many people who have been (transracially) adopted, but also with stories of forced migration, immigration, belonging, and identity, that can cross racial and cultural boundaries and touch generational histories of the trauma of being separated, especially families who have been separated by war, poverty, and geopolitical forces. Specifically in a Korean context, this touches not only adopted people, but also those separated by the boundary between North and South Korea. In a German context, this touches on the forced separation of families in West Germany and the GDR. There are numerous global narratives that my story resonates with, including children who were kidnapped and taken to Russia recently in Ukraine, refugees who left without their families from Syria and Afghanistan. My story is a universal one. Though I do not know the specific circumstances of my relinquishment, I have seen and heard enough to know that many adoption systems are corrupt and driven by greed, and a lot can be unpacked when we frame them as a result of unequal power dynamics. International adoption in particular, can be seen as connected to the ongoing predicament of postcolonial relationships between 1st world and developing countries. 
 

I am looking forward to sharing this work with you all and I hope that despite my very specific personal situation, that universal themes of loss, separation, return, and belonging strike a nerve in anyone who has endeavored to live a full human life with integrity, despite fear, shame, rejection, and abandonment. I am sure I'll be a different person afterwards, which for me makes a lot of sense, since all my artistic work is about transformation. I hope to be reborn.

Thanks for reading! 진심으로 감사드립니다. 

Liebe Grüße,

Mirae kh RHEE

ABOUT the Creator 

(이미래/李未來) Mirae kh RHEE is a transnational artist, researcher, writer, and speaker, who has been based in Berlin, Germany since 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include Missing Merope at the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles, 2023; Sammel-Sucht, Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum Berlin), 2023; Books and Things, Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University, 2022; Unfinished Business, SOMA Artspace, Berlin, 2021; and Inventing Genealogies, Baruch College, NY, 2021. RHEE has upcoming presentations at the University of Chicago, Sarah Lawrence College, Residenzschloss (Dresden Castle), the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum Berlin), and the San Diego Museum of Art. mirae-kh-rhee.com

Call to Action : What can you do?

Follow: @runtowardsmyfamily on instagram and Tiktok to accompany me on my journey

Spread the word: tell everyone, especially your South Korean friends and community

Amplify OAK (overseas adopted Korean) and other adopted BIPOC voices and stories

Educate: learn more about biological women's health issues like Endometriosis and other genetic illnesses that can detrimentally affect those without family medical history

Donate: Become one of my financial supporters and help make this project happen!

어떻게 지원 하시겠습니까?

1. 팔로우 해주세요: @runtowardsmyfamily 인스타그램(instagram) 과 틱탁 (Tiktok)을 팔로우 해 제 가족 찾기 기행에 동행해 주세요!
2. 널리 알려주세요: 널리 모두에게 알려주세요. 특히 한국에 계신 여러분들의 친구분들과 지인들께 홍보 해주세요!
3. 해외입양인 (OAK – Overseas Adopted Korean)들과 입양인들의 이야기들을 상세히 부연하고 알려주세요!
4. 학습해 주세요: 자궁내막염과 같은 여성질환과 유전병에 관해서 학습해주세요. 자신의 가족병력을 전혀 모르는 입양인들에게 해로운 영향을 미칠 수 있는 유전병에 대해서 좀 더 조사하고 배워 주세요.
5. 기부 해주세요: 제 재정적 후원자가 되주세요! 이번 프로젝트가 성공적으로 마무리 되도록 도와주세요!