Secrets and lies as South Korea's adoptees search for belonging

The Age

21-06-2025

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Singapore: There is a word in Korean, sosokgam or 소속감, which means 'a sense of belonging'.
For Carissa Smith, who was adopted from South Korea in 1985 and grew up on the NSW North Coast, it's something that has always been elusive. Instead, she has lived with a life-long feeling of dislocation and anguish.
'I always struggled with 'fitting in', like I have a hole inside of me,' she says.
'On my birthday, I would look at the moon and wonder whether my birth mother was looking at the same moon from Korea. I wondered if she missed me, I wondered if she loved me.'
Last year, she travelled to Seoul, hoping to find clues about her birth family that would paint a fuller picture of her identity, and answer questions that her three young Australian-Korean children might have one day.
It's a journey numerous Australian adoptees have made, which has taken them to the doors of the Eastern Social Welfare Society, the agency in Seoul that has facilitated the adoptions of some 3600 Korean children to Australia since 1978. It holds the files containing critical information about their past.
Smith says she was ushered into a room where a staff member sat across from her holding a manila folder of her records, using a ruler and her hands to obscure large sections of it.
'I begged her to show me those bits, because I just wanted to try and find my birth mother,' she says.