Stuck at the Border

“…I would like to tell you on behalf of the Korean people that we have tried hard to make a respectful country. However, as I stand in front of you I feel uncomfortable. I will tell you with all my courage that I love you all here. I can say to you with confidence that you will have a place in our hearts.” (p.172) This excerpt was taken from the speech given at the 2004 Gathering in Seoul by the South Korean prime minister of health and welfare. Filled with paternalistic affection, it only preludes to a larger problem which is discussed in Part II of Eleana Kim’s book Adopted Territory. The Korean adoptees may have a place in the hearts of the South Korean nation, but what about in their country? Kim says in her book that “Transnationally adopted Koreans are symbolically situated at the border of the nation. As spectors of both family and foreignness.. (p.173) For the rest of the book this can be clearly seen in Kim’s documentation of the adoptees’ experiences in Korea from the Taxi cab transactions to the story of an adoptee’s suicide. Being situtated at this border interferes with their processes of ‘home-building’ which is discussed in the article ‘Uprootings/Regroundings’. “Making home is about creating both pasts and futures through inhabiting grounds of the present.” (p.9) Something of which the inhabitants of South Korean are interfering with. Why the interference if this is indeed the adoptees’ ‘motherland’? Could it be that the Confucianistic ideas of ‘purity’ are at work? What ever it may by be, from Kim’s work it can be seen that the adoptee will forever always standing between the borders of being a ‘foreigner’ and a ‘Korean’.