When I was growing up, I thought that all babies came from the airport. Which was true, at least for me. I was born Jang Hye Ryeong on June 15, 1988, but Jessica Hobson was born at the airport on Dec. 16, 1988. The picture of a six-month-old child coming into the arms of her parents is one that hangs proudly in my parent’s home, indicating the start of our family. It’s as if I sprang to life at that moment, Athena-like. As Jessica, maybe I did begin a life there at the MSP airport when the social worker brought me off the plane, 6,000 miles away from the country of my birth. Though Hye Ryeong had to go somewhere, didn’t she?

I am one of 200,000 Korean adoptees around the world, and our numbers are still growing. I am not an orphan. My biological mother still lives, and I can see that my smile mirrors her own in a translation of genes. My voice and hers are unidentifiable in all that is similar. When I look in the mirror, I see frustratingly straight hair and lashes that refuse to curl in the way that magazines do. However, when you look at me you might see thick, Asian hair and slanted Asian eyes. This is my reality – a dual identity of non-belonging.

I try not to speak for all adoptees, but the truth of the matter is adoptees face similar situations wherever they grow up. Two-thirds of all Korean adoptees find their way to the United States. Interestingly, 10 percent of all adopted Korean Americans come to Minnesota, meaning that there are approximately 15,000 of us roaming around the state. We make up the majority of all Korean Americans. We are not Koreans by culture although, looking at us, most people can’t tell the difference. And because families don’t come cheap, the majority of adoptees come to middle class or upper-middle class couples. This means that many adoptees end up in generic, homogenously white suburbs and communities that subtly infuse racism in a way that seems integrating and diverse.

Growing up in a suburb of the Twin Cities, I was one of the few people of color in the city. I was often, if not always, the only person of color in the classroom. It was a relief to be able to go to Korean Culture Camp for a week once a year. I giggled with my peers as we sat in the bleachers and watched our parents search in vain for our faces, not being able to rely on identifying us by our black hair or Asian features. Once a year, I felt as if people weren’t picking me out of the crowd.

But that week of Korean kimchi and rice, folk dancing and language classes left me feeling less like a Korean and more like an outsider. I could never be as graceful as the real Korean dancers. No matter how hard I tried, I liked macaroni and cheese more than bulgogi. I knew that this was a vacation and a reprieve from the constant racial consciousness that had been growing since my adoption day.

Before going to school, I had been surrounded by people who loved me, who saw beyond (or failed to see at all) my skin color and accepted me as a part of the family. My adoptive parents, with the best intentions possible, taught me how to be their daughter. But my blond, Norwegian mother couldn’t teach me about being an Asian woman. Neither could my father, for all his well-meaning attempts.

Being an Asian raised by typically white, Scandinavian parents was more difficult than people imagined. The adoption agency had taught them how to love a child as their own – a replacement of the biological child they were incapable of conceiving – but they were not taught how to raise a child that was not their own. It was not a love they lacked, but an understanding of the consequences of reality. In their home, I felt like myself. It was outside that I realized I was different.

In a world where I was just another member of the Hobson family, I didn’t know how to cope with the racist insults that the other kids naively quipped without realizing that I was just about as American as them. Yes, legally, I am only a naturalized citizen, but I have no knowledge of my ethnic background – just like most other American kids. How should I react to a kid screaming, Go back to where you came from, you Communist bitch! I didn’t even have the slightest idea who Kim Jong Il was, or why a Minnesotan girl should care about atomic bombs. Give me a break, I thought that the Axis of Evil had something to do with the losing team in World War II.

Returning “home” to Korea did not provide the answers I had hoped. Adoption agencies, protected by self-created ignorance and preventative measures, would not allow me to look at the Korean documents that had shaped my life for more than a few seconds. My lack of Korean skills frustratingly forced me to realize that no one was ever meant to see these files again, especially not when I was supposed to be assimilated into American culture. I didn’t need to see these papers again.

At the same time, I was constantly mistaken as a Japanese tourist. The Koreans didn’t know what to do with me. I looked Korean, certainly; I even dressed like them. My upbringing demonstrated the loss of what was my birthright: Korean identity. The Korean people did not understand the term ibyang, adoptee, and were furious that I was culturally ignorant as I attempted to explain that I was Korean American.

My biological mother did not know me. She recoiled at my refusal to go to a public bathhouse and cried over my refusal to eat things that still had their head on. I was not Korean anymore and had taken on the more ignorant, cruel aspects of American ideology. But that was what I had gone away for, wasn’t it? To have a better (American) life? Another mistake was in letting her think that I was angry at her for sending me away. Yet, how could I not be? Children belong with their mothers. If she had loved me, societal pressures on an unwed mother should not have mattered. Right? It is unthinkable in the United States that a child born out of wedlock would be sent through international adoption. Yet this is my (and thousands of others’) reality. I know now that she does love me, in the detached way that only a biological mother who has been removed from her daughter for 20 years can.

The dual marginalization of my experiences both in the United States and abroad draws into sharp focus the fact that adoptees truly belong to neither place. While we desperately look at magazines for fashion and make-up tips, Korean adoptees find that the world is not made for them. We can’t make our eyes look European, no matter how hard we try. We can’t blend in. Yet, we are not welcome in our country of birth because we are culturally different.

The adoption agencies fail to address these issues. We are adopted and forgotten. Adoption is what makes them money, not post-adoption services. Adoption agencies only search for biological parents if it will boost their image. As thousands of transnational and trans-racial adoptions occur every year, we must come to question what it truly means for these children and the adults who have already experienced the pain, suffering, loss and confusion of adoption. We are not what meets the eye – Asians in an American world. We experience bits and pieces of different lives – American, Korean, individual lives. It is the responsibility of each citizen to realize that the United States truly is a diverse nation and that even given information can’t be seen just by looking at my face. I am not a Korean by culture. Nor am I a true American. I am ibyang.