Interview 2, Adoptee
Would you please introduce yourself?
My name is Becky Belcore and I am a Korean American intercountry adoptee. I was adopted when I was almost one year old in 1973 to two American parents who at that time lived in Minnesota. When I was five years old we moved to the South. I mainly grew up in Virginia and Alabama at a time when there were few other Asian Americans living in the American South.
I connected with the Korean American community in 1996 in my early 20’s when I went to the Korean American Resource & Cultural Center (KRCC) for their summer youth program. KRCC was a founding member of NAKASEC. Over the last 28 years, I have been a volunteer, board member, donor and staff of these organizations. I am proud to be part of an Asian American network that has its roots in the democracy movement of South Korea and organizes towards social, racial and economic justice and liberation of all peoples.
Becky Belcore is holding a sign that reads “71 YEARS IS ENOUGH,” one of three messages of our campaign.
I presume that you are aware of the fact that the Korean War gave rise to international adoption, and it was widely industrialized globally afterward. Have you ever associated your identity as an adoptee with the war in that sense?
Yes, I am very aware the Korean War gave rise to intercountry adoption from Korea. As a result of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from Korea have been sent abroad for adoption. I am one of those 200,000 adoptees.
As a result of this war, we lost the fundamental things people should know about themselves- our real dates of birth, our real names, our biological families, our health histories, and our family histories. I will likely never know who my Korean parents are, and the story that has shaped my entire life. Korean adoptees also lost the ability to learn and speak our native language (Korean) and our culture, which alienates us not only from Koreans when we visit Korea, but from Koreans in the countries to which we were adopted.
Additionally, thousands of us who were adopted to the United States did not have our U.S. citizenship secured, and are facing multiple hardships as a result, the worst being separated yet again from our families through deportation- the families we were able to make for ourselves in the United States.
This is all a result of the Korean War, the Korean government’s unwillingness to care for their own children and the greed and mishandling of us by adoption agencies both in Korea and the United States. Intercountry adoption is still happening from Korea to this very day, 71 years after the armistice.
What does peace on the Korean Peninsula mean to you as your Korean-adoptee self?
As a Korean adoptee, peace in Korea is a righting of a wrong that led to the tragedy, difficulties and pain adoptees live with every single day. Peace in Korea means that this will not happen to the future children of Korea and children of other countries who are impacted by the ongoing conflicts in the Korean peninsula, between Korea and other countries, and the weaponization of Korea given its geopolitical location in Asia. There must be a peace treaty now, and Korea should be a leader in creating peace in the world so future generations can know who their families, live with their families, and live in peace. These are fundamental human rights.
