• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2016

From 1953 to 2015, approximately 200,000 children born in Korea were adopted into foreign countries. Many studies have focused on Korean adoptees growing up in the US, as the majority of these children were adopted by American families. In comparison, research on Korean transracial adoptees raised in European countries is limited. Thus, the current study aims to highlight the journey of Korean transracial adoptees from Europe to Korea. Three participants narrated their life stories as adoptees in two separate interview sessions. The findings of this study call attention to the adoptees' ongoing reconsideration of their identity as they assimilate life experiences within two disparate cultural settings in Europe and Korea. The study found that ambiguous loss faced by the adoptees from their childhood in Europe continued to their adulthood in Korea. Major themes of the participants' narratives in their journey from Europe to Korea focused on their feelings of loss and the lack of belongingness. This study found that the sense of loss and the lack of belongingness changed over time. Participants were active agents in the process of their journey from Europe to Korea, as they constantly worked to adapt to and improve their situation in face of adversity.