Stuff Adopted Koreans Like

#5 Visiting the Mothership with a Tour Group

AKs prefer to visit the Mothership with a tour group - at least for the first trip. For AKs whose tongues are tied by the mother language, it is safer to hide in a pack. And for many AKs, it is safest to hide in a pack of white people.

#4 Attention

If you were at the Seoul Station subway stop this past week, you might have been accosted by a pamphlet-dispensing chicken.

Fear not. It was just an AK in a chicken suit campaigning for attention (to adoption issues, that is).

That's right. AKs love dressing up as farm animals (donning roller blades in one instance, not pictured) to make a point about what's wrong with adoption.

#3 Being First

AKs really like being first. Nothing wrong with that. Who doesn't like being first in line, first to see a popular show, first to travel to exotic locales or first to be successful?

Every AK group in every country in every city is the first of its kind. And then there are the first conferences and first forums and first panels that feature first-time topics by these organizations run by and for adult AKs. (I used to sit on the board of one.)

#2 Chopsticks

Adopted Koreans love their chopsticks.

The relationship starts out shakily, though. Being raised in small towns by hotdish-eating Lutherans meant that there was no one who could teach us to use them without the aide of rubber bands.

#1 Changing Names

Adopted Koreans love to create new names for themselves. It's a symbolic rebirth. They create them as a sign of liberation from their white adoptive parents and to connect with their newly found Korean roots. And in some cases they change them because, well, it's hard to be an Asian in America with a last name of Smith.