Complex Encounters of ‘Homecoming’: A Critical Autoethnographic Theorisation of Returning ‘Home’ as a South Korean Transracial-Transnational Adoptee

This paper explores homecoming journeys from an adopted Korean perspective through the use of autoethnography. Adopted Koreans have been returning to South Korea in search of answers, and instead encounter the global apparatus that is the ‘transnational adoption industrial complex’–the global for-profit economy that manufactures ‘orphans’ by removing children from single Korean mothers to send to the West in order to satisfy the needs of (primarily white) Western couples. Adopted Koreans span a multitude of cultures, languages, faiths, generations and nationalities but share a common connection to South Korea and choose to undertake a homecoming journey–which is unique compared to other diasporic Koreans. For many adopted Koreans, these homecoming journeys are fraught with complexity, confrontation, and sometimes layers of re-traumatisation. These journeys, however, can also catalyse a profound shift in an adoptees’ sense of Self, their relationships with their Korean families, their sense of belonging in Koreaas home, and their understanding of their adoptions. From this view, understandings about Korean adoption from a decolonial feminist perspective can be made to contribute towards a ‘third-space’ identity for adopted Koreans looking for a way to articulate their experiences outside the binaries of Western adoption ideology and Korean ethnonationalism.