Perspective: Why I reclaimed my South Korean citizenship after losing it as a baby
I couldn’t read what it said, but it had my American name on it, as well as my Korean one — some of the few words I can recognize in written Korean. A friend who came with to translate pointed to the bolded words that confirmed that I had successfully reinstated my Korean citizenship. Because of the pandemic, there was no pomp and circumstance: no pledge, no anthem, no handshake. I filled out some forms, the immigration officer handed me a flag and a mug, and off I went.
I left the immigration office as a Korean citizen, something I hadn’t been since I was a young child. I was brought from South Korea to the United States when I was 9 months old, adopted by an American family in Minnesota. When I was a few years old, I was naturalized as an American citizen. That entailed the forfeiture of my Korean citizenship, a decision I had no choice in as a toddler.The document I received in the immigration office in Seoul brought me closer to regaining what I had lost.
Growing up in middle America, I never really identified as Korean American, as I struggled to relate to the typical Asian American immigrant experience:my adoptive family’s ancestors were from Norway, Germany, France, Poland, Ireland and Canada. My family’s American immigration story was two or three generations back. I didn’t call my mother “Omma,” and I grew up around sauerkraut, not kimchi.
I always thought of citizenship as something you were either born with or aspired to. During my undergraduate studies in Phoenix, some of my classmates wererecipients, with stories similar to mine — we’d grown up in the United States from a young age, feeling at home there and maybe not knowing anywhere else — though our situations were materially different.