Youngsun

Youngsun, 33, is a visual artist based in Queens, New York. Born in Seoul, they were adopted into white family living on Long Island at around 5 months old. Growing up in a predominantly white community, Youngsun describes feeling "othered": the stares, the constant questions, and an overall narrative of "fortune" that accompanied childhood reflections on adoption—one in which gratitude was to be extended bilaterally between parent and child. In retrospect, Youngsun articulates this feeling as tides of grief that neither the people around them—family included—nor Youngsun themself had the language to think through. "What kept me going through my younger years," they say, "was just the ability to create, whether it was painting or drawing... not only as a cathartic and useful tool for myself, but also something that could speak to other people."

In 2019, Youngsun and their family visited Korea, a trip whose emotional charting was clear-eyed, informed by stories of other adoptees whose birth search and reunion had ended gracefully. Upon arriving at Eastern Welfare, however, Youngsun was greeted by a clinical environment with a dearth in their records, far from the warm and fuzzy experience painted by others' accounts. When they returned from the motherland trip, Youngsun received a message from the agency relaying a closed-door situation wherein the birth mother seems to have ceased communications surrounding the adoption— second abandonment of sorts, amplified by the frustrating lack of support from the agencies that facilitated adoptions themselves. Today, after years of creative endeavors, continued work with Korean American and adoptee communities, investigating things they experienced in childhood, Youngsun notes that giving self-permission to grieve, in their own way, was what was most liberating: knowing that the sorrow between birth mother and child is shared; knowing that self-love and compassion comes closest to a birth mother's love; and hoping that adoptees know there's no right or wrong way to approach their adoption, other than staying true to their needs and intuition.

Special thanks to the Thomas and Wonsook Foundation for their generous support in making this project possible.