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Korean Adoptee’s Pre-Wedding Photoshoot

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When I first planned my return to the “motherland” I knew there were a few things on my bucketlist. Months prior, I had stumbled upon a blogger’s pre-wedding photoshoot she had done in S. Korea. After reading more about it, looking into studios and watching people’s videos on it I knew I wanted to do it.

Let me tell you the experience did not disappoint! Even my husband thought it was a worthwhile experience.

Now, to clarify even though they call it a “pre-wedding photoshoot” my husband and I had been married for five years already.

I will say the process was not particularly simple to book. We contacted several studios and communication was difficult with the language barrier and getting answers to our questions was not easy. (Hopefully, many of the studios have streamlined their booking process since then.)

After some frustration trying to book a session directly with a studio we found an agency called How2Marry who helped facilitate the process.

We finally settled on La Promesse Studio located in the Gangnam district of Seoul. The studio itself isn’t huge but one would never know that from the pictures. It seems every square inch of it was purposefully thought out.

The package included the following:

  • Tuxedo rental
  • Transportation to and from Tuxedo shop
  • Transportation to and from Hanbok shop
  • Makeup services (on site)
  • Hair stylist (on site)
  • Dressing assistant
  • 2 English translators
  • Videography
  • Photographer
  • Studio use
  • 5 dress changes

Here are a few more images from the shoot. (The quality had to be reduced a bit to be able to load faster.)

Thanks for stopping by!

Korean Adoptee: Returning to the Motherland

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I am a Korean adoptee. At 29 years old I returned to my country of birth, South Korea. The decision was easy for me. I wanted to check this trip off the list before we expanded our family.

Korean adoptee returns to motherland
Visiting a Buddhist temple in Daegu with my birth family

A motherland tour is emotional and thought provoking for any adoptee. I think what helped me was our mindset leading up to the trip…with 0 expectations. We booked the nicest hotels we could find in each city we planned to visit. I made a list of things we wanted to do and places we wanted to see. This was supposed to be a luxury vacation before we embarked on parenthood. It turned out to be so much more than that…

After deciding to go back I initiated a birth family search. Mostly, it was a formality. I never had an intense need to know more about my origins but I also didn’t want regret. I filled out the necessary documents and officially submitted my intent to search.

We finalized our itinerary for the trip. We had so much fun stuff planned! I checked in with the adoption agency often in the months leading up to the trip. I would find myself anxious and hopeful whenever I got a reply from the agency seemingly caring more than I would have admitted at the time.

Almost exactly two months from submitting my intent to search I woke up one morning to the email that would change my life as I knew it.

Present day

Six years later in the year 2020 I am ready to share my story. I encourage all international adoptees to consider returning to their birth place at some point, with or without a birth family search.

Realizations from my motherland tour:

  • Stepping off the plane at Incheon I had an immediate sense of peace being surrounded by people who looked like me. I was one in the crowd for the first time in my life. Nobody knew my story or questioned why i was there. In S. Korea I was never the only person of color in any given room or environment. I would often have reality checks with myself which were almost out of body experiences as I couldn’t believe I was back surrounded by my original culture and language.
  • Going back meant so much more to me than I could have known before the trip. Or maybe meant so much more than I could have admitted to myself. It was seeing and experiencing a culture and language that I will never be a part of but there were moments throughout the trip where I felt a sense of belonging. A feeling not often felt in the States as tolerance is not the same as belonging.
  • Being there made me sad. A different kind of sad being Korean than I had experienced growing up. Until then I had only experienced racial negativity being Asian in a white world but this sadness was a sense of loss. Now knowing what it felt like being in Korea I knew once and for all that I would never truly fit in there either. You can look the part in passing but with any interaction with shopkeepers, waiters, etc. they knew I was American in an instant. I guess through all of the adversity growing up in America maybe I had in the back of my mind that I could always go back to Korea and feel normal. This trip was confirmation that was not the case.
  • The biggest realization I had was probably that nobody can or will understand these feelings of loss being immersed in a country and culture where you look the part but which you share no part. I believe only transracial adoptees have a chance of understanding the complexity of emotions I was feeling. Not my husband, my adoptive parents, my birth parents or birth sisters.

Seeing my birth country further solidified who I was then and more importantly who I am today…a Korean adoptee. My children are descendants of a Korean adoptee. A different topic for a different day…

Being a transracial adoptee is messy and complicated. I returned to S. Korea to simply check it off my life list but the realizations and clarity of identity I gained was far more than I could have expected. The time spent in Korea was happy and sad, fulfilling and draining, full of clarity and added confusion. I realized that who I am today actually had very little to do with who I was when I left South Korea at 9 months old. I control my destiny regardless of my past and I shall live without fear or regret.

Thanks for reading!

-Christina

Korean Adoptee returns to motherland 29 years later