‘Seoul searching’: Korean adoptee celebrates 50th by raising awareness, funds for travel

NINA MOINI: A landmark report in South Korea has concluded the government bears responsibility for facilitating a corrupt foreign adoption program, peaking in the 1970s and '80s. A commission in the country yesterday released the findings after a nearly three-year investigation.

The adoption program left thousands of Korean adoptees with questions and grief about their origin. More than 20,000 of those adoptees live here in Minnesota. It's the state with the highest number of Korean adoptees in the country.

One of them is Chilly Caufman. He's been a part of the Twin Cities music scene for 20 years, and is helping organize a music festival to support adoptees to visit their birth country. It's called Heart & Seoul Connection. That's Seoul, as in the capital of South Korea.

Thank you for being here in the studio with us, Chilly.

CHILLY CAUFMAN: Thank you, Nina.

NINA MOINI: And Chilly is working, of course, with the organization Adoptee Hub to put the concert on. And the nonprofit's founder and CEO is joining us, too. Ami Nafzger.

Thank you so much for being here as well, Ami.

AMI NAFZGER: Thank you so much.

NINA MOINI: Ami, I'd love to start with you. Can you paint a picture of what many Korean adoptees learned about the Korean adoption system last year, and what that was like?

AMI NAFZGER: Well, I think a lot of adoptees are just processing what's going on, especially in this truth and reconciliation report. It's a lot to process. It's something that I think adoptees are trying to process, as in, is that me? Was that me? Is that where I came from? Am I a part of that fraud that the Korean government has done?

And so, I think there's just a lot of questions where adoptees are wondering, was I stolen? Was I-- what would my life would have been like if I wasn't part of this fraud from the Korean government, and been able to stay in my birth country, and be able to have kept my language and my culture and my identity? So there are just a lot of questions that adoptees are having at this time.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And in some cases, too, on top of a lifetime of questions. And now more questions, Chilly. I mean, like many Korean adoptees, I understand that you've had questions your entire life. And can you tell me a little bit about just your journey around your identity that's kind of led you to this point?

CHILLY CAUFMAN: Yeah. I guess, I grew up in a smaller community that just didn't have resources and support for Korean adoptees. So growing up was really difficult for me to fit in. And I just abandoned a lot of my cultural identity to just survive and just fit in.

And with that, over the years, I started to have some soul searching-- ha ha. When I went to college, I went to Saint Cloud State University. I met a handful of other Korean adoptees, shared experiences, were able to understand the different levels of just trying to survive in Minnesota, I guess.

And what led me to this accumulation of wanting to put together something like this is I kind of lost a lot of the community that I made in Saint Cloud, and I was searching very hard for answers and just resources and support in the Twin Cities. And that's when I was introduced to Ami and the Adoptee Hub, and a lot of the adoptee community in the Twin Cities, which I didn't really even know existed.

And with that, I had been spending over the last 30 years supporting the Twin Cities music scene. I worked at the Electric Fetus, I worked for First Avenue, I worked for Live Nation, so I'm always supporting musicians. And I wanted to create something that would spotlight my friends and their talents, and be able to come together and collaborate on something beautiful to help spread awareness, and to help just shed some light on the difficulties and things that the Korean adoptees are going through right now with this troubling time.

And with this, I wanted to use my birthday. I'm turning 50 years old on Saturday, and I wanted to--

NINA MOINI: Happy birthday

CHILLY CAUFMAN: Thank you so much.

NINA MOINI: Amazing

CHILLY CAUFMAN: It's beautiful to have this community come together and support something that I'm so passionate about and I believe in. And I wanted to use my birthday as a leverage to bring all my friends and family together to create some awareness, and to create some kind of foundation and support for Korean adoptees.

And with that birthed the Heart & Seoul Connection, which is a fundraiser that is going to help support the travels of Korean adoptees back to South Korea for the first time after adoption. So a lot of us adults have been wanting to go back to Korea, but we really don't have the resources, the things in place to make a trip, or if we have financial barriers, and just things that we're definitely scared of.

I know I'm terrified to go just because I'm not raised-- I wasn't raised in that-- with that kind of background. So a lot of my youth is coming up to-- really the things that I have always feared are coming up, but it's something I need to do, and this is going to help me do it by the support of the community, and bringing this all to light. So thank you for having us.

NINA MOINI: Of course. It's going to be a big year for you, Chilly. It sounds like.

Ami, what does it feel like to hear your friend talk about just all the different emotions, some of them painful, some of them good? I understand you've been to Korea. You've been there. You've helped to try to have the government have a more of a relationship with people here. What does his words bring forth for you?

AMI NAFZGER: Well, I think just hearing about Chilly, it really confirms the fact that this is why Adoptee Hub is in existence, and why we've created Adoptee Hub. We want to provide support and resources, and also just post-adoption programs for adult adoptees, who are actually struggling and having-- just needing some resources and having questions about their identity, and where they came from.

So I think just what Chilly is experiencing now, and his questions that he's experiencing at an older age is just, it's common. It's common for a lot of international, transracial adoptees to actually experience this, and have these questions. Some experienced it when they're younger, when they're teenagers, but many of them aren't really experiencing it until they get older. And when they are, they don't really have that support or resources. And so that is why Adoptee Hub actually exists.

NINA MOINI: And do you feel like over the years, Ami-- I don't know how long you've been actively doing this work-- do you feel like it's become easier, better, harder to talk about these feelings with others?

AMI NAFZGER: Well, I started-- actually, I created an NGO-- non-government organization-- in Korea called GOAL-- Global Overseas Adoptees Link-- in Korea back in 1997, and that's when I went back to live there for about a decade on my own. Didn't really have the intentions to create something there. I just went there to do some soul searching myself, and to try to do a birth search.

That's when I ran into a lot of issues, such as not being able to live in Korea for more than three months, and then finding that we had to have a-- that there wasn't a special visa or any kind of visa for us to stay there as Koreans. So that's where I worked with the Korean government and started to advocate for a special visa.

That visa actually is in place now, and is called the F4 visa. It is mandatory by the Korean government. But we've been able to build something like in that kind of trust and relationship with the Korean government, as well as I had built an NGO called Global Overseas Adoptees Link, where it actually also provides and serves, and it still exists today, services for birth searches for adoptees, as well as different kinds of cultural classes and courses, learning the language, being able to understand Korea, and being able to learn how to reside in Korea, and the nuts and bolts about Korea, as adoptees want to live there, but then also visit, or as they try to do the birth search.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. So this is a culmination of both of you all's life's work, of this concert that's coming up. Chilly, how can people still attend, and what do you hope folks take away from it?

CHILLY CAUFMAN: So yeah, this is really just to spotlight the talent and just the high level of amazing musicians that we have in Minnesota. And I've gathered all my friends and artists. I have dancers, live painters, bands, DJs, emcees. Its accumulation of all the different communities that I've been involved in, in my 30 years of being in Minneapolis here.

And it's a way to just bring everybody together because we really can't do anything on the bigger level. Everything in the government is so chaotic right now, but we can do what we can in our communities, and that's what's important to me. All these people are stepping up for me, and I've been there for them, and we're coming together to collaborate and spread awareness, bring joy, bring light, bring some peace-- peace and understanding of the situations, the difficulties that Korean adoptees go through.

And we can still come together and do our part in the community, but when I see the people that have been open to being involved in this, it just brings so much joy to my heart to see people really wanting to rally and support behind this.

And people can still get tickets. They're available at the Hook & Ladder, Zen Arcade. You can go and buy in another person to avoid online fees, or there is a ticket link on Eventbrite that you can go. Tickets are available at the door, as well.

And we are also having a Happy Hour gathering, initially, for Korean adoptees at the Arbeiter Brewery, which is one block away from the Hook & Ladder. That starts at 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. That's open to all ages, all families of Korean adoptees.

We're having some live performers. We have a DJ. We're having an art raffle and trivia. So that will be taking place leading up to the event. So thank you.

NINA MOINI: Thank both of you for stopping by. Congratulations. Wishing you a lot of joy around the event and a lot of success. And thank you both for stopping by.

CHILLY CAUFMAN: Thanks, Nina.

AMI NAFZGER: Thank you.

CHILLY CAUFMAN: Thanks, NPR.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Chilly Caufman, organizer of the Heart & Seoul Connection, a concert that's going to be, like you said, at Hook & Ladder starting this Saturday at 7:00 PM. And Ami Nafzger, the Founder and CEO of Adoptee Hub, in Minnesota.