Friday, June 29, 2007

Korean Adoptee Opera Professional

Sometimes I forget that I’m an adult. Oh, I know I am and I act like one (most days), but I sometimes forget to correctly categorize myself in the adult column. So, when I came across this article about Andrew Gangestad, a Korean adoptee Opera Singer, I was amazed to see that he was my age. For some reason, performers always feel older to me (though pop stars seem to be getting younger).

This article from the Yonhap News Agency is about Gangstead’s first trip back to South Korea and his search for his birth parents.

He believes that it must have been a tough decision for his biological parents to do what they had to do.

"I would also like to show them my accomplishments. I want to let them know what I have done," he said.


I thought that it was pretty great that he had learned a couple of Korean songs for his trip and I wish him luck. I hadn’t realized just how small the chances of locating birth families were until I read this article.

According to government statistics, 13,068 overseas adoptees made efforts to locate their biological families in 2005, but only 316 -- about 2 percent -- were reunited.


However, I suspect that the percentage will change with the more recent Korean adoptees. More and more Korean adoptees seem to be coming with birth family information that make search a little easier.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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