Artist Statement

K-Orphan Style is an installation calling attention to the aesthetics of transnational adoption. The word K-Orphan exposes the fiction at the heart of the industry. We were not true orphans; we were legally made into them, constructed for global consumption in the same way South Korea crafts other K-brands for export.

Building on Meta-Suŭi/Meta-Funeral Hanbok, where I recreated the baby clothes I was sent in as an orphan using sambe, a traditional hemp used in Korean mourning rituals, this work extends from personal artifact to collective reckoning. I received permission to replicate the clothing of other orphans, also remaking them in sambe. Dressed by social workers to present us for export, these garments were also death clothes, marking the symbolic end of our Korean identities. Displayed in a fictional storefront, these garments are paired with excerpts from adoption files that described us as pure, charming, and racially ideal. The window dressing includes slogans from my adoption agency to expose how Christianity and capitalism function as intertwined engines of the adoption industry, converting Korean children into humanitarian commodities within a global system shaped by colonial power. The four outfits presented here symbolize the private agencies that were founded by Christian missionary networks that became the central infrastructure through which most South Korean children’s adoptions were processed: Social Welfare Society (now Korea Welfare Service), Holt Korea, Korea Social Services, and Eastern Social Welfare Society.

The installation also includes historical gifts, Danghye slippers, that were given to us at the moment of departure, an ironic gesture in a culture where gifted shoes are believed to make someone walk away and never return. Nearby, my artwork of glittering rubber shoes, There’s no place like (home) Korea, mimic these bitter farewell gifts while referencing The Wizard of Oz and the fantasy of being transported elsewhere. These works mourn the children dressed for disappearance and confront the system that erased them.

I would like to sincerely thank the other K-orphans involved in this project: Gim Jeong-mae, Gim Hyeon-hee, I Gi-yeong, and Kimura Byol.