Geography of Kinship

On April 27th of 2019, the members of KHFSS volunteered to help out at the screening of two documentaries about the history of adoption in Korea and adopted children finding their families. This event was held at the Howard University in D.C. where we guided the 150 guests inside and helped set up the food tables.

The two documentaries played were Geographies of Kinship and Relative Strangers. Geographies of Kinship is about the history of Korean children adopted to America during the Korean War. Relative Strangers is about those children who were adopted going back to Korea to find their families. With their eyes fixed on the screen, the audience was sentimentalized by the documentaries.

Each documentary was less than an hour long, and KHFSS took a seat in the back to watch with the guests. Those videos didn't just explain Korean history, it guided the audience through personal stories of individuals who were traveling to Korea to find their families. Some of them had never been to South Korea even though they were of Korean ethnicity.

After the two videos were finished, the audience rambled out as they saw the Korean food prepared in front of them. After they finished their meals and left, we cleaned up the waste and wrapped up the event.

Our contribution to this event was smaller than the events we had volunteered at before, but we were able to talk to some of the visitors and see just how many people in our community cared about the stories told in the documentaries. The audience consisted of mostly Koreans but there were also Americans whose interest in Korean history brought them to this documentary showing.

Most of the KHFSS members are Korean Americans, and although we are Korean, we don't have the same relationship with our culture and history as Koreans living in their country do. I think this experience really helped all of us connect to ourselves and our history and we left the event with a feeling of inspiration.