All You Can Ever Know — Nicole Chung
A Korean American adoptee’s memoir about growing up in a white family in Oregon, searching, and becoming a parent herself. The most common answer to “where do I start?”
Everyone · For DoKADsLibrary · bookshop
DOKADS / Issue 001The reading
The reading
pile.
Not a database — a set of shelves the community fills in. Books, films, podcasts, organisations, and the practical stuff nobody hands you.
recommend something ↓
How this list works
Everything named below is real — books and films you can find at a library or bookshop, and organisations whose links go where they claim. Shelves marked open call are ones we are honestly still collecting for; the suggestion form below keeps this page growing.
Anything about immigration, citizenship, visas, or law gets checked and dated before it goes up — see how we handle that on the learn page.
Section 01. Browse the shelves
Format
Who for
Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. — Jenny Heijun Wills
A Korean adoptee raised in Canada writes about reunion with her birth family in Korea — fragmentary, honest about how complicated “finding them” actually is.
For DoKADs · EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
The Language of Blood — Jane Jeong Trenka
A foundational adoptee memoir: two sisters adopted to rural Minnesota, and what the author found when she traced the story back. Trenka later became a leading voice for adoptee rights in Korea.
For DoKADs · EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
Palimpsest — Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom
A graphic memoir by a Korean adoptee raised in Sweden, about searching for her origins while expecting her first child. A reminder that this history runs through Europe too.
For DoKADs · For teensLibrary · bookshop
Outsiders Within — Trenka, Oparah & Shin (eds.)
An anthology of writing by transracial adoptees across many countries and communities — essays, poetry, and scholarship in one place.
EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
To Save the Children of Korea — Arissa Oh
A historian’s account of how Korean adoption began and became a system: the war, the Holts, and the Cold War politics underneath. The academic backbone for our history explainer.
EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
Invisible Asians — Kim Park Nelson
Based on extensive oral histories with adult Korean adoptees, much of it rooted in Minnesota. Scholarship where adoptees are the sources, not the subjects.
Everyone · For DoKADsLibrary · bookshop
Adopted Territory — Eleana J. Kim
An anthropologist follows how adult Korean adoptees built a global community and returned to Seoul — the world DoKADs are now a second generation of.
EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
First Person Plural — Deann Borshay Liem
The classic Korean adoptee documentary (2000): the filmmaker discovers her adoption file does not match who she is. Essential context for why records cannot always be trusted.
EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee — Deann Borshay Liem
The follow-up (2010): searching for the girl whose identity the filmmaker was sent to America under. About switched identities, decades before the truth commission confirmed how common they were.
EveryoneLibrary · bookshop
Geographies of Kinship — Deann Borshay Liem
Four adoptees from different countries return to Korea, woven together with the history of how the adoption system grew (2019). The widest-angle film of the three.
Everyone · Going to Korea?Library · bookshop
Twinsters
Two Korean adoptees — one raised in the US, one in France — discover each other through a YouTube video and find out they are identical twins (2015). The warmest possible entry point.
Everyone · For teensLibrary · bookshop
Adapted — Kaomi Goetz
Long-running interview podcast in which adult Korean adoptees tell their own stories, season after season. The single best way to hear the range of the first generation’s experience.
For DoKADs · EveryoneVisit ↗
The Janchi Show
Three Korean adoptees talk adoption, identity, and culture with humour that does not undercut the serious parts. Janchi means “party” or “feast.”
For DoKADs · For teensVisit ↗
Adoptees On — Haley Radke
Not Korea-specific, but the deepest archive of adoptees interviewing adoptees anywhere — useful for understanding the landscape your parent’s generation navigates.
Everyone · For parentsVisit ↗
AK Connection
The Minnesota-based community organisation for adult Korean adoptees — and the organisation that powers DOKADS. In the state with one of the largest Korean adoptee populations anywhere.
Everyone · For parentsVisit ↗
Also-Known-As
A New York-based community for adult intercountry adoptees, founded and led by adoptees, running mentorship and cultural programming for decades.
EveryoneVisit ↗
IKAA — International Korean Adoptee Associations
The umbrella network linking Korean adoptee organisations worldwide, best known for the international Gatherings that bring hundreds of adoptees together in Seoul.
Everyone · Going to Korea?Visit ↗
KAAN
The Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network runs an annual conference that welcomes everyone connected to Korean adoption — adoptees, families, and increasingly the next generation.
Everyone · For parents · For teensVisit ↗
GOA’L — Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link
The adoptee-founded organisation in Seoul: birth-family search support, help navigating Korea, and services for adoptees returning short- or long-term.
Going to Korea? · For DoKADsVisit ↗
NCRC — National Center for the Rights of the Child
The Korean government body that now holds post-adoption services: adoption file requests and official birth-family search. Note: the legal right to request records belongs to the adoptee themselves.
For DoKADs · Going to Korea?Visit ↗
325Kamra
A nonprofit using DNA testing to reunite Korean adoptees with birth family — the route that works even when the paper trail is wrong or missing.
For DoKADs · EveryoneVisit ↗
Talk To Me In Korean
The friendliest structured way to learn Korean from zero — courses, podcasts, and books that assume no heritage-speaker household.
For teens · For DoKADs · EveryoneVisit ↗
How to Study Korean
Free, exhaustive grammar lessons — the reference to keep open alongside whatever else you use.
EveryoneVisit ↗
Visit Korea — official travel guide
The Korea Tourism Organization’s English-language site: practical, current, and good for the ordinary-tourist layer of a first trip.
Going to Korea?Visit ↗
Finding a therapist who gets adoption
Psychology Today’s directory lets you filter therapists by adoption as a specialty — so you do not spend six sessions explaining the basics. Many list telehealth.
Everyone · For parentsVisit ↗
For Korean adoptees raising kids
Resources on talking to your children about your adoption — what to say, when, how much. We know of surprisingly little written for this exact situation; if something helped you, tell us.
For parentsOpen call
For teachers assigning family-tree projects
Alternatives to the standard assignment, and why the usual version lands badly for many students. Educators in the community: we would love your materials.
For teens · For parentsOpen call
Writing by DoKADs themselves
Essays, zines, research, and art made by descendants of adoptees. This shelf is nearly empty because the field is that new — which is exactly why we want to fill it.
For DoKADsOpen call
Section 02. Suggest something
What got you
through?
A book, a film, a podcast episode, an organisation, a single blog post from 2011. If it helped you understand your family, your parent, Korea, or yourself, it belongs on a shelf here.
Tell us which shelf, what it is, and one line on why. We will credit you or not, whichever you prefer.