DoKAD is shorthand for descendant of a Korean adoptee — the child, grandchild, or great-grandchild of someone who was adopted from Korea. It is the term this community uses for itself, and if you have never seen it before, that is normal: most people who fit the description have never heard the word. It is also new and not yet standardised — some research uses it only for the adult children of adoptees — so this is how we use it here, not an official definition.
The maths behind the term is simple. Around 200,000 children were adopted out of South Korea from the 1950s onward. The earlier generations of adoptees are now well into adulthood; many are parents and some are grandparents. That second and third generation — the people who inherited this history without living its first chapter — is who DOKADS is for.
The word is a useful handle, not a test. Nobody has to qualify.
Some DoKADs grew up close to Korean culture. Some grew up with almost none of it. Some are mixed race, some are not. Some have birth-family information; most do not. Some parents talk about their adoption constantly; some have never mentioned it once. All of that is inside the word.
Why have a word at all? Because naming an experience makes it findable. Before there was a term, a child of a Korean adoptee wondering about their family history had nothing to search for and nobody obvious to ask. A shared word turns thousands of people quietly carrying the same odd set of facts into a community that can find each other — which is the entire point of this site.
And to be clear about the other direction: you do not have to use it. Plenty of people come to events, read everything here, and never once call themselves a DoKAD. The label is a door, not a badge.