My husband and I are both white, and adopted our oldest son from Korea. We live in a very homogeneous area of New Jersey, and KoreAm is just one more way we try to make our son’s birth culture part of the fabric of our family. Thank you so much!

Each department is so unique and brings us such a wealth of info about the Korean American community. We have many friends who have also adopted children from Korea, and they love KoreAm, too!

Unfortunately, I had to search high and low to find your magazine and I know my friends never would have seen it if not for me. I think there must be a way to get the word out about KoreAm to parents of Korean adoptees and adoptees themselves. If my social worker or adoption agency had handed me a free copy of KoreAm when I applied to their Korea program, I would have subscribed years ago.

Sending every adoption agency that places Korean-born children into U.S. homes a few free copies of KoreAm for their parents in process would be one way. (I’d recommend the February issue with Yul Kwon on the cover. I can’t tell you how many adoptive moms of Korean-born kids are in love with him!)

Adoption agencies and adoption professionals (i.e. social workers) lose touch with families after the children come home, but families are always looking for ways to help educate themselves about their children’s birth countries and cultures. Because your publication is such a great way for adoptive families to bring another link to Korean culture into their lives and could have such a positive impact, I hope you can find a way to tap into this population. 

Jeani Dimech-Juchniewicz, New Jersey

Lopsided Portrayal

Christine Ahn’s piece on the protest against the expansion of the U.S. base at Pyeongtaek was a remarkably lopsided portrayal of the controversy. It would appear that the U.S. military is forcing its iron will down the throat of helpless Korean farmers. The South Korean government is fully complicit and has sent in numerous soldiers to brutally suppress the peaceful protests and arrest town leaders on trumped up charges. If this were true, the Korean government would richly deserve condemnation. Interestingly, although most major newspapers in South Korea are extremely critical of the current administration’s every mistake, I have yet to read an article that places blame on the government instead of the protesters. 

While the protestors at Pyeongtaek claim that they were violently handled by soldiers, real accounts and images taken at the site reveal the opposite, showing the activists chasing and beating unarmed soldiers and wielding metal pipes and bamboo spears with split ends designed to cause severe injuries or even death. It’s because of the outcry from the parents of young injured soldiers that the government later decided to equip the soldiers with body armor and sticks and also to increase the number of troops.