Despite a proliferation of stories about fairytale reunions, or stories that treat adoption as the end of an individual’s journey, Korean adoptees have a wide range of experiences. Those experiences are not monolithic, nor are they always black and white. One such adoptee is Ally Yoon Chae, born in 1979, who came to the U.S. at the age of 10. Named Choi Yoon-kyeong at birth, Ally was born out of wedlock and later neglected by her birth parents. She and her brother were living in a one-bedroom hut with no electricity or running water when a stranger — likely a social worker — brought the two of them to an orphanage in Seoul in the late 1980s. After a year, Ally and her brother were adopted through what she believes was the Eastern Social Welfare Society. Her adoptive parents, she says, saw them in what was essentially a magazine. Her adoptive mother named her Alexandrea Porter. When Ally moved to her adoptive parents’ home in Ventura, California, in March 1989, it felt like a new start. But after a year, the adoptive parents divorced. Ally juggled several things at once: learning
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