By Cora Hyun Jung/Murphy News Service

“Oh gosh, A lot,” Libby Otto said when asked about how many Korean adoptees live in Minnesota. “So the saying goes, ‘one for every lake,’” she added, referring to the state’s famous “Land of 10,000 Lakes” motto.

A 2009 study by U doctoral candidate Kim Ja Park Nelson reported that Minnesota is home to a higher concentration of Korean adoptees than almost any place in the world. The population of Korean adoptees in Minnesota is estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000. Korean transnational adoption began in 1953, just five years after the first domestic African American-to-white adoption.

Between 1953 and 1962, about 15,000 transnational adoptions took place. Even more adoptions took place in the States starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with 37,469 transnational adoptions from 1965 to 1976.

Libby Otto was adopted from Korea when she was 11 months old in 1994, after her brother was adopted. Since then, both of them have lived in Minnesota.

“I grew up for 14 years in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and moved to Grand Rapids in 2009,” Otto said. After she graduated a high school in Grand Rapids, she moved to Twin Cities area to go to the Hamline College.

She graduated college in three years with a degree in English and secondary education. She was in orchestra, sang in choir, acted in musicals and was a member of the speech team during her middle school and high school years.

“I was pretty nerdy,” Otto said with a smile.

Otto’s mother, Terry Otto, described her as “an extraordinary young woman.”

“She has a lot of resilience and a strong sense of who she is,” Terry said. “She is also a perfectionist and sometimes is impatient with others who don’t share her drive to excel academically.

“I don’t think that being adopted has anything to do with that. I think it is just in her nature,” her mother said. “We have always been very open about adoption and celebrate our family’s formation in this way.”

“Fergus Falls is pretty small, very monocultural and monoethnic,” Libby Otto said, as she described her hometown. She said a lot of Caucasian people live there. “I think I was maybe one of five people of color in my middle school. It was very small, predominantly Caucasian. Grand Rapids is small as well and very similar to that make-up. I didn’t grow up with a lot of people who represented what I looked like.”

Growing up in predominantly white towns, Otto developed a desire to meet up with people who looked like her.

“One of the main reasons why I came down to Hamline and down to Twin Cities was because I was missing that representation,” Otto said. “Just seeing Asian people around me was a big thing I was missing. My hometown definitely impacted what college I picked and where I wanted to be.”

Otto turned last June and she started a career as a teacher at the Roseville Area Middle School, teaching English language art to seventh and eighth graders.

Otto is clear about her origin and racial identity as Korean unlike some other adoptees.

A 1981 Australian study by Rita J. Simon and Howard Alstein showed that a majority of parents reported that they wanted their children to racially identify as raceless or as white. As a result, many parents and children reported either having no racial identity or a white identity.

Park Nelson’s study said “the perception of the quality of “racelessness” in adopted children or their parents is culturally indistinguishable from whiteness.” She said because the dominant culture in the States is white, and non-whites are “of color,” having no race is effectively “the same as being White.”

Otto said she embraces her racial identity and is proud of being Korean. She said the eye-opening” moment she had at Kamp Kimchee really changed her thoughts about what it means to be Korean.

Kamp Kimchee is the oldest Korean adoption camp for entire families, held for one week during summer in Brainerd and Baxter, Minnesota. The Kamp serves campers ranging from nursery level to 12th grade.

“I was 4 when I started going to Kamp,” Otto said.  “Kamp definitely exposed me to Korean pop culture and picked my interests in it. It made me realize there is this whole other side to Korea instead of just very traditional aspects of it.

“It (attending Kamp Kimchee) really made me proud to be Korean at that point, Otto continued. “We didn’t have PSY, we didn’t have a Gangnam Style, and no one really knew anything about Korea in my hometown other than it’s a really old country and it’s next to China and Japan.

“So then, as I got to listen to this cool music and watch these cool dramas, it was super cool to be able to show my friends that stuff too, saying, ‘listen to this! I don’t know what they are saying but listen to it!’”

Otto said she and her entire family have been going to Kamp Kimchee since she first came to America until she graduated from high school.

“For me without Kamp, I wouldn’t have been as proud as I am about being Korean and what that means,” Otto said. “I don’t think I would have been as comfortable with being adopted and what that label means. The satisfaction is definitely that I get to know how to help families that are just like my family. That’s what I love about the Kamp.”

Simon and Alstein’s study points out that some parents by attempting to deemphasize the race of their children to protect them from the difficulties of difference and unconsciously “Whitewash” their children, but Otto’s parents are more than willing to accept their children’s racial identity.

“My parents are very comfortable with my brother and I being Korean and they’ve been very proud of that as well,” Otto said. “They just wanted us to feel just as proud as they are of us because it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Growing up, Otto has been exposed to Korean culture in many different ways.

“My mom cooks Korean food, and Bulgogi and rice is our go-to,” Otto said. “Whenever we were in The Cities, we went to Korean restaurants. When I was in the middle school, we had a Korean foreign exchange student come and stay with us for a year.”

Terry Otto said she sees her daughter as “racially Asian, and Korean American ethnically,” because she identifies with and celebrates the two sides of who she is.

The Otto family is willing to get to know more about their children’s origin and try to understand what it means to be Korean, but not all families take the same path — and Otto said she thinks  that is not the best way.

“I’m really glad that she identifies as both,” Terry Otto said. “It is the reality of who she is and who our family is. I also know families who say ‘we are all the same. Race doesn’t matter,’ to their adopted children. That is a lie. Race matters in the life of an adoptee because it is the first thing people who don’t know them see. So it matters to their parents or at least it should, in my opinion.”

Otto said the main reason that some parents don’t want to expose their adopted children to Korean culture is lack of resources.

“Resources aren’t just available,” Otto said. “A majority of Korean adoptees live out of the Twin Cities. That’s probably the main reason.”

The example of an adopted child who became color-blind is the case of Jennifer Arndt-Johns,, a Korean adoptee who grew up isolated from others who shared her Korean heritage. She was raised in an all-white family in predominately white communities, and she shared that she was shocked when she was invited to join the Asian-American Student Union and the Korean American Students Association during her freshman orientation at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“It was confusing to me because I didn’t think of myself as an Asian American and I didn’t know what it meant to be Korean,” she told Minnesota Monthly. “I would be on campus walking down the street, and when there were other Asian Americans walking toward me, I would look the other way or cross the street to avoid them.”

Though Otto didn’t have such an identity problem, she encountered a different kind of issues as she reached puberty in her middle school.

“In middle school, when everyone is changing physically and trying to fit in, it was super important for me at that time to try to fit in, which means cutting my hair in certain way and wearing makeup in certain way,” Otto said.

“None of my friends had monolids (eye-shape). I was trying to wear same eye makeup as my friends, and it did not work because they didn’t have monolids,” Otto said, referring to eyelids some Asians have that do not ‘fold.’

“ I look back in pictures now, and I look so ridiculous. When I got a haircut, I looked like a Christmas tree. Cutting Asian hair is really hard. It is totally different than cutting white hair. So we would oftentimes travel to Fargo, which is an hour away or we would come down here to the Twin Cities, which is three hours away so I could buy makeup and get my hair cut.”

Otto had some problems as she tried to fit in the school, but she said she had no issues regarding her race.

“I didn’t ever feel I was being left out or targeted because I was Asian or Korean or adopted,” Otto said. “The questions still happen about my adoption and about being Korean, but I never felt I was discriminated against in my hometown.”

However, there has always been one issue that chases after most adoptees, an issue about their biological parents.

“I haven’t tried to meet up with my biological parents yet,” Otto said. “Once I get a little bit more settled with my life, then I will probably start the search process — whether that means going over to Korea and trying to do that from Minnesota.

“(The) possibility always exists that any biological relation to us, whether my biological parents or biological siblings, won’t want to meet us. Even if I can just get a picture, I think that would be super cool because I don’t even have a picture of my birth parents,” Otto went on.

“I think that’s something that a lot of adoptees have to come to terms with that. Even if you do go over to Korea and do a search and contact them, they still might not want to meet you. It goes both ways.”

Otto said having someone with whom to compare yourself would be nice.

“Growing up, you always hear like, ‘Oh, you have your mother’s eye, or you have your dad’s nose,” Otto said.  “I would just love to be able to compare myself to someone and be able to say ‘I have, yes, I do have my mother’s eyes.’”

“I think anyone you see on the street is going to have issues with who they are and what they want to become,” Otto said. “For us as adoptees, it’s just being constantly different in your family. Probably the hardest part is knowing that you are never going to be able to be compared to one of your parents. That’s how I feel. I would never be able to say that I look like my mother who has blue eyes and brown hair. There are definitely people who have problems and issues with their identity.

“Adoption is hard thing,” she said. “Any adoption is going to be hard thing whether it’s a domestic adoption or international adoption or transracial adoption because we experience huge loss at such a young age.”

Terry Otto also talked about her daughter’s birth parents.

“Someday she (will) feel (the) need to find out her beginning,” her mother said. “I support that however she needs. I’m not threatened by that because we are very solid in our relationship. We have a family. We have people coming to family through marriage or through adoptions. Family is what never changes. No matter how far apart you live, one constant thing is we are always there for them.”

The Ottos have always had to field questions about the racial make-up of their family.

“They asked to my parents like “Are these your children?” or “Is this your real brother?” to me because my brother and I are not biologically related,” Otto said. “But he is definitely my real brother. Questions were always asked and they are still asked now. We are just super interesting, right?”

Mom Terry also shared a similar story as she got to learn how to deal with the questions. She said there were questions such as: “Where your children are from?” “How long did it take to adopt?” and “How much it cost?”

“All I wanted to do is get my groceries,” she said. “I think the questions are directed to children instead of to us. You can’t protect your children from those questions, because racism does exist. I think they have learned how to master those questions as adults. You always communicate. You make sure that you are conscious about people asking questions,” she added.

Libby Otto shared a story about when her family went out to restaurant to have meal together.

“They asked us like, is your table together, or do you want this all on one check,” Otto said. What was so obvious to her was not obvious to others. “And it’s like, of course, we are family. We are going to make our parents pay for it,” she said.

However, Otto approached those somewhat annoying questions that were asked over and over again in a very wise way.

“I think the way that I approach questions like that is (to believe) people are genuinely curious, and they want to know,” Otto said. “I’d rather take an opportunity to educate them or to tell them this is what a family can look like, and there is no one way of family should look. So I just take it as an educational opportunity.”

She emphasized the importance of education in understanding international adoptions and transracial families.

“I think education sparks conversation,” Otto said. “We can have discussions about what it means to be a transracial adoptee, then the conversation is going to start happening and questions are going to be asked. And we can’t make change nor expose ourselves to anything different if we don’t ask questions. You need to have someone who can at least tell their side of story. I don’t mean formal education when I say ‘education.’

Otto spoke of perceptions some have about what adopted families are like.

“I think there is a perception that adopted families are not real families or broken families, or there is something that is preventing the parents to love the child because the child is adopted. I don’t agree with that. I think my parents love us just as they would love any biological child. It’s totally unexplainable.”

Terry Otto shared the first moment she saw Libby and her brother. She said there was strange feeling when she saw her children, and Libby described her mom was “sold” on them.

“Probably this is what human beings do to claim their own, falling in love with a child,” Terry said. “We have never regretted the decision to adopt children to become parents. The way I view it is that we were given a gift. I would love to be able to meet Libby’s birth mother someday to thank her for allowing me to raise such a fine young woman.

“Life is complicated,” Terry Otto said. “Whether you give birth to children who look like you or not. We truly don’t spend time thinking about how Libby and her brother are different from us on the outside. The society doesn’t let us forget. We forget.”

“It may seem odd, I know,” she added. “When I look at my beautiful, smart girl, all I see is my daughter. The one I carried to the airport in Seoul, the one I diapered and bathed as a 1-year-old, the child I read to and fed, the ballerina, the first prom, graduations, and on and on. All the times run together, good times and bad times and in-between times.

“A million moments with a billion more to come as her mom, “ Terry Otto continued. “I am so blessed for this gift that words can’t describe it well enough. Luckily it was us who had these two wonderful people. I would die for either one of them. That’s how much I loved them. I don’t know if anyone can understand that.

“I just feel like the luckiest mother on Earth, because somehow this child was sent to my life.”

Reporter Cora Hyun Jung is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.