mika_jo's profile

When In-Hwan asked me to mail him a poster of a famous skateboarder, we had been casually dating almost 3 months. I dreaded the post office. I don’t consider myself petulant, but in the Korean post office I become huffy almost immediately. Today was no exception. I brought in the poster carefully packaged in a shipping tube with the address written in large letters across the side. “Is it okay to send the package like this?” I asked the woman behind the counter. The other tw...

  Unclassified   Returning to Korea is a journey that most adoptees submit to take. It begins with a pang of disconnect from family or country, or a twinge of curiosity. Some come to Korea with high expectations of meeting familiar smells, sounds and places. Others come as tabula rasa explorers of the country, looking for new things they can connect to. I went hoping to reach a place I belonged. Finding that place was harder than it seemed. When I stepped off the plane that took me...

Returning to Korea is a journey that most adoptees submit to take. It begins with a pang of disconnect from family or country, or a twinge of curiosity. Some come to Korea with high expectations of meeting familiar smells, sounds and places. Others come as tabula rasa explorers of the country, looking for new things they can connect to. I went, hoping to feel I had reached a place where I belonged. When I stepped off the plane that took me from Korea to the States, I had an eerie sensation th...

In-Hwan asked me to mail him a poster of a famous skateboarder. I dreaded the post office. I don’t consider myself opulent, but in the Korean post office, I become huffy almost immediately. Today was no exception. I brought in the poster, carefully packaged in a shipping tube with the address unmistakably written across the side. “Is it okay to send the package like this?” I asked the entire staff. They all turned and pulled out a few books to check the measurements and deba...