"나? 전형적인 덴마크인도, 한국인도 아니다" - 오마이뉴스

"나? 전형적인 덴마크인도, 한국인도 아니다" - 오마이뉴스

2011년 2월 16일 ... 나는 전형적 덴마크인도 아니고 전형적 한국인도 아니다. 그렇지만 나는 또 덴마크문화와 한국문화에 깊은 영향을 받았다. ...

 

 

[ENGLISH VERSION]

 

“I am neither the typical Dane, nor the typical Korean”

[Interview with Sung-soo Kim] Jane Jin Kaisen, a winner of Asia Vision Award at the 2010 International Documentary Festival

 

Jane Jin Kaisen was born in Korea in 1980 and adopted to Denmark when she was three months old. She was educated in Denmark and in the USA and works as a visual artist and filmmaker. “As an artist and filmmaker, what I find so fascinating about Korean society is that because the country so rapidly modernized, past and present co-exist, and models for a democratic society are still being negotiated. While South Korea is ultra-modern, there are still traces of past traumas of colonization and war. Adoption is one of those legacies of the past, which extends into the present moment as overseas adoptions are still happening. Since the 1990s, adult adoptees started to return to Korea, and they are not only searching for their birth families when they come to Korea, but they are also questioning the structural and societal reasons for their adoption,” she says.

 

Jane Jin Kaisen came to Korea for the first time in 2001 and re-united with her birth family. Since then, she has visited Korea almost every year to participate in art exhibitions and to do research for her films and artwork.

 

 Below is an e-mail Q&A interview with Jane from February 8 to 14.

 

- Your film, "The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger", was winner for an Asia Vision Award at the 2010 Taiwan International Documentary Festival. You were also one of the winners at Nabi Gallery Showcases. Could you tell me about the awards and elaborate on your work?

 

I am happy that I have been able to share my artwork and films with audiences both in Asia and in the West. I made the film, “The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger” in collaboration with Guston Sondin-Kung. It is a 72 minute experimental documentary film that is the result of three years of research. The film looks at how militarism has affected three generations of women in Korean society: the halmonis or former comfort women who were conscripted by the Japanese military during the Japanese colonization of Korea, women who work in the kijichons or camp towns around US military bases in Korea, and international adoptees who were adopted overseas since the Korean War.

 

The film looks at how militarism and patriarchy has affected women and children and pinpoints these issues as a structural problem and an international issue that involves not only Korea. It also targets Japan’s responsibility of war crimes against women; the US military’s responsibility in sex trafficking, which today involves many Filipino women who are coerced into military prostitution in Korea through the Filipino, Korean, and American brokers; and the Korean government’s responsibility to ensure proper human rights for all women and children in Korean society. It is great that my work has been recognized and awarded in places such as Taiwan and New York, but the most meaningful part of making artwork is the dialogue I have with audiences about the issues that the works raise. It was very special to show the film “The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger” in Taiwan as Taiwan often relates its past to Korea’s as both countries were colonized by Japan, and Taiwanese women were also forced into military sexual slavery by the Japanese army. The film was also screened in the United States, and we had many meaningful conversations with American audiences who recognize the violent effects of U.S. foreign policy. Especially younger American students were surprised and interested in knowing about this history as many of them don’t know very much about the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

 

- The first time you met your biological parents, you must’ve been happy, yet you were also a little sad and had very complicated emotions. Since you have been separated for such a long time, there could be considerable linguistic and cultural barriers. Could you tell me about when and how you met them?  Since your first meeting, how often do you see them?

 

I met my family for the first time in 2001 and saw them again in 2004. Recently, I met them for the third time, and I have spent around three months with them over the years.

 

It has been a long process to re-unite with my birth family, and it has been life-changing not only for me but also for my entire birth family. I think and there is naturally a lot of pain and sorrow involved, which may take a long time to heal, but I feel very fortunate and blessed to have been given the chance to re-unite with my family and to get to know them as an adult. I believe that it has been a very positive experience for me to meet my birth family, and I feel very emotionally and spiritually connected to them.

When I met them the first time, I was twenty-one years old, and I managed to find them through KSS (Korea Social Service) with the help of GOAL (an adult adoptee association in South Korea). It was my first travel to Korea, and I had very little knowledge of Korean language and culture. Today, I think I understand Korean society and am mentally much better, and I think that helps our relationship, and I hope that we are able to maintain a lasting and loving relationship in the future.

 

- After you met your biological parents, you felt that you were no longer the same Dane you used to be. Could you explain in what way?

Meeting my biological family is the most life-changing event in my life. It completely changed my conceptions of self, identity, and belonging. I realized that the narrative that has been constructed around me as a Dane is not the full story. I also have ties with Korea, although I did not know what that meant until I was an adult and it is still something that I constantly negotiate within myself and in Korean society.

 

I don’t think identity is singular. Today, I identify as a Dane, as a Korean adoptee, as the daughter of my Korean parents, and as the sister of my Korean siblings. At the same time, other histories have affected my identity as well. I studied for four years in the U.S., and I married a Jewish-Chinese American, and I have worked as an artist in such places as China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Chile. This has also shaped my identity and my perspectives of the world.

 

Since I came to Korea for the first time in 2001, I grew interested not only in understanding my personal history, but also in understanding Korea’s history. As an adoptee I think I can relate to other people in Korean society who struggle to have a voice, such as migrants in Korean society, people of Korea’s common classes, and women who had to give up their children or make sacrifices in other ways due to Korea’s patriarchal structure,

 

I have also been involved in the growing international adoptee community, and it has been very fascinating to see how Korean adoptees from various experiences are making artworks, writing, and doing scholarly work and changing the narrative of adoption. The adoptee experience is not singular as we grew up in different countries, cultures, and family structures. However, the commonality that we share is that we often discover [옥수웅1] different stories from those told to us by the adoption agencies and our adoptive families and societies while growing up. I see the potential for international adoptees to work together with other communities in Korea to build a more just and equal society.

 

- Your birth family is from Jeju Island and lived there during the Jeju April 3 Uprising (Massacre). You recently got news that your paternal grandfather wrote books about the massacre. How did you feel when you realized this?  

When I first went to Jeju Island in 2001, I did not know about the Jeju April 3 Uprising. As I have been raised and educated in the West, most of the literature I read about the Korean War was from a Western perspective, and it was only recently that I have been able to find resources to understand more in depth the tragic and violent history of Jeju Island where my family is from.

I found a book that my paternal grandfather wrote, and I decided to have it translated in order to understand more about my family history. He wrote about his life and about the Jeju Uprising. Through his writings I could better understand how everyone on Jeju Island was deeply affected by the Jeju Uprising.

 

The history of the Jeju Uprising has been suppressed in the collective history of Korea, and it is a very ideologically charged event. It was long seen as a communist rebellion when in reality countless innocent people were killed. The Jeju Uprising happened in 1948, thus preceding the Korean War, and the U.S. military is also responsible for the atrocities.

 

As an artist and filmmaker, I think it is important to cast light on this history and to convey the truth about this genocidal-like event and its effects in order to restore honor to the victims and begin a process of healing.

 

While growing up as an adoptee, I felt that I was a person without a history, so by getting to know about the history of Jeju Island, I can begin to locate my own history on the microscopic level of my relation to my family, and in a larger scope, attempt through the medium of art and film to convey the truth and heal the wounds of the Jeju Massacre as a collective past. I see the history of international adoption related to other histories that have been silenced and labeled taboo in society, and I believe that in these cases, in order to create a just and democratic present and future society, it is important to deal with the past.

  

- What is the meaning of your artwork in your life?  What do you pursue through your artwork?

Art is a very important aspect of my life. It is the way I am able to communicate my thoughts and feelings most accurately. My artwork has been shaped by my personal history. I locate my subjectivity on intersecting and often contradicting social, cultural, political, and historical coordinates. I primarily work with film, video and performance art and through these mediums I often convey multi-layered stories that take into account both historical, psychological, and cultural perspectives. I believe that art is not just decorative, functional, or commercial. Instead, art can have an important function in society by posing questions about social and political issues to a broader public. In my artwork, I am invested in conveying stories that are contested and silenced and to create meaningful dialogue. For instance, the film “The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger” was an attempt to locate international adoption within a longer history of militarism and patriarchy and to look at the structural problems rather than stigmatizing individuals in society.

 

- You mentioned earlier that you don’t see identity as singular. Could you elaborate on how you identify yourself as a Dane, a Korean, and a world citizen, and how these identities interconnect?[옥수웅2] 

I identify myself as all of the above. I don’t believe in nationalism and I am neither the typical Dane, nor the typical Korean, yet I think I am deeply impacted by both Korean and Danish culture. I see myself as a world citizen and yet I am skeptical about the recent celebrations of international adoptees as transnational privileged assets because this does not account for the often very tragic and sad family histories that are the underlying reasons for our adoptions. 

 

- What is the greatest difference between Denmark and Korea that you’ve noticed?

The greatest difference I think is the social welfare system. Denmark has for many years had a social welfare model that ensured many rights to its citizens. For instance, all education, even university education is free to all citizens in Denmark, and social welfare is provided to single mothers, elderly, and the disabled. Also, it is a very gender equal society compared to Korea.

 

Korea has progressed remarkably economically in the last decades but not without a certain cost for the less fortunate or less wealthy in society. With democratization comes the task to establish proper human rights and equality for all citizens as well as the immigrants and migrant workers in society. 

 

- Regarding the overseas adoption issue, some Koreans say, “Adopted children will be better off in the adopted foreign country than in Korea.” Do you have any thoughts and feedback on this?

It is a serious misconception that children are automatically better off in the West than in Korea. In the past, people might have thought that children adopted overseas would have better economic and educational opportunities, but then you don’t account for the pain and trauma that might arise from being uprooted from family and culture.

 

Today Korea is a first world nation that is able to care for its own children. Instead of sending children overseas, Korean society needs to be more accepting of single parent families and establish a social welfare system and legal system that can provide proper human rights for all its citizens. Also social values and norms need to change so that society is more gender equal and accepting to others, i.e. single mothers and bi-racial children.

 

- What was your most painful experience as an adoptee?  Do you have any advice for other adoptees?   

The most painful experience has happened in both the West and Korea. As an international adoptee, people in both societies often presume who you are and what you are supposed to feel without asking you.

In Denmark, people always insist that I am one hundred percent Danish because in Denmark it has very much been believed that it was possible to erase adopted children’s past and make them Danish.

In Korean society, blood lineage is still considered important and adoptees are therefore often pitied, or it is presumed that we are of questionable family heritage. We are often treated as children or foreigners even when it comes to laws that concern us.

 

I hope with the growing activity of international adoptees in fields of art, academia and activism, that Western and Korean societies will recognize our multi-faceted voices.

 

http://blog.daum.net/wadans/