Koreaboo

When I was growing up on Awabakal land, in a small suburb of Newcastle, there was no one who looked like me. For many years, I was the only Asian girl at my primary school. I was often startled by my own reflection, expecting to see a blonde, blue-eyed beach kid, and instead seeing a dark-haired, brown-eyed girl staring back. 

For a long time, I believed my adoption was an isolated event, a private twist of fate. But when I began searching for my biological family, I realised my story wasn’t the exception. It was part of a much longer history, one that connects me to thousands of others. 

Since the 1950s, over 200,000 Korean children have been sent abroad for adoption, raised across Europe, North America, and Australia. Despite being the largest group of intercountry adoptees in Australia, more than 3,600 since the late 1960s, our stories have remained largely unexplored. For decades, adoption narratives were shaped by adoptive families, governments, and institutions, rarely in our own words. That is changing. Across the globe, a community of Korean adoptees is rising, reclaiming its past and redefining its future. 

This play is one small part of that reclamation. It was inspired by my life, but it’s not a documentary. It’s imagined from reality. With the support of my families in both Australia and Korea, I’ve written it from the inside out. 

In 2018, I was rehearsing a play at Griffin when I got a call from my social worker. After years of searching, my first correspondence from my birth family had arrived—letters, photos, faces. 

In those images, I saw—a nose, lips, and eyes shaped like mine. I thought it would bring clarity. Instead, it opened a kind of confusion. A history I’d only imagined was now real, but still distant. I couldn’t quite see myself in it. It unsettled me. A change I didn’t have words for yet.  

I couldn’t have predicted how my relationship with Korea, my family, or myself would evolve, or that something so private would eventually become a play. Something light, funny, even a little absurd.  

Maybe Koreaboo began back then, and maybe it was always meant to find its way to the stage. 

Standing with the play now, I see myself clearly. Not as unfamiliar, but whole. 

I don’t speak on behalf of all adoptees. This play is simply one offering. I hope it encourages people to discover the growing body of work being created by Korean adoptees. Every story is different. Together, they reveal the breadth and complexity of our experiences in a way no single voice ever could. I’m grateful to those who have spent decades sharing their stories. This play sits among their work. 

This story is deeply personal, but it wasn’t created alone. It grew through collaboration. I’m deeply grateful to Jessica Arthur, Julian Larnach, Andrew Lee, Heather Jeong and Jen Jackson. To everyone who joined us throughout development, thank you for your time and care.

I’m indebted to our creative team, for their artistry, expertise and insight. And to our production team, stage management, crew, and everyone behind the scenes, thank you for making each performance possible. 

Thank you to the Griffin Studio program, and everyone at Griffin, for going above and beyond to support this story. This work wouldn’t exist without the generous backing of donors and the Board. It’s through this kind of collective support that new work can thrive. 

It’s a rare privilege for a new Australian play to continue beyond its first season. I don’t take that for granted. I’m incredibly grateful that Koreaboo has been given the opportunity to keep evolving. Thank you to La Boite Theatre, Brisbane Festival and Malthouse Theatre for your faith in this work and for welcoming it into your communities. 

Thank you to every audience member who has come to the theatre and engaged with this work. With every season, this story has found new conversations, and meanings beyond anything I could have imagined. That is one of theatre’s greatest gifts.

Thank you to Currency Press, Belvoir St Theatre, Shanahan Management, Cameron’s Management, Korean Liquor, Oriental Merchant, Jonah Klein, Simon and Jessie Whipp, Sally McClennan, Polly Rowe, Lauryn Bae Brokate, Josh Price, Cameron Stead, Wade Jackson, Eloise Winestock, Michelle Law, Alex Papps, Vanessa Downing, Candy Park, Khym Scott, Charles Napoleon An, Cassie Hamilton, Lauren Proietti, Angela Nica Sullen, Margaret Watson, Su Park, my friends, family, KAIAN and the Korean Adoptee community, your support made this possible. 

I’m fortunate to have reconnected with my Korean family. Every adoptee, if they wish, should have that chance. Too often, reunion depends on luck or personal resources. It should be supported, resourced, and treated with care.

To ask where you come from, or to feel what you feel, shouldn’t require permission. These are rights, not privileges. And yet, for many adoptees, those rights remain out of reach, denied by systems that have long prioritised secrecy over connection.

What’s needed is lasting support legal, emotional, and cultural. True advocacy makes space for every stage. It asks us to meet those shaped by adoption with compassion and respect, not judgement. And to offer care that honours their experience, and the freedom to grow, without carrying anyone else’s expectations. 

Reunion isn’t always what we see in films. It can be awkward. Incomplete. It doesn’t always bring answers, just different questions. 

Koreaboo wasn’t written to fix the past or offer tidy answers. It’s an invitation into a story felt by many but seen by few, where hope and disappointment sit side by side. Where connection doesn’t offer resolution, only the chance to begin. 

It holds that attempt.
It asks questions out loud.
It stays with what doesn’t resolve.
It doesn’t offer a solution. 

 It offers relationship and recognises the courage it takes to keep showing up and learn how to love someone as they are. 

Years ago, I went looking for someone who looked like me. 

Now I offer this story back, hoping someone else might feel a little less alone.