When adoption doesn't mean the end of the story

[2026/03/07] By The Korea Times

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 how to speak English, visiting her dad’s place on weekends and navigating her mom’s struggles with mental illness. After a few years, she found a job to avoid being at home but was forced to spend half her paycheck on bills.

“The first year was amazing, heavenly — discovering what being a child and being taken care of meant. But childhood got robbed again,” Ally said. “We didn’t have a childhood. We didn’t have parents, really.”

Around 16 or 17, Ally’s rebellious side — and her voice — began to emerge. Once, when she was having an argument with her adoptive mother she decided to ask point-blank why she was adopted in the first place.

Her adoptive mother’s response was that she was just trying to save her marriage.

“I just remember it was very, very painful. It confirmed she really didn’t love us,” Ally said.

Around the same time, Ally’s adoptive mother revealed something else: Ally’s birth mother had reached out after the kids were adopted — but the adoptive mother refused contact.

Ally recalls being extremely hurt and angry. It wasn't that she wanted to contact her birth mother, which she didn't. It was about being denied the agency to decide.

“That choice,” Ally said, “was not even available to me.”

After graduating from Mount Saint Mary’s University in 2008, she changed her name to Ally Yoon Chae and severed ties with her adoptive family.

Today, Ally resides in Ventura, California, where she works as a physical therapist. She doesn’t have her adoption papers or know the city where she was raised. She’s unsure if she wants to go to Korea to search and isn’t interested in finding her birth father because of the trauma she experienced. But she thinks it possible to find her mother and reunite.

If that were to happen, there are two things Ally wants to say.

The first: "Why did you abandon us and leave us?"

The anger and resentment have not fully abated.

But Ally, now 46, leaned into therapy and her faith over the years. She put in much work to start healing and feels grateful for the strength it took to keep fighting.

“It was something horrific that I survived,” Ally said. “I’m living in southern California, one of the most beautiful places on earth, after coming from the slums of Korea. I feel like I’ve found peace and no longer need to search and struggle. I’m able to live.”

She doesn't know the choices that her mother made or why she made them. But Ally knows it must have been hard.

So, the second thing she wants to say is: "I forgive you."

News from：The Korea Times