Hi, it's Elise Hugh and you're listening to TED Talks Daily.

This talk begins with the story of a curious-looking tattoo.

By the end, that marking will remind you of the powerful ties that bind us to our families.

Korean adoptee Sarah Jones calls us to reframe the way we think about adoption so it better

protects the stories and cultural identities of adopted children. Okay, take a listen as she offers ways

we can think about transracial adoption more compassionately and the questions that all of us should be

asking about it. Her talk is from TEDx Salt Lake City in 2019.

When I was three years old, I was trans racially adopted from South Korea by a white family in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I arrived in America with a mysterious tattoo on my left forearm. The tattoo was so large

and noticeable that my adoptive parents had it surgically removed right away. They were worried

that other kids would make fun of it. Today, there's only a light scar where the tattoo once was.

Korean adoption records in 1976 were notoriously

incomplete. I didn't have any information about my background or my birth family. I didn't even know

if my name or birth date were real or if they were assigned. And no one knew what my tattoo meant.

Transracial adoption is where a child from one race or ethnicity

is adopted by parents from a different race or ethnicity.

In my generation, children who were adopted from Korea

were assimilated into the culture of their adoptive parents.

So I was raised as if I were white. Growing up, occasionally my family would eat at a Korean

restaurant or we'd go to the Asian festival, but I did not identify with being Asian. Looking back now, having my tattoo removed is symbolic of losing a

connection with my Korean ethnicity and culture. And I am not alone since the 1950s, almost 200,000

Korean children have been adopted all over the world.

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