In Eleana J.Kim’s reading Producing Missing Persons: Korean Adoptee Artist Imagining (Im)Possible Lives, she lists several different artists that delved into the notion of the cultural identity crisis for Korean oversea adoptions. I was especially interested and drawn to Kate-hers Rhee’s artworks and performance arts as it implicitly lead the audiences in thinking about their own identity but also creates a queer link between pop culture and the media to adoption and cultural identities.
In Kate-hers Rhee’s artwork Missing Persons Project, she performed an act of sticking missing persons posters of herself around the hospital at which she was born in. Of course, she was not missing but it ironically shows her struggle of being a forced immigrant as she finds herself lost in her triple identity as she was an oversea adoptee herself as wanders around her Korean, American and German identity.
While raising awareness of the danger and risk of oversea adoption, she also focuses on how media and pop culture have potentially helped many families to reunite. As technology and pop culture emerges and works together, media platforms become the dominating space for an adoptee to connect and possibly reunion with their birth parents. This in a way also ironically reflects the despair within the Missing Persons Project. In a way, Rhee is aware that no one will be able to identity or actually “find” the girl (herself) printed on the paper. Not only because it was herself, it also shows how dependent we are on alternative methods of reunion through the failure. The project can also be viewed in a rather cyclical way as it shows how much the society is being commercialized where even the finding of people becomes a story to be made exciting for the audience.
Not only does Rhee raise the awareness of Korean oversea adoptees and how it interconnects with the media, she also takes a step further in challenging her korean identity. In another interactive performance piece Transkoreaning, Rhee presented a transformation process of herself from a rather western thinking (as she have stayed in Germany for over 10 years) to being embedded with South Korean culture through the use of social media. Through the employment of the internet and social media in particular (such as vlogging and blogging), she had made the audiences rethink how to approach the notions of cultural identity and “modern South Korean identity cliches and stereotypes” as it have been “further perpetuated by the popularity and dissemination of Hallyu”. Narrating in her non-native level of Korean, over the three months, she have not only transformed her communication ability in becoming an “authentic Korean” but have also showed the progress of how she changed her ethnicity and image of being an Korean woman through the influence of cultural presentations on the internet and from her surroundings. What makes this performance appealing and exciting is because it not only engages with herself as an individual but also deals with herself as the “other” by explicitly showing the struggle of embodying a transnational cultural identity.
The Politics of K-Pop 
Great blog post! I think an occurring theme that is coming up from Korean American stories we have read about in class is a struggle with identity as Korean Americans. I think having a sense of identity is very important but is so easily lost when racism and stereotypes are projected on to the non-white population of America such as Asians and Blacks. When a community is constantly being cited against you it is a natural fear losing a sense of self identity or having no sense of belonging. I love how you mention in your blog post that social media is a great way for Korean adoptee’s to find their brith parents in their home country. I think social media and online communities are huge parts of finding friends and communities that help create identity and belonging. I think the West views other areas of the world, such as the East, as inferior so I think Rhee’s performance,Transkoreaning,is a great example of how she makes the audience think differently about South Korean stereotypes.
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I think you bring up an interesting point about identity and its relationship to Hallyu. I think throughout the semester we have learned that certain historical and cultural contexts influence one’s identity. As you mentioned, Rhee uses her art as a way to grapple with her being coded in many different cultures as an “other,” and she forms her own identity that is an amalgamation of historical and cultural contexts of all the nations she’s been apart of. I think this ties into the art produced by Jiwon that we saw today in lecture. In her video she shows how two different generations of Koreans grapple with their identity, and the cultural and historical contexts that are linked to how they identify. Men in the Korean military are often supposed to absolve themselves of their personality in order to establish uniformity. As a result, men who fought in the Korean War felt as though their identity was lost. From a more current cultural perspective, K-Pop stars are often supposed to downplay their own personality and identity in order to create a blank slate that fans can project their own desires upon. I think this can have transnational implications with the way idols are perceived by consumers in different countries.
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I think you make some great points. Going off your idea about identity, I believe many Asian Americans struggle with figuring out what their identity is and what it means, making it that much more difficult for those who are adopted. Many Asian Americans grow up feeling the need to cast away their Asian identity to fully assimilate and be American. When I moved to the United States from Taiwan at age five, my parents wanted me to learn English quickly so I would fit in. They tried to speak to me in mainly English, not further developing my Chinese skills. Adoption adds a whole new level of intricacy to one’s identity because the environment you grow up may not necessarily reflect your cultural heritage. However, I believe the representation of Asians we are seeing in more recent media allows Asian Americans to feel more comfortable with that label (of Asian American), allowing them to embrace their Asian heritage rather than feeling the need to fit in with white people. For example, there seemed to be a lot of solidarity within the Asian community after Crazy, Rich Asians. Also, many Asians, even non K-pop fans, feel a sense of pride in the Korean wave that is currently taking over western countries with acts such as BTS and Blackpink.
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Your blog post’s strong focus around the relationship between art and identity was reminiscent of a particular artwork and the controversy surrounding it for me. Dana Schutz’s painting, “Open Casket”, was the center of a whirlwind of controversy in 2017, when it was exhibited at the Whitney Biennial Exhibition in New York. It is a stylized portrait of a black 14 year old boy named Emmett Till, who was lynched to death by two white men in 1955. The reason why this painting caused so much controversy is because the artist herself is a white woman. Protestors believed that a white woman such as Schutz herself did not have enough cultural license about the black community and its struggles in order to tell their story for them. This was an issue about identity because people believed that by telling the story of Emmett Till, she was infringing on the identity of the black community, as this was their story to tell. This counterexample of sorts shows how artistic expression can be the perpetrator in damaging one’s identity, as opposed to the example you used of people using artistic expression in order to explore and develop their own identities. I think the main difference lies in how established a community of people see their identity as; if it’s something that even has room for exploration. Thus, a community such as the black community may be bound together through solidarity of shared experiences, whereas a mixed-race adoptee might need to further explore their own identity, since they have no predecessors to look towards.
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Something that I always struggle with as an American-born-Chinese is the extent to which I can be considered authentic by both Chinese people and Americans. I feel like any effort I make to balance the two is futile. I love Chinese food, but my parents always eat Chinese food and I rarely get to eat American food. Also, my fluency in English certainly does not translate over to Mandarin; in fact, my mom always critiques my mandarin. I think that even finding a middle ground and being comfortable with it is difficult. However, I am proud to be an ABC, and I’m satisfied with having an answer to when my mom asks if I am more American or Chinese – I’m both.
I am very interested in the role media plays in reuniting families. It is always a blissful moment to see that reunion, but sometimes I wonder if media interferes at some point. Perhaps there should be a cut-off point the family is comfortable with, since, after all, it is a very emotional and personal experience. Regardless, the power of media can be very important when considering the years and maybe even decades of separation between members of a family.
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