Interview of Stephen Morrison

Today is June 4, 2009. This is Alex Cline interviewing Stephen Morrison, and we're at his church [ANC Onnuri Church] in Mar Vista. This is a window of time that we have in his busy daily schedule, in which he has allowed us to talk, and I'm very appreciative of that.

Good afternoon, or good evening, actually.

Good evening.

Thank you for agreeing to do this.

You're welcome.

We normally start with very simple questions at the beginning, and in your case I'm going to ask you that question a little bit differently than we usually do. What do you remember or know about your early life, and specifically when and where you were born?

According to a woman that I met later in life, she used to live next door to us when she was teenager and I was just a little baby, and she told me that my parents, mother and father, and then there were myself and my younger brother, so four of us lived in a pretty comfortable life. We had sizable house, and my father, according to her, had a relatively good business. Don't know exactly what he did. So he did pretty well for a while and then the business went down and thoroughly brought on lot of hardship, in him as well as the rest of the family, and we wound up moving out to like a rental house, and from then on it got worse, because my dad turned to alcohol.

So he started to--well, I think he drank before, but probably not as much as he did at that difficult time in his life. So eventually he got consumed by alcohol, and he became sort of like alcoholic, and the byproduct of that was that he abused my mother, and I remember him beating on my mother, and my brother and I just watched, unable to do anything. And a lot of times when my dad would come home drunk, he would even hit us for no reason.

Oh, wow.

Yes, so he just was not in control of himself. On the other hand, my mother was sort of like angelic, so very loving, very nice, and from what I remember her face, she was pretty. I think I was living like with one with an angel, one with a thief devil. [laughs] Of course, devil making really tough for everybody, and my mother couldn't stand the abuse, so she finally ran away. And even as little kid as I was--I might have been like, I don't know, four- or five-year-old kid--I could understand that she did the right thing, yes, and that I never blamed her for running away, because I wouldn't want anybody to go through what she was going through. So, unfortunately, that was the last time I saw her.

And my dad, later on, he got into trouble with some sort of a law, and he got arrested and thrown into a jail, and that was the last time I saw him. So us two kids, maybe about five years old and four-year-old, maybe three-, we were just roaming around the streets, and we had a little tiny makeshift little hut that my dad built, and we were able to sleep there, but during the daytimes we had to kind of scrimmage for food. So we walked around the streets especially looking for coins that people dropped, and we were able to find something every day, and sometimes we got some handouts. People took pity on us. So that went on for like months. So each day a new adventure would begin where we would have to find where our food is coming from, so it was a very difficult and very trying time.

But because I was too young to even recognize the gravity of the situation that I was in, gravity of it, you just respond to the situation, just go out and look for food. You know what I'm saying? You don't think about depressing thoughts. You just live it, you know?

Yes, survival mode.

Yes, yes. You just live it and so that's what happened. And later on, this one particular woman under the bridge where we were staying, she took pity on us, and she sold steamed crab on her little cart right by the bridge, so every time we passed by she was there, and sometimes she would give us a free crab, knowing clearly that we don't have money to buy anything. And later on she decided to help us out by taking my younger brother to her home to raise.

Oh, I see.

So she sort of adopted [him], and that was the last time I saw my younger brother. So I was left by myself, and then a couple of weeks later, a gentleman found me roaming the street and saw that I needed a home, so he took me to an orphanage, and that's where I started having my orphanage life.

Right. So do you still therefore have specific memories about that time, even though you were very young?

Yes. For some reason, it doesn't go away. I forget a lot of things that happened recently, but those things just don't go away, for some reason.

Now, is this in Seoul?

This was in Kangwon Province. It's sort of like a coastal, eastern coast state. We have like thirteen states in Korea, and Gangwon is sort of like a mountainous region with a coastal--adjacent to what they call Sea of Japan. Koreans like to call it Sea of Korea. So I remember distinctively in the morning watching the sun rise from our makeshift hut, and watching the sun coming out of the water, watching the big and small ships going up and down and fishing boats, the, what do you call that, seagulls flying, and occasionally I would see like military frigates or carriers and things like that. So I know from that experience alone I was somewhere in the east coast. And this lady who was my neighbor in her teenage years, we met her later and she told us that our home--that I was born in the city of Mukho, yes, spelled M-u-k-h-o. That's an eastern coastal city of Gangwon Province.

And do you know about what year you would be talking about then, when you were out on the street?

According to--okay, of course, I don't know exactly when I was born, so I don't even know exactly how old I am, but roughly speaking, they gave me my birthdate and my age when I was admitted to the orphanage, so that became sort of like official birthdate. So I could be three years younger or two years older, but I think I'm pretty close to round about, and so I really don't have clear record or any clear memory of when I was born, things like that.

Right. But generally, then, what time are we talking about, like about the time you went into the orphanage, when was that?

Oh. The record says that I went into an orphanage around 1961, to a small orphanage in Gangwon Province, and after that, because I had a problem with my leg, I was then later sent to Holt Children's Services in Ilsan, Korea, and that's about thirty minutes north of Seoul, only seven miles away from DMZ. So Holt Orphanage was established by Harry and Bertha Holt, an elderly couple from Eugene, Oregon. They sold their property, their lands, their business, and went over to Korea and established an orphanage, because they'd seen plight about many children, especially Amerasian G.I. babies, shortly after Korean War. There were just a lot of them, and so he had a call from God to go over and help these children, and many of them got adopted to United States.

So I was admitted--according to the record, I was admitted to that orphanage, Holt Orphanage, in 1962. So I was then six years old, according to the record that they wrote down. So I was admitted at six, and I grew up there--I lived there till when I was fourteen, so I lived in an orphanage for eight long years, and then I got adopted.

Well, do you know about what happened with your knee that needed attention?

I think one of the first things that they did when I went into Holt Orphanage was to look at my condition in my knee. I was born with a normal leg, and I caught some sort of a disease and caused my knee to kind of lock, and I couldn't stretch. So they tried to fix that, and they didn't have the medical tech knowledge, and it was done at the best hospital available at that time. Still, they didn't have the technologies, so they wind up stretching my leg, my left leg. They took the knee joint out and fused the two bones together, and I'm stuck like that. But I'll tell you, it's been a blessing for me to have a leg like that, because it never bothered me physically. I mean, only discomfort I have is during skiing.

Oh, wow. You actually ski?

Yes.

Amazing.

Or sitting on a stadium seat where seats are very narrowly spaced, and that can kind of be a challenge.

Yes, wow.

But other than that, there's no pain, no problem.

Interesting. Do you have any sense of why this woman who took pity on you and your brother would have taken your brother in and not you?

I asked her that question, and I don't normally tell this side of the story. But I asked her, and she took my brother, and she took him to a clothing store, and she bought him brand-new clothes, and I was really envious. Wow. She's being so nice to my brother, and she said that she is going to take him to raise him. And God bless her. I'm glad she did that, and I've never had any misgivings toward her. But she did--and when I asked her, "How about me?" And she said, "Because of your leg."

That's what I wondered.

Yes. "I cannot take you." So because it's very tough for special-needs children to live in Asian countries. It's not just Korea. Yes, China, Japan, they're all very strong discrimination against handicapped children, and I guess she had a hard time accepting me. But the thing was that even though I felt the strong pain of rejection at that time, later on I would think about it and then say I would clearly understand her feeling, but at the same time be grateful that she took my brother. And I didn't really treat my brother too well, and that's one of the regrets in my life. When I was--he just followed me everywhere I went, and when somebody would give us like cookie or even bread or fruit or some food, I would eat like three-fourths of it and give him just a quarter, and if he complained, I would just whack him, you know.

Sure. Well, that was the modeling you had, right? That's what you knew.

Yes. And it wasn't until I got separated with him and I went into orphanage, and after having been in the orphanage for a while, there I was pretty comfortable with clothes, shoes, and food, and regular food, and I was getting nutrition, and all of a sudden I started missing my brother. And it's like, I would think about my brother all day long, and just play with friends there, and I would sit on the hill and just look out to the world and wonder where my brother was. Those were tough times. And in my pocket I had at that time marbles that I played with kids, and some what we call Ddak-ji, like a Korean version of small baseball cards, but like even one-third the size of that, with lots of different pictures, and those collections you have to play in a game and then you win. I had a whole bunch of that, and I felt like if he had shown up in front of me, I would just give him everything, because I really, really missed my brother.

And not a day goes by even to this day that even split second I would think about my brother, so I guess he's really put an impact in my life, and always, always feeling guilty the way I treated him. I go on a speaking tour a lot. I speak to a lot of large group of audiences, sometimes two thousand, sometimes twenty, and I share my story, and every time I get to this part of the story I tell them, "If you have brother or sister, be nice to them while you have them." So that's what happened. Yes. Otherwise, if I talk about this, I would get pretty choked up, but because I've spoken so often, I've built up some resistance. [laughs]

Right. So not to jump perhaps too far forward in the story, but since you were able to connect with this woman to find out something about your background, were you ever able to find your brother again?

No.

I figured not.

After I grew up, after I graduated from college, I got a job at then Hughes Aircraft Company, building satellites, and I was given an opportunity to go to Korea, and after that, many, many times I went to Korea, a lot of times. Korean media, people in Korea, feel that I have a story, so a lot of Korean media came in this story, and especially when I decided to establish a nonprofit organization to promote adoption, to be a voice on behalf of homeless children. "Here is an orphan boy who grew up in orphanage, got adopted to a very nice family, did very well in school and career, and he wants to put something back in this society by creating what's called MPAK, Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea." So they kind of feel that's a good story to tell. So I've been pictured on many, many newspapers, television programs, KBS [Korean Broadcasting System], SBS [Seoul Broadcasting System], MBC [Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation], all these. Those are like CBS, NBC, ABC of United States, and numerous times. They did a one-hour document story on me.

They even allowed me to go to like a Wednesday morning program where KBS has like Ichimada [phonetic], or "Morning Place" or something like that. And on every Wednesday, they have a program to reunite lost families, so a person would come on and they would share their stories of the past, and people were just glued to that TV program, and they would call in. "I met your brother," or, "I am your brother," "I am your sister," you know? "I am your father." And then the next week, the TV show bring them together in a studio. They meet them for the first time and there are all the emotions. There's crying, hugging, and tears, and all the audiences and all the TV audience even, they break into tears. It's been a real sensational program.

So I went onto that program. So I described all about my Gangwon Province, how I grew up, and I didn't get a call from my parents. But this lady, who was at the time [unclear] tiny tots, she was our neighbor, and she was fourteen at that time, so you can say that she's about maybe twelve or fourteen years older than us, maybe twelve years older. And she remembered us. She even remembered our names. And she called the studio, saying, "I know that man." So while KBS camera was staring at me with their camera, I was actually receiving this phone call from her, and she told me a lot of things that I already knew, so it was no mistake that she--she really knew our family.

Wow.

So I got to meet her the next year, and then she told me about all the things, where I was born, what my parents were like. But unfortunately, she didn't know their names, because she knew their names when she was in her teens, and she was already into, like, what, fifties when she met us. So that's how I got to know something about my past.

Interesting. What do you remember--you described some things, some vivid images of the water and the boats and the seagulls. What do you remember about the town that you were in, in terms of just what the area was like, the structures and the people there, sort of the different types of businesses that might have been in the area, what it was like?

It was a fishing village, definitely, and there was not too far from it like a Navy, naval base, I guess. And I remember a train right in front of us, going up and down, carrying lots of coal, just black coals, and a lot of people working along that coal, the railyard. I remember lots of fishing boats selling a lot of fish on the market. Koreans love squid, so they catch lot of squid, and they open it, and they dissect it and they open it and take the middle part out, inside out. They open it and put skewer in it, and they dry. There's rows and rows and rows of squids that are being dried, and I remember seeing that. And like some forty years later, KBS takes me where I was born, and for the first time in many, many years, I got to see those images, and it was really neat. It's like going back to my childhood memories. Yes.

Had it changed much in that time?

Oh, it changed a lot, yes. Korea is now sort of like an economic powerhouse now.

Sure. Right.

Hardly any straw-thatched roofs, houses. All like tiles or shingles, and lots of roads paved. [laughs] It's different days, different. So I remember going there, and I have a video of that, sitting on a hill looking down and just reflecting. So I've been on TV show a lot, but I never got a call from my brother or someone who purported to be my brother at all.

One thing that I remember was that on a winter night--because in Gangwon Province, they get more snow than any other place.

Yes, I was going to ask about the weather and how you dealt with it.

So we get a lot of snow, and we had a little makeshift hut, like I said, and inside it we built a little tiny stove. We had a little pot, and we were able to get some rice. We didn't have the ways to get the water, so what we did was to put some rice on the pot and go out and get a whole bunch of snow on top of it, put the lid on it and heat on the fire. That's how we cooked our rice. [laughs]

Wow. Pretty resourceful.

Yes. And one time, one gentleman--this was while we were still with the dad, and he was always out doing something during the day, never home, so us two kids were staying. A gentleman--both my brother and I were sitting in a--it's barely tall enough for us to stand. Imagine how my dad would--it's like climbing into a tent, you know what I'm saying?

Yes, right.

We were sitting there and somebody, like a blue suit, passes by and throws something at us, and we look at it. It's a brand-new winter longjohn type of clothes, and we were kind of dumbfounded. Wow, whoever did that. So we were very grateful, and from that day on we wore that every day. Of course there is no washing, and we would get lice all over, and somehow--and one night it got--my clothes got caught on fire, and I woke up and remember crying and quickly running out to the front of the hut, grabbing the snow and putting it right on my arm. And I still have the scar on my arm. I looked at my brother--all his clothes were burned, so I don't know. I think he deliberately took it off. Maybe the fire was going out; he decided to burn his clothes. [laughs]

Wow. So how did he stay warm after that?

I don't remember.

Wow. Amazing. What do you remember about the first orphanage that you were taken to?

I was one of the youngest guy, youngest kids there, and most of the boys or boys and girls were older. Older kids went to school. School was like next door, and because I wasn't old enough, they didn't send me to school. So I just played around during the daytime. I remember getting very, very sick one time, and I lay down several days unable to get up. I had a very, very high fever. Apparently it was a Christian orphanage. So I was really sick. They don't have a bed. It's like you sleep on the floor with a mattress. So I was lying there and just really feeling sick for several days with a very high fever. This orphanage director comes in and he gives me some medication, and he puts his hand on my head and starts praying. And I remember just watching his face, his lips just moving. He prayed, and that very afternoon I was okay. [laughs]

Wow.

And the thing is that when that KBS TV, they did a story, I took my wife [Jody Morrison] there to that orphanage. We somehow found that orphanage, and they moved. Their orphanage moved to another location not too far away from where they were, and there I met the same orphanage director, same face, because I do remember the face, even though as young as I was, I do remember him. And, of course, he didn't remember me. So I told him, "It's more important that I remember you than you remember me," and I thanked him. So that was a very touching moment that I got to see him, and he was into his eighties and had a stroke, and he wasn't doing too well.

And after that, I wanted to--after that orphanage, I was there maybe six month, not more than a year, I don't think, and I went to Holt Orphanage, because somehow the orphanage director thought that if I go there, Harry Holt would heal my leg through operation. I went there, and that was the first time where I saw a Westerner.

That's what I was going to ask. Before we get there, can I just ask you, in the first orphanage, about how many children do you think were there?

There were about fifty.

And evidently, as far as you can remember, they were all Korean, then?

Yes. Yes. There weren't any Amerasian.

Yes, that's what I wondered. Okay, so then you went to Holt. How did you travel there?

An adult took me on a bus, and we traveled a good day through the dirt road and winding road, and I'm sure I slept most of the way. And so I went in there. I first walk up to the Holt office with this gentleman, and they sign me, sign some paper over, and he leaves, and I'm left there. And all of a sudden this woman walks in. She has very funny-colored hair, very large nose, big eyes, kind of scary-looking feature. I'm like I've never seen any person like that. And she was, of course, an American missionary, and she was helping Mr. and Mrs. Holt with children, taking care of the children. So she brought me--she asked me like a very rough Korean [unclear], like, "Are you hungry?" I said, "Yes." So she brought me chocolate milk--I didn't know what that was, of course--and a couple of pieces of bread, and I thought, "Wow." At that time, bread was sort of like a rich man's meal. [laughs] So I eagerly ate the bread, and when I tasted chocolate milk, I didn't like it at all. I just wasn't used to a chocolate taste. I couldn't drink the rest of it. So that was my first taste of American food. [laughter]

Wow.

And then I met Mr. Harry Holt, and he had this mustache, gigantic eyes, and very thick eyebrow, and just looking at him, it was like very fearful. And he had that mean look. But the moment he hugged me, the moment he greeted me, all that disappeared, and from then on he became really--I always looked forward to seeing him again. So I was put in a little unit where there were younger kids were, and it turns out that older kids were transferred to Ilsan Center, which is about thirty minutes north of that, and later on I was transferred over there along with other big kids. And there the kids were taught how to read and write. They were taught Bibles. They had church service. They had clinic. They had dormitories, school, playgrounds, and it was right on the foot of a mountain, and I really, really enjoyed living there with my friends. There's just so many good memories, playing with them.

But as much as I enjoyed there, there's always a spot in you where you long for family. Especially I remember looking out the fence toward the world, and I remember watching neighborhood kids with their hats and water bottle with the backpack, going on picnic with their family, and how I was so envious and remember thinking, "I wish I had family like that. I wish I had mother and father like that." So I know, for having gone through that experience, I know what the homeless children go through, and I think that's one of the big impetus in me creating the MPAK organization to promote adoption.

How many kids, then, were at this Holt Orphanage?

At Holt, during their peak they had about seven hundred children, a lot of children. A lot of biracial children.

Yes, that was what I was wondering.

So in a room there would be about twenty of us sleeping on a mattress, room like this big, maybe more like a ten by ten, twelve by twelve, and rows and rows of kids just sleeping. And there would be black Amerasian, Caucasian Amerasian, and they looked just like Caucasian, they're all abandoned by their birth mothers. They know that what a shame it is for them to try to raise them, because they know that they'll get a lot of jeering, a lot of condemnation from people--

Right, they would be stigmatized.

--for having gotten involved with American in the first place. It's like a death mark, and you're doomed, even though a lot of times it may not be their problem. Maybe they were raped, you know. There have been cases like that. So I lived with lots of black kids and Caucasian kids, but as a kid, as children, as kids, you don't--at first, when I first met one of those kids, black kids, I kept looking at him, because he was so different. He was so different. And then once you get to talk with them, play with them, then all that disappears and they become like your buddies, and you sleep in their same room, you eat with them, you go to school, go to church together, you play, you get in a fight and all that, and they're speaking Korean just like you do, and singing, so I became very close to them.

And one thing that I remember is that because these kids were Amerasians, once they go out of the orphanage, neighborhood kids, town kids, they would always say something derogatory, like expression of "N words" in Korean. And we never used that, because they were like brothers. So when somebody--if we would pass through a certain section of town, and if there is a kid calling bad names for my black friend, we would gang up on him and beat him up. [laughs] So you can say that I learned to like black people from--those were the kids, those Amerasian kids really helped me to have very favorable view of African Americans.

Interesting.

And if it wasn't for them, I would be just like the rest of them. What distinguished them was not only their skin color, but their physical ability. So we were enrolled in this school in Ilsan, and every year they have like an athletic event. So they would be paired to run hundred-meter dash, long jump, marathon, like marathon thing like maybe 5K, that order, not a real marathon, and these black kids--oh, and also basketball--they dominated every sporting event. [laughs] And other schools were very envious of this school where we were going, because all the winners were our black Americans and also Caucasian Americans as well, and it was really interesting to see how they really, really excelled at everything in sports.

When did you, or if you did, if you can remember, develop an awareness of what the explanation was for these kids' situation and the kids in the orphanage, which kind of opens the world up to something outside not only your orphanage but your country?

Yes. You learn very early on, even when you're like seven, eight, nine, and know that their mother were Korean, their fathers were G.I.s, African American G.I.s or Caucasian G.I.s, and that these children were the byproduct of those relationships. But because you are friend with them, because I was friend with them, you think about it and then later on you kind of think, well, so what? What's done is done. They're my buddies.

Had you seen American G.I.s? Do you remember seeing any when--

Yes. There were some very good American G.I.s. They were in the 8th Army, and there's one particular guy named Durbin, and Steve Forrester [phonetic]. Those are Caucasian guys, and every Saturday they would take a leave from their base, come through orphanage, and every time they'd come, they'd bring a whole bunch of candies, and, boy, we really loved following them around.

They were popular, I'm sure.

Oh, yes. They were probably in early twenties, and they were--of course, to us they were like giants. We had to always look up and extend our heads and ask them for some candies, and I really, really remember them fondly. Those--you know, God bless those U.S. G.I.s that came over. They saw us kids and realized who we were, and they sympathized with us, and they wanted to be like a big brother, so they came and played with us and gave us lots of goodies. And sometimes one guy, a guy named Steve, he befriended one Amerasian boy, Caucasian, and he was sort of like a big brother to him. Together--each week he would come and take one of us out, us kids out, and so we would go to USO [United Service Organizations], and that's when I first tasted hamburger, played pool. He would buy us some clothes. It's just amazing that he would do that each week. And then the next week, the two guys would take another kid out. It's just, you know, I wish I could really meet him and thank him for being so nice to orphan kids.

There was also--I said Durbin. I don't know whether he was last name or first name. He was also very nice. Yes. And I remember there was one G.I., he must have been like a private or something like that. None of them were officers at all. One guy came and he must have been late, maybe like nineteen or twenty, but he was big to me. And I remember these G.I.s, they would--on the Christmastime, they would bring barrels full of toys from U.S. Army base and hand them out with their Santa Claus [costume] on, and there were hundreds of kids sitting around in a sanctuary, and they would give us gifts. It's just wonderful, wonderful what they did, and bring us chocolate, bubble gums, the Bazooka? That's when I first tasted those.

Did you develop a taste for chocolate by then?

Yes, I did. And licorice, that was something new, and they would bring lots of Mattel toys, trucks. It was really neat. And lots of dolls for girls. And there was this one G.I. guy--well, through the Christmas present, I don't know who gave it, but I had the checker set, like black and red checker set, and this one G.I. guy comes every Saturday and sees me playing with checker, and he says he wants to play. I could tell by his hand motion that he wants to play. So I set up and I set up, he set up his, and I would beat him every single time. [laughter] I would beat him every single time, and he would scratch his head, couldn't figure out what he was doing. [laughs]

Interesting.

I thought that was pretty funny.

Yes, wow. We're coming right up to the time when you have to take off for this class. I just wonder if this can be answered quickly, and you can answer it. If not, we'll save it for the next time. But what knowledge did you have of why the G.I.s were even there, in terms of the history, the recent history of your country, in terms of the [Korean] war and all that; what was your awareness of the reason that U.S. G.I.s were in your country then?

Oh, yes. You don't learn about it until later, like seven, eight years old, when you first go to elementary school. You always learn about Korean War and how the United States and the U.N. [United Nations] forces came to rescue Korea, and how because of them Korea was saved, which is true. And there were fifty-some thousand G.I.s that died, or maybe U.N. forces, I don't know, maybe U.S. forces. So we are taught in school, elementary school, to hate Communist North [Korea] and to love United States and the democracy. Of course, we are also taught what the North Koreans teach about us, that we're sort of like a puppet to United States. But we know that our economic condition and the picture of Korea was really changing dramatically fast for the better, the economic-wise.

So from day one of the school, even before you go to school, you're taught--you meet people who are working at the Ilsan orphanage, men and women and even teachers, who will show you the scars of, "Here's where I got my--on this shoulder, I got my bullet wound." They would actually show. And this one guy who was teaching Bible class, he said he had to fight off the--he even one time saw the grenade coming at him. He caught it and threw it back. [laughs] And there were another teacher who shared a story about Korean War, where one dark pitch night, all you had was knife and that's all you had, and you were fighting North Korean commies. The way to distinguish was to put your hand on their head. If it was a hard metal casing, what do you call that?

A helmet?

--helmet, then it was a South Korean or U.S. If it didn't, like a North Korean, their head like a cap, then that was a commie. You just thrust him.

Amazing.

I hear the stories like that. So I knew that's why U.S. soldier, U.S. military had presence there, to protect. And long--many, many years, North Korea wouldn't even dare to attack South Korea because of them, and that's even true to this day. So no matter what the Korean young population, the young [unclear] generation in Korea, they're like very--they haven't really suffered through. They're a new generation and a lot of them have some built-up brainwashed image of U.S. soldiers there. They comment, demonstrate, and saying, "Yankee, go home." To me they all look foolish, and older generation. It's like, "How can you do that to our best friend, United States?" So I hope that friendship will continue to go on, because to Korea, U.S. is the best friend. U.S. saved Korea. Look at North Korea with what they're going through. Korea, South Korea could have been another country like that.

Yes, very sad. So you had a lot of drills and things?

Oh, yes. Lots of soldiers, lots of helicopters flying, lots of tanks. It was still like--especially in that area of Ilsan, which is seven miles south of DMZ, that was a normal, everyday thing. You see U.S. military practicing, dropping bombs on a hill, and you can see at night just a lot of flashes.

Wow, weird.

Yes, dumping sounds, bombs exploding.

Did it scare you?

It was so used to it, you know, and they would have these practices with the empty bullets, machine guns just firing, and they came to our hill, and us kids got really excited about it. They were going up there shooting at one another, a blue team, green team, and orphanage director got really mad at the military commander. "This is a children's center. We have here handicapped children, cerebral palsy and kids who--you're going to scare them. Please leave." And they did. After that, they never bothered to play on the mountain.

Wow. Interesting. Okay, well, I don't want to take more of your time than is okay, so we'll continue this next time. We'll pick up from the Holt Orphanage and your eventual adoption. Okay?

Sure. All right.

Thank you.

Today is June 11, 2009. This is Alex Cline. I'm interviewing Stephen Morrison at his church in Mar Vista in West Los Angeles, and this is session number two.

Good evening.

Good evening, Alex.

Thanks for coming in and sitting down to talk again.

You're welcome.

I have a couple of follow-up questions from our last session, which will deal with going back to sort of the beginning of your story. The first one is, most of the time I think people, when they hear about things like parents no longer being able to be present and take care of their children, having something like child services or some sort of social worker or some sort of institution step in to take care of the children, and in your case it doesn't sound like that happened, and I was wondering if you could explain perhaps why that was, that you wound up with your brother living essentially under a bridge for a little while.

I think in those days, because Korea was so socially disorganized, and even politically--it wasn't too long after the Korean War, so social structure, welfare system has not been really structured or set up, and I don't think there was any system where if a child becomes homeless, their automatic response was that, "Take him to an orphanage." And there was no effort to reunite with the family or find parents and things like that, so it was whoever found the children, and if they deemed that those children didn't have any homes or places to sleep or have enough food, then whoever saw them reported or took them to an orphanage by themselves. So that's what happened to us.

But not right away, though.

Yes. Because we were living with my dad, and even though he would leave somewhere in the morning and come late at night, don't know where he goes during the daytime, and my brother and I were just walking around the streets looking for food to eat--he hardly gave us something to eat. And I still remember one day, he was warning us that he's going to go away for three days and that we're to fend for ourselves, so three straight days we didn't eat anything.

Wow.

We hardly drank either, and it was the most painful experience, not only physically but emotionally and mentally. It was just very, very excruciating. And at the end of the third day, when my dad came with some fish and some food, and I was able to next day regain my strength back again, and me and my brother, both of us just starved for three straight days, not eating nothing. And we were just like four or five, at most maybe six years old. So that was very, very painful. And we--there was no refrigeration in those days, so when you buy fish, it's really salted. You kind of brine it almost like, so it won't get rotted. So fish was very, very salty to eat.

So we lived under that condition and after a while, I guess maybe the neighborhood kind of saw my dad kind of being around us, maybe they didn't bother to--but once they found out that he wasn't around, that's when this one gentleman or one woman who sold steamed crab took my brother to raise him.

I see.

And one gentleman found me and took me to the orphanage.

And even though the police, I have to assume, was involved in putting your father in jail--

Yes. We actually went to the police station to look for our dad, and they said, you know, "Go home." And we were kind of shunned or should I say turned away by the police. They didn't even try to talk to us, just refused us, so that was kind of a disappointment.

I guess.

And that was the last time I ever saw my father. So my brother went away, and, of course, I told you about how I wished that the same woman would take me as well, but she didn't want to take me, and that was the last time I saw my brother. And then I was admitted to the orphanage, where I met Mr. and Mrs. Harry Holt, and there I grew up with hundreds of other kids and a lot of them were Amerasian blacks or Caucasians. I became good friends to them, and we protected one another. If the neighborhood kids bugged them for their races or their color, I know we made sure that that kid get beat up. [laughs]

Wow. Yes. Another question about this early period that occurred to me as I was listening to the last session is the issue of your name. Do you remember what your name was, or your brother's name?

Yes. My brother's name was Dae Chun, Tre Dae Chun [phonetic], and my name was Chae Sop Choon [phonetic]. However, for a long time, because in Korean custom, typically when sibling brothers and sisters are named, they try to keep one portion of the name same. So in other words, my brother's name was Dae Chun. I remember him as Dae Chun, and I'm thinking, why am I not named Sop Chun, the last name is Chun. Or have him become Dae Choon rather than--and match with me, Sop Choon. So I had that curiosity, and it wasn't until the KBS program, where this woman who called--last time I told you about her, and she called and she immediately corrected me. "Your name is not Sop Choon. You are Sop Chun." And that made sense, because my brother's name was Dae Chun. And it's like, wow, she really knows her stuff. So the name that was given to me and my brother I know. That was from my parents. But as far as how old I was, when I was born, I had no information.

Okay. Then did that name remain with you during the time you were in the orphanages?

Yes. The name is Sop Choon; the one that I thought was my name stayed with me.

Wow, interesting. So you were in the Holt Orphanage then for eight years?

Right.

And I have to assume that like most orphanages, the older you get, the less your chances of getting out of the orphanage.

Right. Yes. In those days, Mr. Harry Holt, his aim was to try to place for adoption in the United States families the Amerasian children, because the longer they lived in Korea, the more difficult, with all the ridicule and discrimination they would suffer. So he tried his best to place as many as possible the Amerasians. He placed a higher priority on them, which was the right thing to do. And then along the way, some of the full-blooded Koreans got adopted, and they were becoming more and more and more as the Amerasian, a lot of them were already being placed overseas. So that's what happened, and I got--my number was number 3333. Yes, I was the three thousand, three hundred thirty-third child to be admitted to that institution, so it was easy for me to remember. So every time we had to write some idea, we had to write down that number.

And Harry Holt was a really nice man. When I first looked at him, he was very fearful-looking man, deep sunken eyes, mustache and big eyebrows, and very scary to look. But then once he hugged you, it's like all that just melted away. I remember one time where I had a knee cast on after the leg surgery, and I still had a full cast on it, and I was just walking, barely, up the hill. And he saw me and he knelt down like a few feet away from me, opened up his arm welcoming me to come into his arms, so I remember going right into him, and so that was really sweet of him. It's one of those things where you don't forget nice kindness of some individuals that have been kind to you, that you don't forget what they said or what they did.

Yes, so because they were very devout Christians, we were taught Bible stories. We had church services. We prayed during our meals, and our school was pretty much like a Christian school type of environment. And, of course, I really enjoyed playing with my friends in orphanage.

I have a question about that. What was it like for you when your friends started to get adopted and leave?

Yes, that's a good question, because as we were all like brothers and sisters, doing the same things, going to school, playing one another, eating together, sleeping, you know, and then all of a sudden we would get a news that such-and-such is being adopted, so he's going to be leaving for United States on certain day. And there would be two reactions from us, glad that he's going, but at the same time sad that he's leaving us. But there's another component, also desire in our hearts, perhaps somebody would adopt me. So there were three things, actually.

What was your sense, or what sense were you given of where you were going to be going, of the United States, this other country, what your chances were of going to this new place?

Well, the adults who were handling your case, they pretty much explained to you who the parents are. "You're going to America to a nice family by the name of such-and-such, and you're going to be very happy there. They have lots of things to eat, a lot of clothes to wear, big house and big yards," and things like that, and kids get real excited. But usually, what I remember the most was that on Sunday morning service at the church, we would have a regular service, and way at the end there would be announcement, and then the presider, the adult, would call out the person's name who's going to America and announce that he has a new family, he will be leaving us, and let's wish him farewell. And he would be brought to the front, and he would be given one pack of gum. That was a precious--we didn't even have things like that. He would be given a one pack of gum by maybe the pastor as like a going away, congratulation type of present, and then we would all clap our hands, and then we would sing a song. And that, you can make a movie out of that scene. I mean, it would make everybody cry. It's like we're singing like, [demonstrates] "God be with you till we meet again," you know, that kind, and the kid standing in front with his tears would just flow from his face. He stood with his head bowed, and then we would all be sad, and just afterwards we would hug him and shake, handshake him and things like that, and--

You can edit this part out? Yes. So that memory, it's like watching a movie. You know, Steven Spielberg might make a movie of children in that kind of thing. It's really--when you see that kind of image where children's crying and wishing farewell, it's really a touching moment. So I remember many scenes like that. And by the time it came my turn to go, I was a little older, like junior high, and I was away from that particular setting to an older boys' home in Seoul, so we didn't have anything like that.

Oh, I see. Well, before we get there, I have another question, which is, you're growing up in this orphanage and you're in Korea. You're culturally Korean, but it's maintained by Americans, Caucasian Americans. What was done, if anything, culturally, to sort of prepare you for this new life that you were going to have?

That's an excellent question. In fact, Mr. Holt, knowing that all these children if they get adopted would go to United States' families, he taught all the children alphabets through the teachers, and some of us knew alphabets when we were first or second grades. Some of us knew some words, like a pie, like apple, dog, with a flesh-colored picture, so we would be taught some English language.

Okay. That was my next question was the English-language question.

Oh, yes. But another very interesting aspect was, in that elementary school we were taught history, but U.S. history, so we learned about George Washington and [Benjamin] Franklin. We learned about Thomas Jefferson, [Abraham] Lincoln, [John F.] Kennedy, and all these wars, and the Indians. We were taught that, and it was very interesting. But not only that, we were taught some American music.

Really.

Yes. "Polly-wally-doodle-all-day", you know, I don't know, "Why I went down South, for to see my gal," and ABC, of course, those kind of early sixties elementary children's songs. And we were taught how to read English books, like "Jack saw Jill," that kind of--

Yes, right, right.

And we had some reading contests, and so I was able to read some sentences in those days. And so we were exposed to English from early on and so knew a lot about America. We saw some films about America, how wonderful, the color film. You rarely look at color films. And I remember the people in the movie were skiing. Oh, that was, oh, I would love to do that. It looked so fun. And picking up an apple and eating it, and that looked so wonderful. But not only that. Mr. Holt, in order to acclimate us to Western food, he--of course he gave us some Korean food every now and then, plus in the morning, oatmeal and milk. In the afternoon we were given spaghetti, Jell-O, pudding, and in the evening Campbell's soups, with that rice, mixed rice. Pork and beans--we were exposed to all that, and we were given bread. So there was one person who was making that bread. And the neighborhood kids were really, really envious of us. We were fed a lot better than neighborhood country-boy kids, and some of those kids remarked, "I wish I could be an orphan." [laughs]

Oh, golly. Yes.

So it was really interesting. We got introduced to macaroni and cheese. I mean, cheese was, ugh, how could he eat stuff like this? You had to get used to it, you know?

Yes, yes, sure.

Yes. And Mr. Holt had like big wheels of cheese in the storage. I remember going to Mr. Holt's house, and he had the kitchen on the right, and as I went to the kitchen sink, I saw what looked like, on the kitchen sink right by the faucet, I saw what looked like bread. Wow. So I grabbed it and put it in my mouth and chewed on it, and I went, "Uck. What is this?" It was a dishwashing sponge. [laughs]

Oh! Oh.

You know sponge, it looks like with the holes in it, it looks just like slice of bread, and I got fooled.

Yikes. Wow.

So we were acclimated to American culture way before, and I think that really helped many kids when they went home with the parents in the United States.

It's funny, because I was going to ask the U.S. history question much later. I had no idea that they would have been teaching it that early. That's very interesting.

Yes.

So how, then, or how much did you then keep kind of connected to your Korean culture, in terms of the food and things? You said you had a little bit.

Now, here's the kicker, though. We hated oatmeal. Oh, just didn't like that at all. Every morning, either porridge or what do you call that white--

Like Cream of Wheat?

Yes, Cream of Wheat or oatmeal. Oatmeal the next day. It's like seven days in a row. It's like what happened is that Mr. Holt and all the donors, they have their good intentions feeding us American food, and oatmeal's good, you know. Especially for me; I eat that now for cholesterol purpose. But during the shipment from United States to Korea on a ship, it goes through, like, I don't know, a month or two, or maybe more. Maybe it gets stored in the United States and gets shipped, and then it comes over to Korea, and then what happens was that those oatmeals were being attacked by lot of worms and bugs. And we would be given the oatmeal, and when you pour the milk on, dried bugs would be floating around. [laughs]

Oh, man.

And these looked like a larva, a flattened larva dried, and they're just floating.

Protein.

And we would just pick it up, toss it away, and eat. And I'm sure I ate a few hundred bugs.

Sure, yes. Protein, like I said.

With that protein--without knowing. And sometimes they would give us like biscuits from United States, and we would open it and there would be larvae kind of crawling around. Some of them are still alive. It was just kind of look, pick them up, and squeeze them away, and we would eat. So that was it, and so it was a very interesting part. I hope to write a story on those. [laughter]

But now, what about--I mean, did you ever have kimchi?

Oh, yes. So one day after Harry Holt, Mr. Holt, passed away in '64, we got the news that rations or aid from the United States has been a little bit dwindled, for some reason. And all of a sudden they decided to give us for breakfast barley and rice mixed, rice and kimchi and Korean style soup, you know, soybean paste soup.

Sort of like miso?

Oh, and we were so elated at that news. So one morning I went there and ate the breakfast hurriedly. It was so good. And as I was walking back to the dorm room, I saw a black Amerasian guy coming to me and to the cafeteria. He was kind of trudging along. I told him, "Hey, you know what they have for breakfast? Rice, kimchi, and gook." And his eyes opened up in a like, "What? Really?" And he was so elated, he started running for it. He was so happy. So we were not given much chance to eat kimchi. It wasn't until later, way later, after Mr. Holt passed away, that we started getting more and more Korean food after that.

How did it go over, then, if people were used to eating that other stuff?

Oh, they loved it. They were craving for it, these kids. I still remember one time, usually through the evening they gave, like, Korean-style rice, kimchi, and soup, and still in the morning they had, for a while, still like oatmeal. And I remember especially on a cold winter night, I would deliberately save the kimchi and put it on top of some storage roof, and in the morning, kimchi would be frozen, and I would take that and take it down to the cafeteria, eat it with oatmeal. [laughs]

Wow.

And other kids kind of joined in.

That's early fusion cuisine right there. So as the years are rolling by now, and Mr. Holt passes away, you're still there. What are your feelings now as you're getting older and your friends are going off? And how many of your friends that you had there were still there like you were, who had been there maybe for years?

Well, many of them got adopted eventually, like many older children. And then I got adopted and I didn't hear about it. It wasn't until many years later that I visited Korea, and that's when I visited Ilsan, where my old orphanage was, and I remember seeing some of the same faces. Of course, they were grown up, and they were still there, and most of them were like severely handicapped children, cerebral palsy. There was one particular guy that I remember. He was always in a wheelchair, his arms and legs all twisted, and he could hardly talk. But he had pretty good intelligence. He could understand, but he had difficulty uttering his words. So he had pretty sound mind, and he remembered me, and I remember just sitting down with him and talking with him, and I remember apologizing to him. "Hey, friend, I'm so sorry. I got to go and here you are. All these years you have to go through this." But then he humbled me, because he was a very good Christian, and he says, "Steve, you shouldn't be feeling sorry. Instead, I've been blessed to be here." He said that, "If I wasn't here, I wouldn't have met Jesus Christ to be my savior, and just for that I'm really happy." And he was, oh, he really humbled me. I thought I had it really, really good, but he really humbled me that time. So whenever I go to Korea, whenever I go to see orphanage, I try to make it a point to see him and have a talk with him.

And Mr. Harry Holt and now Mrs. Holt, both are buried in the hills of Ilsan, and whenever I go there, I carry a bouquet of flower and lay on their graves in a way of expressing my respect and love for them, because what they have done was just tremendous. They sold their properties in Oregon and then they set up orphanage in Ilsan. They didn't have to do all that, and in so doing, Mr. Holt died of a heart attack, so I think like that, people like that that kind of carries you in your life. As you go through your life, you face some difficulties and some decision-making process, and you're confused with certain thoughts, and those are the people, the memory of those people and my parents, they kind of carry you through the hard times, and they help you to overcome all the difficult situations.

So how concerned were you that you were perhaps not ever going to be adopted when you were there?

You know, that really did cross my mind many, many times, what if I don't get adopted, because I was full-blooded Korean, and I really didn't have too much hope in it. So I saw older grown-up adoptees who would be kind of literally pushed out of the orphanage to fend themselves. I think they're better now. They do some educational process right now, some special skills, maybe watch making, some jewelry, some stamp making, some labor type of skills, some manufacturing type of skills. They teach that and then they give some money nowadays to help them to acclimate to their new environment. But in those days, if you turned eighteen, bye-bye.

Wow.

The next day, you didn't know where your next meal was coming from. It was tough. And I met this friend who had their one bad knee. He was like, what do you call, polio. Great intelligence, smart kid, good kid. He was my same level, same grade, and I met with him when I was in Korea, and he was telling me the story how one day somebody in Holt just told him, "From now on, you are to go out of this orphanage. You're no longer welcome in here." And he was thrown out, literally, without money. And he just lived like a hell, and he was telling me the pain and all the agony. And somehow, because of some people helped him, he developed the trade for carving out stamps and then using, and he opened up a small mini-store and then later on expanded that to include watch and jewelry, and he was able to live by himself. Boy. So he's one person who did well.

And I know another buddy of mine, same grade, also a person with a sharp mind, and I'm really, really sorry they couldn't come. I mean, if they were like that nowadays, there would be many families who would be wanting that. So he learned the trade of making crystals for a chandelier, so he worked in that company for a while. So some became taxi drivers, and some could not adjust at all. They continue to live in--the orphanage director, because they have some mental problem, there's no way they're going to be able to support themselves, so they are allowed to live in the institutions until they were like into twenties or thirties.

So to this day, when I go to the same orphanage--it's still there at Ilsan--I miss some of the people that I used to know. Now they've been there for like fifty years, since their childhood. It's a pretty eye opener. It really makes me think every time I see them, it's like deep sense of gratitude, deep sense of who I am, what I should be, and also the responsibility that I have to fellow human being, and all of those things kind of work together in my finding my organization called MPAK.

These days especially, people are more aware of just how deep the trauma can be for children who are abandoned and the kind of emotional problems and things that they can have as they get older. I wondered if you remembered any of those sorts of situations, children who exhibited signs of trauma when you were in the orphanage, or if you yourself had any trouble sleeping, or recurring nightmares, fears, things that made it hard to relate to other people in all kinds of ways that these sorts of things can sometimes play out when you're growing up.

I think in my situation, having mother and father, especially my mother, into my, I don't know, maybe three, four years old, up to that time--

Yes, very helpful.

--has really, really helped me, and it is probably why I had the personality that I have and the capability that I have, and emotional stability. Of course, when you get separated from mother and father, especially mother who's loved you very much, and you go through all sorts of what ifs and also why, why did this happen to me, why did this have to happen to me, and why couldn't I be like normal kids with mother and father and go places, and especially when you are growing up in orphanage, even though in one moment you're busy playing with kids or your friends, but there are times when you are left by yourself. You kind of think about a lot of things, and all of a sudden you miss your mother, and you miss your brother, and you can't really cry about it. There's really no use. And you think about it. But I don't think I went through a real serious trauma. It's one of those things for me personally, and I don't know about others, in a deep tragedy like that, I'm sort of able to kind of block out in some ways, and even though I feel really pain, and I feel like hunger for my mother and my brother, somehow I'm--I don't know about now. At that time, I was able to--maybe it was too traumatic, I don't know. Maybe that was the reason that I was able to block out and just kind of become numb.

And I think maybe that was the reason that contributed my being a poor student in Korea, because I wasn't a good student at all. Like language and science, the history, I would read like a chapter, and I would almost remember all the contents, facts, dates, causes and reasons, and be able to summarize, and I had that intelligence. For some reason, math didn't come to me, and I had a tough time. I didn't like math at all. I hated math, and that didn't come to me that easily. It wasn't until I came to America, where I began to receive love and felt the security of home--all of a sudden, all the difficult equations that I never understood in Korea started coming to my brain really quickly. It's like, oh, there's nothing to this thing, you know? It's so easy. Why didn't I understand these things when I was in Korea? I was studying even in harder language, and yet just by looking at it I was able to understand. It's like, wow, this is fun. So I began to really like math. I began to really excel in math and physics, and that's why I'm an engineer. [laughs]

Yes, right. I guess so.

So as far as seeing other kids in the orphanage, I remember kids' parents, and this is really heart rendering--a mother would bring a brother and sister--I still remember this scene--and she would leave them, leave them there, and then finally until an adult care, and these kids are crying, "Mom, don't leave us here. Don't go." And mother, of course, she would be leaving, crying her heart out. And that would be the last time they would see her. Now, she maybe by culturally that she was kind of forced to do that. Maybe she met another man, who would not want to accept the children, and part of the condition for her to live with him, she had to get rid of them. Maybe that was it, and it happened a lot, and even to these days. So those children, they would wake up and cry at night. It's just--it was difficult even as a kid, watching that. Wow, he really must miss his mother. So there were a lot of kids like that, and I think many of them were like me, kind of accepted the situation. You can't do anything about it. And we became like brothers and sisters to one another, and that really helped. That helped. Our existence to one another really helped us to heal, because we were there to support one another, to be our friends, to play one another, help us to forget our pain.

And I still remember one kid who was a slightly special needs mentally, and he had his hand like twisted. So somebody teased him for that, and he started crying. "I don't even have mother and father. Why do you tease me? And he would cry." And then the bad thing was that other kids would tease at him even for that, and kind of imitate, [demonstrates] "I don't have a mother," you know, make their hands go like him, really. "I don't have a mother and father, so why do you tease me?" [Speaks Korean]. So that was--even for me, I knew that was not right, so there were a lot of pains. Those kids had a lot of baggage on their shoulder.

Sure. And you're in an orphanage that has mostly, if not all, older kids, right?

There were a lot of older kids, but--

Were there babies too?

Oh, yes, yes. It depended--we lived with the older kids, but in another building or facility there would be nothing but tiny infant babies in diapers, and one caretaker oversee about ten or fifteen of them. They would sleep with them, and they would change the diapers, feed them milk. Only unfortunate thing is that she doesn't have hands to hold them, so a kid, a child, a baby cries, she would go kind of comfort that child. But another cries, and she would have to put him or her down while the baby is still crying, and she would have to hold another one. It's just, that's how you ruin kids' lives, and I think a lot of the bad emotions and maladjustment, social-emotional problems, come from those neglect. Maybe Reactive Attachment Disorder is part of that. Yes, I've seen lot of kids like that.

Yes. So when did you find out, then, that you were going to finally be adopted, and what were your feelings when you found out?

Well, I was end of my thirteenth year, and it so happens as soon as you turn fourteen, you are not, by law, you're not adoptable. And way at the end of my thirteenth year--because my birthday is February, and around November time, no, December time, this director comes over. "Steve, you're going to America." It's like, "Really?" It's like I couldn't believe my ears. It turns out that they put my picture--I was in my Boy Scout uniform--as a seventh grader. I read the description, and I still have that picture with me. I read the description. It says "This boy is almost fourteen," and something like, "If he doesn't get adopted, he won't get adopted. He is a very responsible Christian lad, a good student. He has one leg that is little shorter, but his life in Korea would be difficult if he doesn't get adopted." So that was the gist of the description that they had on me, and eleven families in United States wanted me.

Wow.

And I think what really helped them to decide was the fact that maybe I'm in a desperate situation. They saw that. So that's what I was told. Eleven families wanted me. So they finally placed me with the Morrison family, the family that adopted a Caucasian Amerasian child from the same orphanage two years earlier. So I got the news that I was being adopted. I was so happy. And my friends on the older boys' home, they were so envious of me. And I walked around with my head held high, as if I'm somebody now. My friends were very envious, and I began to prepare a lot of documents and some shots and medical exams and physical exams and things like that, and finally on May twenty-eighth, 1970, I came over to the United States, begin a new life as a new Morrison.

Yes, right. Now, you said that the director called you Steve. Were you Steve already?

No.

You just said that because--

He said Sop Choona [phonetic]. My name is Chae Sop Choon, Sop Choona, and he called me that, and before I came over to America, my mother and father send me pictures of the family. And they had three children by birth. They were already in their teens, thirteen, fourteen, and sixteen.

Not too far from you.

And the Amerasian child they adopted at ten, he was at that time twelve, and so they sent--so there were six in the family already, and so Mom and Dad's picture, two brothers, two sisters' pictures came, black and white, and the adopted brother, the Amerasian kid, he knew me at Holt, even though he was younger than me. So he knew me, and he felt good of me, and he recommended when my mother was vacillating whether to get me. And this is another incredible story. My mother was vacillating. At seeing the thirteen-year-old boy, she didn't want to adopt. She felt danger sign. But what happened was that when my parents got that newsletter in their home, my father and my mother looked at it and for some reason my dad, when he looked at my picture--there were many children in other pictures, all black and white--for some reason when he looked at my photo, he knew immediately in his heart that was going to be his son.

Wow.

And he said, "That's him," to my mother, and my mother said, "Oh, no. He's a thirteen-year-old boy. That's too old. That's dangerous. How about this guy, eight years old?" And my dad would say, "No. That's him. He's my son." And she would choose another boy. "How about him? He's nine years old." "No, honey. I know this is my boy." And I believe God planted in his heart that, "John, that is your boy," and somehow he knew that, so he didn't relent.

Evidently.

So my mother finally, out of desperation, called Jim [Morrison], who was already there, and, "Let's ask Jim." So she asked him, "Jim, do you know this boy?" And he looked at it and, "Oh, yeah. Get him. He's good." And my mother was reassured, and the rest is history, like they say.

Yes, really.

So I really have a high respect for my father for somehow knowing in his heart when he looked at me, that I was to be his boy, and I always, always treasured that. And I thank my brother for helping with that.

Right. You said you were in Seoul at this point.

Yes, at that point.

What was that like, compared to the other place?

It's like you have the Ilsan, where all the littler kids live, but to go to junior high and high school, we were sent to this particular boys' home, they call it, so older boys. It was in a residential house, and they had several rooms where several boys stayed in one room, you know. And then we would go to school, junior high and high school, in Seoul, Seoul area, and there we were sort of like dressed up, like what do you call it, face of Holt organization. We were given the opportunity to be a Boy Scout. We were given the opportunity to learn instrument, and I played baritone.

Really?

Yes.

Baritone horn or saxophone?

Yes, baritone, baritone horn. And we would play John Souza, John Phillip Souza's march, and whenever a VIP from United States came and landed at Kimpo Airport, all of us would go in Boy Scout uniform, welcome him with a marching music serenade. So that was a good experience.

How many kids were in the home?

There were about twenty, thirty, maybe twenty-five.

Wow, okay. And what was it like living in Seoul after being--

It was, yes--in the orphanage it's like a second-class living. But in that boys' home, we were given good food, a lot more dishes, a lot more selections and much better quality. We had good food all the time, and it was really good, and I saw myself feeling more healthy because of that. So it was really nice.

What was it like going into the city after being where you were before? Seoul is a big city.

Yes. You are taught to ride transportation like a bus, so we were able to go practically everywhere. But because there is no money, you really couldn't go anywhere. So basically, I was limited to school and playing around the neighborhood with friends, and church, that's it. And occasionally we would be called on to do a performance at the airport or things like that. And occasionally we would go to Holt Orphanage for an event, and that was it.

I see. How long were you there?

I was there for like two years.

Okay. So since we're pretty much at the end here, for now, I guess what we'll do next time is start with your trip to the United States. You can at least tell us where you went. Where did you go?

Oh, man, that's a story, yes. So that's fascinating, just coming over to the United States. And here, less than two weeks after I came here, my family of seven, we went five weeks vacation, from Salt Lake City, Utah, driving all the way to Virginia. It's fascinating. I can tell you all about that next time.

Okay, we'll talk about that. So you flew to Salt Lake, or did you come to L.A. first, or where?

I arrived in San Francisco. I left Seoul, went to Tokyo, got on a Pan Am 747 and from there I landed in San Francisco. I thought my home would be San Francisco, because I heard a lot about San Francisco in Korea. You know, [sings] "If you're going to San Francisco," you know that--

Oh, yes, yes, the song, right [by Scott McKenzie].

And so you dream about San Francisco and all the woman putting flowers in their hair and walking around.

It was that time. It was the late sixties.

[laughs] Yes. But my dad said, "We're going to Salt Lake City." And I, "Salt Lake what?" And we got on another plane, and that was kind of a let down. I wanted to live in San Francisco. But we went to Salt Lake City, and that was a really, really pretty city, really enjoyed living there.

Right. Well, we'll hear about that and your new family next time when we meet, okay? Thank you for today.

Okay. All right.

This is Alex Cline interviewing Stephen Morrison on June 17, 2009, at his church in Mar Vista.

Once again, good evening. Thank you for sitting and talking a little bit more.

Well, my pleasure.

I wanted to basically just pick it up from where we left off last time. I felt almost like it was a bit of a cliffhanger last time. It was announced to you that you were going to be adopted shortly before you turned fourteen.

Right.

At which point you would become officially unadoptable.

Right.

And you found out who your adopted family was going to be, and I wanted to ask you, first of all, what it was like for you to say goodbye to the--in this case it was the boys' home in Seoul, but to the whole community, the people from the orphanage that you'd been with for eight years altogether. What was that like?

Well, I think I was honestly more happy to leave the situation than sad. Everybody was happy for me. Of course, there were some of my friends who were kind of jealous because I'm going and they were not being adopted. So I was more ecstatic and happy that I was going finally, that I'm going to be in a family, finally. And hidden behind that, of course, was there were some friends that I had to leave behind, and they were really good friends. And, of course, the school that I went, all the friends that I had to leave and so that was kind of sad.

On another aspect, I kind of--you know, in Korea when you're a kid in those days, you are kind of taught to be kind of nationalistic, like a patriotic Korean. So they teach you in school some patriots who gave their lives for Korea, during a war, during the early history of Korea, some scholars who would write poetry about Korea. And I don't remember his name, but there was one scholar who, before leaving for Korea on his airplane ride, leaving Korea, he composed the poetry, and right now I don't remember, but it had to do with something like, "Although I'm leaving now, I will be back to be with you," something like that, and as the airplane was taking off the runway, as it was going up the air, I was reciting that same poem.

Wow.

And it was pretty interesting. Of course, that was my first ever airplane ride, too, so in two or three hours, maybe four hours, I don't know, we finally landed in Japan, Tokyo, and there I switched over to a Pan Am [Airlines] flight. And on the way there, there were a couple of other younger children who were being adopted, and I just helped with the babysitting. So we were in Japan for at least a good three or four hours, then finally got on the Pan Am flight and flew all the way to San Francisco and landed there, and I thought my home would be San Francisco, because I heard so much about woman planting flowers in their hair and walking around. But that was not to be. My dad met me at the airport and immediately I could recognize that he was my dad, because I saw the picture.

Right. Yes, I was about to say, how much you knew about your adopted family before you left.

Yes. He sent us the photo, the black-and-white photo of him, so he had the same hat and the same demeanor, so I was able to recognize him right away.

So you'd seen this happen many times, but what was it like? What were your feelings about being in this completely new country with this family of people you had not even met before, adopting you and who didn't look like you? Now, admittedly, there was an Amerasian child from the same orphanage who was also in this family, but--you said you were happy, but did you have any apprehension? Were you nervous? Especially I'm wondering about the language issue and how you felt about that?

Yes, there was certainly a lot of excitement, but at the same time some apprehension of you're going into a new family, and you don't know how you would be perceived or how you would be accepted. And when I landed at the San Francisco Airport, when I came over from Korea, somebody gave me a brand-new shirt, brand-new pants, brand-new shoes, and new clothes, really, essentially, and I brought with me a bag, a bag containing some souvenirs. Among them were my diary, which I kept every night, a Bible, a card game, Korean-style card game called whatto. I landed at San Francisco, and there at the airport was a bundle from my home in Salt Lake City. My parents, they sent the bundle. Apparently, the regulation at that time was that any clothes that we bring from Korea or we wore from Korea, when we land in San Francisco, we were to discard all our clothes and change over to the clothes that the family sent over. So I looked at it and it was perfect size, by the way. However, the jeans had holes in it, some wear and tear at the bottom, and they gave me a new sneaker, black with a white bottom. It had the hole, and it was really worn.

Oh, my.

And a shirt and a sweater, and I really hated parting with my new clothes. But there was the regulation. So I got from a new clothes to an old hand-me-down clothes--

Interesting.

--and I'm thinking, "Did I get to the right--?" You know, did I really come to America? [laughs]

Interesting. Wow.

So, but that was the regulation. I guess in the old days of Korea, when children came, they brought with them some lice and things like that. It was not good, so I guess everybody just changed over. They don't do that now. They don't do that.

Right, I'm sure. Well, and Korea is quite different now too.

Yes. But I was able to keep my bag with the souvenir.

That's good. Can I back up just for a second? So you said you were kind of caretaking some younger children. But other than that, was there anyone there, say an adult or someone, helping you out?

Yes. Yes, there were two adults that were bringing--each time children go from Korea to come over to the United States, they always have to be accompanied by adults.

Right, right. Okay. What was it like for you flying in an airplane for the first time?

It was really neat. And it was like as I was running down the runway, as the plane was going down the runway and all the hums and you know, and I don't think it was a jet plane.

Oh, a prop plane?

It had props [propellers]. So it got off the ground, and I saw the images getting smaller and smaller below, and I saw the mountains. A lot of the mountain hills were bare, hardly any trees, because in those days a lot of Koreans cut down the trees to cook food and heat the house. And nowadays if you go there, it's all just green, green all over. And, of course, when you go through the cloud, looking at the cloud, it was just a neat thing, like a puff of white cottons flying, floating in the air. You go right through it, and you're looking down from the air to the cloud, and it was like as if you could just step on it and ski down, so it was a really neat experience. And it was a lot more stable than I thought.

So we then landed in Japan. That was the first time I've ever set foot on a foreign land at that time.

Right. So let's talk about your landing in San Francisco. You see your father for the first time. You said you recognized him.

Right.

As you were coming into San Francisco, what was your impression? What were you seeing and what maybe was going through your mind as you were starting to get ready to land?

Well, I guess the thought was that, wow, I'm finally landing in America. And I looked down the window and all the tall buildings and houses, and what impressed me were those houses with blue swimming pools. It's like, wow, single houses and single families owning their own pool. That's really something else. Because I remember looking at where, when I was in Korea, looking at some of the pictures of the Western country with the swimming pools, taken from the air, so it was familiar. And all the rows kind of laid out so nicely, not like zigzag like Korea.

Another thing that I noticed was that there was just so much greenery all around, lots of trees, even in the heart of the city, where in Korea the land--there aren't too many trees that you can see, mostly concrete, asphalt, some dirt, so there was a big contrast. So I finally was landing in San Francisco, thinking that I was going to live in San Francisco.

Wow. So what was it like, then, when you met your father? And I'm curious to know if anyone else from your family was with him.

No, it was just my father. He flew all the way from Salt Lake City to San Francisco to meet me. And as soon as he walked into that waiting room with his hat on, I just knew right away, ah, that's got to be him. Because I saw the picture of him. And as soon as he walked up, he talked to one of the escort lady. She was an employee of Holt [International] then, and my dad asking something in English but with my name clearly, I could understand. He says, "Choi Sop Choon." And then she pointed at me, and then there I shook my dad in a handshake, and he gave me with smile. There was some paperwork they had to take care of, and we finally--my dad and I got on another plane.

At first he was explaining to me that our home was not in San Francisco. You see, I was in eighth grade, and I knew some little English, because it's a mandatory foreign-language study to start from seventh grade in Korea, so I had a year and a half of English training, and English language class was my favorite. And we had a school in Korea, a foreign missionary, a Caucasian missionary who was somehow tied to that school where I was going. She came in once a week, conducting conversation in English, and that was really good. So if I had a question, I had to first construct the sentence in my head, and then I'd say. So I remember asking about the Amerasian brother, whether he was going to school or not. So I remember, "Does Jim go to school?" And then I first constructed it in my mind, and then I would ask him, and then he would tell me. Of course, I was able to understand some. And so that was a pretty interesting experience.

So we got on the airplane, and we took off San Francisco, and we climb over the mountain, some mountains in those areas, and then we finally got to Salt Lake City and landed, and it was just beautiful city, very clear sunny day, beautiful May twenty-eighth. Let's see. When I first landed in Salt Lake City Airport, we got out of the plane and then we went through their corridor, and then we got out of their building to go to the parking lot. There you saw in the parking lot like rows and rows of cars, and they were kind of shiny. And then he takes me to a one car that has side kind of rusted. It was 1970, and his car was like a light blue. It was a 1956 Chevy bomber. [laughs]

Wow.

And then outside was kind of rusty, you know--

Right. Well, it would be by then.

--because it's pretty harsh winter in Salt Lake City. So I kind of made a mistake by saying, "Oh, an old car." [laughs] I hope he didn't take anything personally. But I got inside the car and it was a shocker, upholstery all torn down, the seat and the carpet kind of--there are holes here and tears here and there. It's like I look at my clothes, which was old hand-me-down, my shoe with holes and my jeans with holes. I got into the car, car had holes in the upholstery. It's like, did I come to the right place?

Wow, interesting.

So he took me to the foothill of the city, which were overlooking the city, and I finally got out of the car, and we pulled up the driveway, and on the right was a basketball post. Apparently my brothers were playing basketball. Pulled into it, and I got out, and my mother came out on crutches with a camera, and it turns out that she broke her leg during a ski accident that winter, earlier, and that was the last time she ever skied, by the way.

Interesting.

So she came out. As she was coming out, she took a photo of me, and I still have that photo. That was the first ever photo of me getting out. And my mother came out and just embraced me with a warm smile. Then she led me into the house, and as I was walking in, on the right side was a kitchen, and on the kitchen there was a counter. On the countertop there was what appeared to be like a bottle of kimchi. It's like, mm, what's this doing in a Caucasian house? And it was not--you know, kimchi is reddish in color, but that one was white, all white. But Koreans do have white kimchi. So I looked at it and my mother said, "I made that." So I could understand that. And then I kind of, "Mm, hmm," like I looked at her like, really, that kind of a stare. So I rested a bit, and I woke up. My mother beckoned me to sit down at the dining room table and have some food to eat. So she apparently said, "I have some fried rice," and then she gave it to me. I ate some. It was a horrible, horrible-tasting fried rice. It wasn't until later that I discover that that wasn't the fried rice. It was more like a Spanish rice. And, of course, later I got to like Spanish rice. And then she pulls out this kimchi, and as soon as he opened that lid, I smelled the pungent salad vinegar--

Oh, right, right, like a sweet sort of smell.

Yes, yes, sweet and, oh, it was so bad. I never smelled anything like that. As soon as I smelled that, I said, "This is not kimchi." [laughs] And she let me have some to eat, and it was just very, very weird tasting. It wasn't kimchi at all that I knew. Apparently, she had an experience of tasting a kimchi at a Korean restaurant a few months before I arrived, so to make me feel at home--

Right, sure.

--out of that memory she composed her own recipe, what she thought it should be, and she made the kimchi. So instead of using our Chinese cabbage, she used regular cabbage. Instead of using garlics, she diced up a lot of onions and put it in, because she didn't know, and she remembered kimchi being kind of sour a little bit. That's why she put whole bunch of vinegar. You know, sourness in kimchi kind of comes out of a natural process. You don't put any vinegar.

Right. Interesting.

And instead of kimchi being spicy hot that she remembered--oh, instead of putting chili pepper, she put whole bunch of black peppers.

Oh, golly.

And that's how she made the kimchi. It's like a Korean person first taste Western food, like a beef stroganoff, and tries to go home and tries to imitate that with what she remember.

Right, without sour cream or the right kind of noodles.

Yes, yes, or good beef. Right. It's like--so that kind of tells you what kind of woman my mother was.

Yes, yes. Absolutely.

She's very adventuresome. She would try a lot of things, and she, you know, bless her heart. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why she got me and my brother.

Yes, right, absolutely.

So that was my first day.

And you had a lot of other family to meet, then, didn't you?

Yes. I was able to meet my two sisters, my two brothers, so age-wise I have two older sisters, I'm in the middle, and two younger brothers. So we were just one big happy family. And they were very good Christians too. So we would sit down during our dinnertime, and Monday I would say the grace, Tuesday my sister would. We would take turn, and on Sunday we would have one big supper during lunch and no dinner, and we would sing doxology, and very, very loving atmosphere the family was.

What was it like reuniting with your orphanage mate?

Well, I noticed that he grew up a lot, and he has like specks on his face, you know the little spots, he still had those. And he forgot most of the Korean. He could hardly speak, in two years that he was there. But he still knew a little bit of Korean words, like some food, some actions, like play, hungry, so he still remembered a few of that. And then there was a Caucasian brother, Mark [Morrison]. He was mechanically inclined. He loved fixing things, working with motors and things like that. And my brother Jim, the Amerasian guy, he was probably the most athletic of the three of us. He loved basketball. He would beat me. I don't think I've ever beat him one time. No, he was good.

But my oldest sister, she was Rhonda [Morrison], and she was more academically inclined, and the second, her sister Cheryl [Morrison], she was very pretty, and she played piano. I think of all the five children, I was most studious, partly because I knew how to study where I was in Korea, as an elementary school child as well as junior high. But I wasn't a real good student in Korea.

Right. I remember you mentioned that.

Yes. I wasn't a good student. But it wasn't until I came to United States, when I received a lot of love and support from my parents, I started to excel. So that was a very, very strange experience to me, how I was so bad in one country, and how when I came over here under a new family, that I would just blossom academically. It's just, that's why family is so important.

Really. So how did you get the name Steve, by the way?

Oh, I think my mother would later tell me that she had that little niece called Steve, and what it is is that my mother has a younger sister, and with her husband, which is brother-in-law, they went to, what's that country, Taiwan as a missionary, like a teaching missionary, so they were like a professor at a university, so professor/missionary. And they had two boys, and they both died in an accident, and one of them was Steve, so they named me in their memory. And also my middle name in Korean started with S, so they named me Steve.

Interesting. Did that remind you, then, of the friendly G.I. who used to come to the orphanage? You said one of them was named Steve.

That's right. You know, I really wish--I mean, there are few Americans that I would really like to meet, but those two G.I.s, Durbin and Steve, I would really love to meet with them and just thank them for the way they cared for us orphans. They took their busy time out each weekend to come, getting out of their duty to come to the orphanage, give us candy and buy us something. I will always--when I think of G.I.s, that's the image I have. I don't have G.I.s that are bad or in a negative way. I don't think--there were tough G.I. Joe G.I.s, but these were very nice and friendly G.I.s that I know, that I used to know, and I would always--they have a place in my heart.

So you said you went on a five-week vacation when you arrived at Salt Lake City.

Yes. Let me--so after that kimchi episode, days would go by where I noticed that family was so loving towards me. My sisters and my brothers, we all got along together, and they taught me how to play Monopoly, Yahtzee, Life, Kerplunk, Blackjack, and I remember teaching them Korean card game called Hwa-tu, and that has a sinister connotation to it, because they used that card for gambling in Korea, so they kind of look down on kids who play that card. But I loved playing with my buddies in Korea, and even though we didn't have money to bet on it, we would bet one another with lashes on our arms or things like that. It was pretty fun.

But then each night before I slept, I read a chapter from a Bible, from Book of Matthew, and then I kept a diary. I continued with Korean. As an eighth grader, I kept diary in Korea, and I kept that up when I came over here. So it's almost been almost going on to forty years, thirty-nine years. I still have that diary with me in my library, and every now and then I pull it out and read it, and I get embarrassed what a terrible writer I was. [laughter] Is this all I could think at that time? Dummy.

And then what I noticed was that the affection that Mom and Dad toward one another was very impressive. I've never seen anything like that, because, see, Koreans--

Yes, right, different culture.

Korean culture just doesn't have that kind of public display of affections, kissing one another, holding one's hands, rubbing one's back, or pulling the chair and open the door. They just don't do stuff like that. And when I saw my dad constantly, constantly be affectionate to my mother, that made me think, wow, as a man, that's how you should love your wife. So I began to learn. And my mother, being a great Christian woman that she was, she always respected him as the head of the household, and she let him make all the big decisions. She made all the small decisions, and she was very--being a preacher's kid, you know, her father was a preacher--

Oh, I see.

--she was very solidly grounded in biblical doctrine, and she really educated us well on that. But being a boy that I was, I looked up to Dad on what he was doing, and the way he loved Mother, and that was something, and it really impressed upon me and kind of formed my idea of what a good husband should be. Each day he would go to work. Before leaving the house, he would hug my mother and give her a kiss and, "Have a great day, honey." And each day he would come back after the work, and as soon as he gets into the house, the first person he searches out is Mom. So he hugs her again, kisses her again, "How was your day?" in front of us kids. So that put a real big impression on me, like, wow, as a husband, that's how you should love your wife.

And then the way they loved me, encouraged me, and even my admiration and how the brothers and sisters got along, that's when I really began to realize--I was at that time like fifteen and maybe sixteen--this is what happy family is about. This is what happy Christian family, from my perspective, was all about, and I began to have a dream. And I said, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a dad just like him. I'm going to love my wife just like he does, and I'm going to marry a beautiful woman like my mother, and I'm going to have a happy family." And adoption is such a great thing. I was very, very happy, and that's when I first decided that when I grow up and get married, have my own children, that we would adopt, and all those dreams that I had as a teenager came true a long time ago. So it's a really, really gratifying experience.

What do you know about--you mentioned your mom's background was that she was a preacher's daughter. What can you tell us a bit about your parents' backgrounds?

Yes. My dad's parents, Grandpa Morrison I believe immigrated from Ireland. So my dad loves potato and roast beef. [laughs] My mother cooked that every week, because my dad loved potatoes. So he came from that background and lived in Philadelphia, and so he had three brothers, only boys, and one was in Virginia, one in Philadelphia, and one, my dad, in Salt Lake City, and they were very close to one another. And my dad met my mother right after his graduation from college, through a mutual friend, and that's how they got married.

There's some story to that, and I guess it's kind of, they really relish it when they tell me how they got married. So my dad would tell me, "The moment I saw her, it was love at first sight." And he said that I think like third date or fourth date, he was sitting with her on a porch and he said to her, "Margaret [Morrison], I'm going to predict our future." And my mother asked, "What is it?" And, "Well, we're going to be happily married." [laughs] "And I'm going to make you very happy. We'll go on vacation, we'll have God as our pillar in our house." And then my mother said she kind of smiled at him but she didn't say anything. And they would tell me that story over and over again, over the many years, because it's fun to hear about how they met, and every time, they would always be together telling me this story, and they would just love, relish it, both of them. And my mother would say, "Oh, your father, he whispered sweet nothing into my ears, and I fell for it like that." And my dad, he being an Irish, he said, "Well," what did he say? He said something like he turned on the old Irish charm. And then he would burst into laughter and then start singing, "My wild Irish rose, the sweetest flower that grows," and, "Every day with Margaret, I love her more and more." You know, that kind of--it was just very--my dad just displayed such a tremendous love and affection toward my mother, it was obvious why they were so happy, and my mother just loved every moment of it. So he really put an indelible impression in my heart what a man should be, how a man should love his wife.

What do you know about her background, then?

Who?

Your mom, where she came from or her family was from.

Yes. She lived in Indianapolis. Well, she was born in Montana, she lived in Indiana, different city. Her dad was a Methodist pastor, and in those days, Methodists are so much more conservative and biblical than current-day Methodist, which is so liberal. And my grandfather, of course, he was a very, very upright, very loving, and really taught her [his] children well. My mother's side, she has a younger sister and a younger brother, so she was the oldest one.

How did they wind up in Salt Lake City, do you know?

Oh. When my dad married my mother, after, they were living in Maryland, and my father got involved--because he was a biology major, and he got employed by the U.S. government as a biological scientist, and in government you go by G.S. scale, government scale. So he had an opportunity to go out to the West to Salt Lake City, work in a military base as a government scientist, and with a promotion, so that's how he moved out to Salt Lake City.

Interesting. And you're surrounded by Mormons out there.

Mormons--it's very interesting. Mormons are--we were Southern Baptist. Of all the Mormon--

That's what I was wondering. I was going to ask.

Yes, we were, of all the Mormons. But you know, Mormons are very, very nice people. Even though I don't agree with their doctrine and religion, they are very upright people. They really live the way they believe, and I really respect them. You know, if I had ten neighbors who are Mormons, over any other religion or ethnic, I would choose Mormons any time. [laughs] Because they are so nice. They don't damage your property. In Salt Lake City, I don't ever remember locking our house. We would go away for one whole week. Everything would still be there. We wouldn't even lock our door. We never locked our cars. It was different world. I kind of doubt it that that's the case nowadays, but it was really, really interesting in those days.

How many other Asian faces did you see?

Hardly ever. Yes. I went to the junior high school when I arrived here, and then after this I go on that five weeks vacation. There were like one or two, maybe two, yes, two other Asians out of about fifteen hundred students.

Wow.

It's that low. As soon as I got to my new home, my family, they had a station wagon. In those days there was no seat-belt law, so we put on a boat, like a rowing boat, no, no boat, but like a luggage rack on top of the station wagon, and our station wagon was pretty big. So there were seven of us, a couple of us sitting in the trunk area, and we decided to go on a camp in Maryland. But on the way--so we would take five weeks vacation. We left from Salt Lake City, through Wyoming, Nebraska, and all the way to Indianapolis, stayed there with relatives, you know, grandparents and aunts and uncles and all that were on my mother's side. So we stayed there and then we left to go to Maryland to see other friends and relatives too. Philadelphia, my dad's side now, uncle, and all the way to Virginia to my other dad's brother. From Salt Lake City, Utah, all the way to Virginia, the Atlantic coast, and then we came back, and it was just a tremendous, tremendous experience.

I still remember leaving Salt Lake City, going on that new vacation, extended vacation. I remember driving down the--riding along the freeway. Cars were going really fast, of course, and I remember all of a sudden, zoom, something would pass by, and it would be a humongous truck. And I remember counting all the wheels, and there were eighteen. There were eighteen wheels, and, wow, how can a vehicle have so many wheels? And then I remember going like Wyoming. In the distance I saw storm clouds with the thunder in the prairie. Whole bunch of deers or maybe antelopes were grazing, and I was, wow, that's beautiful, because I've never seen wild animals until then. And we would pass along and dead, run, hit by trucks or cars run over small animals, and sometimes skunks. I've never even seen those things at all. So we would pass by--like distant you would see a train or a convoy of a train, and in Korea, at most you would see maybe twenty cars, passengers. But I counted from beginning to the end a hundred fifty cars. It's like, wow, this is incredible. They were going miles and miles, you know. And just a lot of awe and wonder, vast expanse of America, the beauty.

Yes, right, just space.

And I remember watching in Korea like an Indian-cowboy movie, and when you go through the canyons you would swear that Indians would pop out any moment now, that kind of an experience. And when you get to Nebraska-Iowa area, just--

Flat.

--yes, flat from morning to end, nothing but cornfield. It's like, wow. So three days and three nights. On third night we finally get to Indianapolis, and there I meet my grandparents for the first time, aunts and uncles and, what do you call it, cousins, for the first time. It was a great, great experience. They all welcomed me, and it was just a wonderful, wonderful time spending with them, and together we would go a lot of places and I would see new things.

I still remember along the way, like one particular thing that I remember was that--I don't remember whether it was Nebraska or Iowa--that place was famous for Jesse James' gang.

Oh, right.

Yes, and they had the Jesse James restaurant, so we went through that place, and my father and my mother would tell me something about Jesse James, and I would read up about it. And even though I was fairly new to the United States, I was really, really quickly gaining on my English, because no matter where I go, home, church, no matter where, I was really, really learning English fast. So in Salt Lake City, before leaving for vacation, I remember talking to one of my friend, and he was my age, and I could barely talk with him. But after five weeks I came back. I met him again at the church, and I began to speak, and he was surprised. "Wow. Steve, you can speak English so much better." And I said, "How do you know?" "Just the fact you could say that." So that's when I really realized, wow, I'm learning a lot.

Wow, interesting. I guess that's how you would best learn--it's immersion.

Yes, sink or swim, right?

Yes, exactly. Because especially if you have to go to school. That's got to be really amazingly difficult.

Yes. So while we were there on vacation, we went to one weeks of camp for teenagers, and my mother and father participated in adult camp, and we visited some more relatives and friends and places. And another impressive place was visiting Washington, D.C., because in Korea, you hear a lot about Washington, D.C. And one of the favorite TV episode at that time was "FBI." Yes, Efrem--

Oh, right. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

--Zimbalist, yes. And they always showed this one building with FBI, and I really want to see that, and, of course, the White House. And so I went there, and the thing that I remember that really struck me about Washington, D.C., at that time was in three colors, blue skies, white buildings, and green lawns all over, those three colors. Of course we got to visit Smithsonian [Institution]. I saw in that--we also visited at the museum. There they had a display of different country, like China, Germany, how the family would live, Australia and like that. And then I went to Japanese family, and they had pretty elaborate display. And I went to Korean place. It was one tiny little window with just very tiny room, very rudimentary looking, like that was not good feeling. It's like, they should do better on this Korean display when they've got China and Japan really big, and just tiny little space for Korea.

Right.

So that wasn't--but I hear they have much better now.

They'd better. This actually leads to a question I tend to always ask, which is now that you are in the U.S., you're meeting people, people at your church, your relatives. What was your sense of how you would measure Americans' awareness of what being Korean meant, or even what Korea was, where it was? Did you have a sense if they had any real kind of awareness or information about what being Korean was?

Well, when I was in Salt Lake City, I remember going to a junior high school, and they would--you know, sometimes there's some good kids and some bad kids. Bad kids would come and I had short hair, and they called me "Mr. Judo." They made some strange sounds, that sounded like supposedly--

Martial arts sounds?

--yes, martial arts or Asian. And there were some other kids who were very, very nice. I remember talking to one kid. He asked me where I was from. In fact, it was more than one kid. Lots of kids actually asked me, "Where are you from? Are you from Japan or China?" Those two are the only things they know.

Right, of course.

And karate, karate, it's like judo. And kung fu wasn't really known at that time, not until David Carradine came along.

Right, exactly.

Then everybody knew about kung fu. But they asked me where I'm from. I said, "I'm from Korea." "Where is Korea?" "It's between China and Japan." They didn't know where Korea was. And I'm thinking, wow, in Korea we learn about all the big and small countries. Here, American kids, they hardly know about national geography. It's like kind of disappointing, especially when they didn't know where Korea was.

And it wasn't just--oh, mostly the adults, they would think of Korea as the war-torn, Korean War-ravaged kind of poor country. And even in seventies, Korea was pretty relatively poor country, but thanks to President Park Chung-hee, his vision, even though he has some negatives sides of, what do you call, dictatorial rule for eighteen years, but there's other avenue, like economic wonder and miracle, is largely because of his policies that Korea was able to improve so much.

Right, and so fast.

And so nowadays, after he's gone, if you ask them to name greatest president of Korea, they all say Park Chung Hee, despite the fact he was the dictator. So Korea was really improving economically in through seventies and eighties, and by the time in '83 or in '90 or etc. I came to United States--no, thirteen years after I came--no, nine years, was it '90? Yes, nine years after I came to the United States, I was able to visit Korea for the first time. Was it nine years? No, thirteen years, thirteen years, yes. I came in 1970 and '83, yes, it's thirteen years.

Tremendous changes. I could even see that in such a short span of time, they'd changed so much. Lots of roads were paved, and I could hardly find thatched houses. Five years later I go back, another big change. It's just amazing the amount of changes that they went through. So for most Koreans and for most Americans now, I think most of the Korean War images have gone away, especially after that '88 Olympics, which really showed Korea as the modern up-and-coming country. So they're the twelfth-largest economic power now.

Right, right. What's your timeline? Because we're at seven o'clock here.

Service starts at eight o'clock, so I can go until seven-thirty if you want.

Seven-thirty? Okay, let's do that. Right now, this period-- [Interruption. Recorder turned off.]

We're back. The time in which you arrived at the United States, 1970, is a period culturally immediately following a lot of kind of tumult, not only in the United States but in the world, a lot of cultural upheaval, a lot of big changes. By then Richard [M.] Nixon would have been president, and the Vietnam War was still going really strongly. What, if anything, do you remember about your impressions of what was happening in the country at that time, and how much or how little impact did it have on your early experience being in this country?

Well, in '70, I don't remember who was the president in 1970. Was it Nixon?

It was Nixon, yes.

He was president from '68 through--and then reelected in '72, right?

Right.

Yes. So because I was young, I didn't really pay attention to the politics, because I was just too busy with my family, my school, and my immediate sphere of influence. It wasn't until like 1972 and afterwards I would hear about Watergate.

Oh, right. Sure.

Yes. I remember about Watergate. And one time I was on a Greyhound Bus ride to Indianapolis to go to visit my grandmother and my grandpa, and at that time I was on my own, meaning my parents sent me by myself to go there and also attend a summer school. So in that bus ride I heard an announcement that Richard Nixon resigned. That was a pretty big shocker. Wow. How can a president be resigning? So there was a lot of tumultuous years in United States.

And in Korea, there were martial laws being passed. If you criticized president or something, you would be given execution statement. I don't know whether people were executed actually; at least they were thrown into jails. So there was a lot of tumult. And also, guerrillas from North Korea going down to South [Korea], trying to assassinate President Park, or to disrupt the politics there, and a lot of spies, you know. You hear about stories of Koreans infiltrating towards south by digging tunnels and discovery of those tunnels in several places. Of course, North Koreans always deny such tunnel. It wasn't until later, during my motherland tour in 1983, I actually went down to the tunnel, and they just--North Koreans in their retreat just painted a tunnel with black, just to give us impression that it was coal that they were looking at.

Interesting.

Yes. But it was all a lie, because the water flowed from south to north, so they can pump it out. So oil embargo was another thing, and long lines and gas lines and fights that broke out because somebody cut through the line.

Right, we had the energy crisis.

Yes, energy crisis, right. And I remember Olympics, the [1972] Munich Olympics, where Jewish athletes got killed. Those were some of the dark times, and Black Panthers raised--those black athletes raising--

Their fists.

--yes, their fists. And then Nixon did something really good. That was reestablished our relationship with China, which was really, really a good thing for him to do. He should be really--if anything, he should be really lauded for that. So there was a lot of that going on. And I was getting to my high school. In '75, I graduated from high school.

Let's talk about the school thing for a minute. You're a teenager. You're in high school. Your English keeps improving, I presume. This is for some people a really exciting time, for some people a really difficult time in their lives. Things are changing. There's hormones. There's the whole culture happening at that time, which was, I think for many people at that time, very confusing in terms of relationships between, say, boys and girls, men and women, the drug culture. You're in Salt Lake City, which is, I think, a pretty conservative--

Sheltered, yes.

--yes, a pretty safe place. But how much, if at all, did any of that sort of touch your life, or even just through things like music where it's kind of the culture at that time?

Well, I remember listening to Carpenters, John Denver, Neil Diamond. I just loved him. I even bought a guitar, started learning and playing John Denver all the time, so those were a really fun time. Carpenters, my sisters loved it, loved them, and we were not permitted in our family to listen to rock music. I mean, we'd listened in radios, so we knew groups like Bachman-Turner--

Overdrive.

--yes, Overdrive, Three Dog Night. You know, you lived through that.

Sure.

And Chicago. We were able to listen to all of those, but we weren't really into--I don't think heavy metal was around at that time.

Yes, it was there. It was starting. You had Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

Oh, okay. Oh, Led Zeppelin I remember. So we weren't really into that, and I think partly because we were a Christian family, and my mother was always careful that we shouldn't be influenced by Mormons or influenced by evilness of the world, materialistic culture. Oh, by the way, you know, I told you about my dad driving torn-up upholstery. It wasn't because he didn't have money. That's the way he was. He was just modest, that's all, and that really taught me a good lesson. And my mother is the type, when we opened Christmas present, "Oh, be careful with the gift wrap. Let's save it." So she would very carefully unwrap the gift and save the paper so she'd reuse it next year. That's the way she was. So very frugal. I don't think they were very successful in teaching me that. [laughs] But I'd really appreciate what they were doing.

So you're going to school. What was going on? You said you became very studious.

I became studious. At first I got like Cs and Ds.

Language?

Yes, language, and then it wasn't until a couple of years later I began to get As and get new motivation. And pretty soon I decided, there's no reason why anyone shouldn't get As. So I got all As, at least in my senior year in high school, and that enabled me to go to Purdue University and enroll in aeronautical and astronautical engineering.

And by then you'd discovered your love of math.

Yes, right. Math was my worst subject, but I loved physics, chemistry, anything that's science, calculus. What happened was that I went to a big high school in Salt Lake City, Utah, called Skyline High School, about three thousand student body, great football, basketball is strong, and everything, one of the major high schools in Salt Lake City. I think it still is today. And my dad decided to transfer from there--I think he was kind of transferred by the government to go to a tiny city, tiny town called Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah close to Nevada, and it was nothing but desert, sagebrush desert, and a tiny town of about, I don't know, a thousand people, mostly military people, military family. And they had like a biological labs there, testing area, proving ground. And you would occasionally hear about how six thousand sheeps died because of chemical leak or something like that.

Whoa.

So my dad got assigned to work in that area, and from junior high, seventh grade to high school senior, student body of only three hundred.

Whoa.

So in each class about forty people. And it's like, wow. And we really didn't like it. We really didn't want to go to such a small school. One year they would offer chemistry, first-year chemistry, and then second year, the next year, first-year physics, and the year after that, back to first-year chemistry. That's the only level, entry level. No trigonometry, no advanced math, no calculus. And I remember taking--I was the only kid doing self-study in calculus.

Wow.

There was a self-study program book that I was going through, and fortunately for me, a new math teacher arrived from BYU [Brigham Young University], fresh from BYU. He was a young guy, he was like twenty-six, and he really helped me, because he knew his stuff, being a math major and all. And I got As in those things and As in physics and chemistry. Then I wanted really to become--my goal that I had at that time was, I really liked space exploration. I would like to become an astronaut if I could. It was like a foolish dream, because my leg, you know. I don't have a perfect knee, and because of that imperfection, you cannot be an astronaut. But still that concept of space, that space exploration pulled me towards math and physics, and I remember reading about astronomy, studying astronomy, and I was kind of torn--and also nuclear physics. And I was kind of interested in all those things, area. Do I want to be an astronomer, nuclear physicist, astrophysicist, or aerospace engineer?

So I remember as a kid in Korea studying like textbook. I would read about and see tiny image of satellite, you know, those tiny satellites in those days, early sixties, and just being wondering about that, how neat it is. I remember also when I was thirteen years old, in 1969 I believe, '68, when, oh, I should know this date--

Neil Armstrong?

Neil Armstrong landing on the moon [1969].

Yes, I was going to ask you about that.

And we were just, all of us just glued to the TV. The whole country was. And in those days, not too many people had TV in their homes, so they broadcasted the launch at a big park on a big screen, projected, and everybody just watched. And when the time came for it to land, we didn't really actually get the picture of it, but like a dotted line of where they might be, and then, of course, the rest of the images afterwards. It was just incredible. And Neil Armstrong, he was splashed everywhere. And I believe those three astronauts visited like twenty different countries, and Korea was one of the last countries, because mainly because they served, one or two of them served during the Korean War. So they were just given royal welcome. I remember reading all about that.

So I wanted--wow, wouldn't that be great to go to the same school that Neil Armstrong attended? Which was Purdue University. So I got in there with the aspiration to be a part of the space exploration. At that time there was talk in the space community about colonizing space, space colonization in a big gigantic cylindrical ring of one-mile radius, and people would just walk and there would be rivers and sky, artificial. And, of course, technically it's doable, but cost-wise, it's unthinkable. So all those things just pulled me into that area, so I went to Purdue. I got accepted there. It was just ecstatic. So I enrolled in the same major that Neil Armstrong went through, and at the time I went into freshman year, I met this professor who used to teach Neil Armstrong, and somehow he and I got engaged in a conversation regarding Neil Armstrong. But he would refer to him as, "Oh, that boy, that boy." I thought that was pretty interesting. He was all gray and white all over; time for him to retire.

So my time at Purdue was tremendously challenging. Going from a small countryside junior high to high school with three hundred study body, with a graduating class of about forty-three students, high school seniors, to a gigantic university, which is supposedly one of the top ten in engineering, it was just a real challenge. And first year I had some problem trying to catch up to their level, because most of the students that came into the school are so far more advanced. Some of them maybe even knew how to write computer codes. I didn't even know how to spell. So it was a real, real eye-opener of how far behind I was in education, and lucky for me I even got in there. So I started to slowly catch up to them, and later on I passed many of them, and I was able to graduate with honor, not the top honor, but I got into honor society later.

And after that, I got a lot of job offers, and I decided to take a job with the Hughes Aircraft Company, which was building communications satellites, and they had a great program with the fellowship program that I wanted to enroll to go to graduate school.

I see. Okay.

So at the time when I was graduating in my senior year, what happened was that three months before I graduated, I already had jobs all lined up. These big companies like Boeing [Corporation], NASA, McDonnell Douglas [Corporation], aerospace, they would come and recruit our graduating class, and we were really popular. The question amongst us what not whether you got your employed. It's like, "How many offers did you get?" So that was the question, and we were just really, really very fortunate to be in that era of time.

I remember studying--I had to take final examination to graduate, and I remember studying late into night, doing projects, senior projects, design projects, studying for final hours and hours, and if you pass it, you graduate. If you don't, you don't graduate. And I remember getting a phone call from home, from my mother, saying that, "Your dad has some trouble with heart," that he had to be admitted to a hospital. "What happened?" "Well, he's just ready to have a big heart attack, and we're just lucky that we caught it." They ran some tests and there was four places that was blocked in his artery. So he had to be operated, and it was right during the week when I was having final. I wanted to drop everything, just be with my dad and be a support to him, but I couldn't. So I would take final exam, study up on another topic, do project, and each night I would call my mom to check on the progress, and fortunately, the surgery was a success, a triple bypass, yes, triple bypass. And I took my last final exam, and I was on my way to dormitory, and I was just--it was such an exhilarating feeling at that time. It's like, finally, everything is done. Finally, I've done my last exam. I'm done. It's like such a load off my shoulder. And also I already had my job lined up, great job, great pay. It's the world just opening up.

It's like I was just overcome with lots of emotion and just lots of gratitude, to my parents, to Harry Holt, and so at night I remember thinking about them and all the people who helped me in the past came floating in my thoughts, and that's when I promised to God that when I become a, what do you call it, the ordinary citizen, I should say, not a student but citizen and working full-time, that I would donate a portion of my salary each month to Holt so they will help other homeless children, which I was the benefactor of that program. And I kept that promise many, many years. Now I do something else, which is really an offshoot of that, through MPAK, but that's for another time.

Right. We'll talk about that next time.

I remember right after that exam, the very next day was the graduation ceremony. My uncle, my aunt came from Indianapolis to attend my graduation, and they took me down--I stayed with them for one night and then they took me to the airport the next day, and I had in my hand a diploma.

Wow.

Yes. So I got on the airplane and I landed in Salt Lake City Airport. My mother picked me up, and we went immediately to the hospital where my dad was staying, and there, as soon as I entered, fortunately for me he was conscious. He awoke. So I approached him. He was lying down. He was--his normal healthy skin color would be white, but he was even more paler, and he was lying down with the tubes doing through his nose, his arms, and just recovering, very, very weak looking.

Right. An incredibly invasive surgery.

Yes. I approached him and I took his hand. "Dad, here I am. And I have something for you, Dad." And I gave him my diploma. And he greeted me kind of weakly, but he was obviously very happy to see me. I let him have my diploma, and he set it on top--he was lying down. He opened the diploma and started reading one word at a time, from the top to bottom, and it's like I was watching next to him, it's like, wow. I felt so proud of it when he did that. It was like, oh, man, I've never felt anything like that. I was so proud of the man who was such a role model, such a loving father that he was, and what better present that I could give than that very moment with this diploma which he invested me with.

And he would tell me during my college days, summertime when I would visit from college, "You know, Steve, I don't want you to get a job to pay for tuition. Don't worry about money. You're a student. As a student, you should only focus on your study." And, of course, I got job, K-Mart, you know, selling flowers and things like that, garden shop, and helped to defray some costs. But then, yes, he would tell me that, "Don't get even a part-time job. You're a student. Just focus on your study. I'll take care of it." It wasn't until later I learned that to afford that tuition, he took out a loan without even letting me know, that he did this behind me, to pay for my tuition and room and board, and he took out a loan.

And it wasn't until like several years after I was working at Hughes--and when I found out, it really tremendously impressed me, deeply. It's like, wow. So at that time I had some money saved up, and I called Mom and Dad, "Hey, guys. Remember you always wanted to go to Southeast Asia to see your sister?" Because then her sister was a missionary in Taiwan. They always wanted to go there. This was like some thirty years later, twenty-five, thirty years later. They'd never been able to go, no time, no money. And I said, "You know, I'd like to send you guys to Taiwan and with the excursion trip to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok," and they were just elated. So I purchased their tickets. I gave some extra spending money. Hotel, I reserved all the hotels and paid for it through the travel agent. They went. Two months they went.

Two months, wow.

Yes. They stayed in Taiwan for about a month. They really, really loved it. So they were there and then they took two weeks of excursion of different places. They just loved it. They came back and stayed another month in Taiwan, and then they came back, and they were so grateful. It's like, wow. What they've done for me was so much more than what I've done for them. And one thing that I realized at that time was that parents, when they do so much for their children, even when children remember just even one-tenth percent and do something for the parents, parents are the one who is so much more grateful the way that their children somehow pays back in some ways. And that's what I noticed about them. They give me so much more, and when I, through my gesture of thanksgiving and love for them, they were so grateful. They couldn't just stop pouring praises and thanks to me for many many years after that. And we would be meeting some of their friends, and each time, "Oh, this is the son who sent us to Southeast Asia tour. Oh, this is the son. This is Steve that I told you about." They were so proud of me.

And I tell you, during the recovery time, right after the surgery that my dad was in, during that recovery I delayed my employment with Hughes one month, to help him recover. So I would walk him through the blocks. I would hold his arms and just kind of slowly walk him along, just to help him through, regain strength, to recoup his strength. And every night we would sit down and either watch TV together or talk and just walk together and talk and talk like a father and son type. It's one of the most memorable times I've ever had with Dad. And one night he looked at me and said, "Steve, you know why we adopted you? We adopted you because we thought we were doing this to help you, because you needed a home. You needed mother and father. You needed a family, so we were doing this to help you. But after all these years, it is we who have been blessed so much more through you." It's like, wow. It was just tremendous and just I really, really appreciated--it's one of those words that I never forget.

And another word--a couple of weeks later he called me again, and he told me something that I will never forget. He said, "Steve, I made some very important decisions in my lifetime. The best, the very best decision was to believe in God. The second-best decision was to marry your mother Margaret, and the third-best decision was to have you in our family."

Wow.

I was just shocked. I mean, shocked is not the right word. It's just I was so impressed, and it's like really gripped my heart, and although he loved five children equally, through those words he was showing me how much he loved me, and, man, it's one of those words that I will never forget. So whenever I go to different churches to speak and speak about my family, my experience, I always tell them about this part of my story, about my dad, my mother. It is because of their love, that's their sacrificial love--they didn't expect anything. You know, I even told them, "Hey, Dad, not that I want you to be, but just in case you want to make a will out, just in case something happens, you want to make a will out, don't put my name in. You don't have to give me anything. You've already given me so much. Give it to Cheryl and Rhonda and Jim and Mark, four other kids, because you've already spent enough for me, for my college tuition. I really don't need anymore from you." And, of course, they really appreciated that, but I don't think they listened to me. [laughter]

Anyway, so a lot of what I am, a lot of what I do, a lot of what I think is largely influenced by my dad and my parents, and just where would I be without them? They set the--they're the standard for me, especially the priority where his best decision was to believe in God. I like to think the same. The second-best decision was to marry my mother Margaret, and I like to think the same with me marrying my wife. And, of course, third-best decision is to have my children, so it's just tremendous, tremendous blessings.

Well, I have more questions for you, but we're going to have to wait till next time.

Yes, okay, let's do that.

That's a great way to end this evening. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Today is June 24, 2009. This is Alex Cline interviewing Stephen Morrison once again at his church in Mar Vista in West L.A., and this is session number four.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Thanks for talking to me again. Last time we left off with you telling me the rather remarkable story of your education at Purdue University, how your father wound up paying your tuition unbeknownst to you at the time, your father's heart surgery during your final week there, and your showing him your diploma. You talked about how much your father's love, how great an impact it had on your life, at the end of our last session. A couple of follow-up things of a slightly trivial nature that I wanted to ask before we move on from there. You mentioned this really small town in western Utah that you moved to, and remind us the name of it again.

It's Dugway, spelled D-u-g-w-a-y, Dugway Proving Ground. It's in western part of Utah.

Right. I wanted to ask you, being Korean, being Asian in America among a dominant culture of Caucasian people, what was the sort of racial profile like in Dugway? I'm guessing it was--

Mostly all black, I mean, excuse me, sorry, all white, with a few blacks and Hispanics. But I'd say 90 percent of them were all white.

Were they mostly government employees, then, like your father?

Yes.

And between that and your time before that, growing up and going to high school in Salt Lake City, being one of the few Asian faces, I wondered if you had any just personal feelings about what that was like for you, if it made any difference, if you felt self-conscious, if you felt a little--

Well, for the most part I really didn't suffer any racial prejudice. I mean, there were some minor issues where, especially in junior high, the kids are just, they can be obnoxious. They call you names and things like that. But into my high school years, because I had lots of friends already built up by then, from the same junior high who went to high school--and that was a big high school, Skyline High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I really didn't feel any racial prejudice that much. I think most of the kids were pretty well educated in terms of treating others who are of different race. I didn't really see that many blacks, maybe one or two out of the three thousand student body there.

I met some black families in my church, and there they were welcome. We attended Southern Baptist Holiday Baptist Church in Salt Lake City, and as you know, I had a good experience of growing up with the black kids in Korea, the Amerasians.

Yes, right.

So I've always had the special feelings towards black Americans. It wasn't until I got into college at Purdue [University], that's when just one time I experienced a racial prejudice. I lived in a dorm, and it was getting towards the end of the year, and our unit of the dorm, our wing of the dorm decided to have like an exchange dinner with a local sorority. And so some of them would come over to dormitory, and some of us would go over there, and I signed up to go over there, and the list, sign-up sheet, was on the bathroom door. A day later I went there. Somebody crossed my name out.

Really. Wow.

Yes. So what I did was I legibly and strongly rewrote my name at the bottom, so after that, nobody crossed it out. [laughs]

Interesting. Well, you walked into my next question, which is what it was like when you went to Purdue.

Yes. So Purdue being the mid-eastern part of this United States, there was some concern that there might be some prejudice, and you hear about rednecks and things like that. But to be frank with you, I rarely, other than that one incident, I rarely experienced anything. For the most part, I had great Caucasian friends, and I played tag football with them, basketball. I went to school ping-pong. In the dormitory it has a ping-pong table. And there is this one guy from farm, local rural farm from Indiana, he was a major in agriculture, and he and I got to be the best friend. I visited his farm. So as far as the racial discrimination is concerned, that one event where my name got scratched out, I haven't experienced anything. No.

I was curious to know what sort of the racial composition of your class at Purdue was like.

Oh, one black, maybe two Asian, and rest of them, like a class of like forty-five, all were Caucasian; one Hispanic.

And you just gave me a little bit of a clue, but what was your social life like? I presume you were still going to church and studying.

At that time I wasn't that active at church there, although it constantly bothered me, a kind of guilty conscience. You know, "You should be a better boy than that." But mostly my dormitory friends were always there, day in and day out, and on our wing, the freshmen wing where all the freshman stayed, we got to be really good friends and to the point that they even assigned me a nickname, called "Toe Jam." [laughs]

Oh, golly. Was there a reason for that?

Because this guy, who was a real rowdy guy--his name was Jim, I don't remember his last name--but he had an Asian guy who he called Toe Jam in his high school, and that I reminded of him, and at first I didn't even know what toe jam was. I thought he was calling me Toe Jim, not Toe Jam. I didn't even know what toe jam was. But good thing that I didn't know. [laughter] So I let them call me, so they would call me every time they passed by, "Hey, Toe Jam," and then, "Hi, Jim." So I was very friendly, and so they liked me very much that I would really take that very well. [laughs]

Right, right. Well, that's good. How much, if at all, did it remind you a little bit of being back in the orphanage, living with all those guys?

Oh, I mean, being in an orphanage, you're so controlled. You're so limited in terms of what you can do, where you can go. In dormitory they have these parties. They have stereos blaring out so loud, and some kids go on weekend party at a fraternity or a sorority or somewhere, come back to dorm all drunk up, and I just wasn't part of that scene. I was very serious with my study, and every given moment I would go to either library or stay in my room to study, do homework, and I think part of the reason was that I was so undereducated. To me it's just a miracle that I even got there, got to that university. And everybody, all the students were so far ahead of me in terms of math and physics and computer science. There was just too much catching up for me, so I think I exerted myself harder than most people. So it wasn't until about a year later, then I started to surpass most of them.

So there were like a few Korean Americans there. In particular, there were two Korean Americans that I'd befriended since my freshman year, and I knew one guy, and I knew the other guy, so I introduced--brought them together, so we became three. But I noticed that when they were talking with one another, when they first met, they were saying some things in Korean I couldn't quite understand. That's when I first realized, wow, I'm really losing my Korean.

Yes, interesting.

Yes. So I could hardly understand what they were saying to one another. So hanging around with them for four years really helped me kind of get back to the Korean culture and language. And after I graduated from college, I came out to L.A. area, where I went to the Youngnak Presbyterian Church, which is a very large Korean church, and there I got involved with the young-adult group, and I began to serve as a Sunday school teacher, teaching junior high school students, ninth graders. Of course I would teach them in English, but the teachers would have meetings in Korean, so I--with that exposure and also I had friends in my work who were Korean Americans, and they speak pretty good Korean. These are the people who graduated college from Korea and came over through the graduate program somehow. They either married a citizen or, you know, and they were able to get employed by the aerospace corporation. So through meeting them, I quickly caught up with my Korean. I'm still kind of rusty to this day.

Now, were these guys at Purdue from Korea, or were they from American cities somewhere?

American cities. Both of them are from Indiana.

Really?

Yes. Yes.

Wow, interesting. What about girls while you were at college? Anything?

I was--you would call I was a very boring, shy guy. Of course, I didn't go out of my way to look for girls. I was kind of very shy, and it was right at that time that--you know, the funny thing is that up to my high school years, even my maybe first or second year in my college years, I've always considered myself someday marrying a Caucasian girl, because that's all I could really see.

Yes. I wondered, this is what I wondered.

And in high school days I dated a couple of Caucasian girls, so I automatically assumed that when I get later in life and marry, my wife would be a Caucasian. You know? And when I started hanging around with the Korean friends, where I gradually went back to the Korean society day by day, and then there would be like a Korean American club at Purdue, consisting mostly of students in graduate school, those students who graduated from Seoul National [University], which is the top, top university in Korea, all the graduate schools, they came from there, and there was one from Yonsei [University], and that's like second after Seoul. So just by being with them, spending some time with them, it kind of gradually drew me back into Korean culture and language, their food, their culture, and that's when I noticed that my heart was kind of shifting, and by the time when I was senior year, I made up my mind that I want to marry a Korean girl, and from then on I never looked at another Caucasian girl.

Interesting.

No matter how beautiful they were, it just didn't interest me after that, for some reason. I don't know. That's--

Yes, can't explain these things sometimes.

Yes, it's hard to. Well, actually, that's not true. Even after I graduated, I had interest in one Caucasian girl in Salt Lake City who went to my church. She was very pretty. That's when I really had to struggle, and by that time I was pretty much into Korean culture, because I was getting a job in L.A., and partly because of that reason I came, to go back into the Korean culture and go to Korean church, and maybe someday I will marry a Korean girl. And about that time, I met a beautiful, very nice Caucasian girl, and I just dated her once and I came out here, and there was a big struggle within me at that time. Do I continue with her, or do I not? So there was a lot of battle inside me, and I kept saying, "In true love, there is no color. But in true love, there's every color," you know what I'm saying? So I kept trying to justify myself in one sense, but couldn't on the other sense. But by the time Christmas came, where I tried to go back to Salt Lake City where my parents were and to spend some time with them, I thought I'd call her and go out again. By then, she already had a boyfriend, so that settled it. [laughs]

Yes, I was going to say, done deal. Yes. So you very conveniently walked into what I wanted to get into, which is your taking the job at Hughes Aircraft, coming to Los Angeles area, leaving your parents in Salt Lake City, and you just said that one of the factors was that you knew there was a sizable Korean community here then.

Right.

How did you discover that, and what were your feelings about this decision that you were making? What was important about that at this point?

Well, I always heard about L.A., especially Olympic Boulevard, where lots of Koreans are congregated. You'd read about it in the newspaper, magazine, and also my college friends at Purdue spoke about that. So it was natural for me to--because I got job offers at Lockheed Martin, and I got an offer from Texas [Instruments], and I got another offer elsewhere. But then I decided to come here, because that would give me the most best chance of me getting back into Korean culture. But at the same time, Hughes was willing to offer--I mean, had I qualified, a fellowship program to go to a graduate school of my choice.

Wow.

So that was just too hard to pass up. So when I got into Hughes, a year later I applied for that program, fellowship program, and I got in. I thought about going back to Purdue, or maybe a local school like UCLA or USC [University of Southern California], and I decided to go to USC. They paid 100 percent, and plus some additional spending money, all the books, and in addition to that I worked like twenty hours a week. So I would go to school--so in two years I got through with master's degree.

In what specifically? What was your master's in, what subject?

Oh, aerospace engineering it's called there.

Okay. Was it the same as your undergraduate degree?

Undergraduate degree was in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, but at USC it was called aerospace. So they're essentially the same thing.

Right. Okay.

So it took me two years to go through the master's program, and Hughes paid for every single--it was very expensive, you know.

I'll bet, at USC for sure.

Oh, yes, USC. And then most best was that--and this is something that I really respect at Hughes--even after you get your M.S. degree or even Ph.D. degree if you want to go--I had the chance to do that, but I opted not to--there's no obligation for you to stay with that company.

Wow.

You know? To me, that's how they were confident of what they were doing, and I really, really respected that program. And I don't know, that was from the time when Hughes was private foundation, owned by private foundation, Howard Hughes Foundation at that time. But then GM [General Motors Corporation] finally bought them out, and from then on, I believe, the educational benefits or programs kind of went south, and I hear it's not as good as when I went through.

Good timing for you, then.

Yes, yes, really. So it was really good.

Tell me about coming to Los Angeles and settling and discovering the Korean American community here and what that was like for you, what form that took.

Yes. I first settled in Hermosa Beach, and I wanted to be reasonably close to the beach--

To work. Oh, to the beach, oh, wow.

--to the beach and to work, of course. So I was like a block and a half--

Nice.

--in our apartment complex. So I would go to work and then at evenings I would kind of stroll around the beach, and then weekends I would get involved with the Korean church and things like that.

What year are we talking about now?

This is like '79, '80. And I wanted to go visit Koreatown in Olympic Boulevard, because I've heard so much of it, and sure enough I went there and by myself and drove around up and down the streets and looked at different signs and finally found a restaurant, and I went in there and had dinner, and it was a great experience. So from then on, I would frequent Korean markets, buy some stuffs that you wouldn't be able to buy at American markets, like--

Real kimchi, for example?

--yes, real kimchi and other side dishes. And a buddy of mine who graduated from Purdue, he was one year ahead of me as senior, he got a job in L.A. area, actually close to Riverside County, and he decided to go to Youngnak Church, because he knew somebody there, and so it was natural for him to recruit me to go there, which I did, and that church was great. I was there for like eight years. I met great friends and great church environment.

And spiritually, I grew up a lot. But there was--while I was pretty happy with my adoption experience, there was like an internal struggle within me. It's sort of like the Koreans call it shade within my personality. It's like someone like hidden from all others. It may be a pain, it could be a bad experience, it could be some secrets that the person may have, and so I had a case like that, and that kind of bothered me for many, many years. And that was on the reason, like the question why, like why was I orphaned, why did God--I was a believer in God. Why did he take my parents away? And why did I have to grow up in orphanage?

Yes, the questions all orphan children ask.

Yes. And then also, and why this adoption and all the blessings and wonderful things through adoption? What's the meaning in all this? So I began to ask those questions, and that really bothered me for many years. And so that's my, what I call shade within me, or shadow within me, in my heart. I never told anybody. I just kept it to myself, and finally it got kind of unbearable. Around 1987 or '88, I left the church, Youngnak, just to get away from it all. I even went to Colorado to hike around mountains in Colorado. This was in 1987, I believe, where I went on a vacation. I climbed the highest peak in Colorado called Mount Albert, so I hiked up there, and I drove around. It was like a September-October time. The aspens were just sparkle yellow all over. It's just very, very beautiful. And here I was kind of thinking about what is the meaning in my life, what's the purpose. [laughs] Seriously.

Yes, sure.

And also thinking, who am I going to marry, that kind of thing. By that time I was already in thirties, only thirty I guess.

Right. And in the Korean culture, that'd be pretty old.

Yes, yes. So it bothered me for many years, and being a Christian, I sought a lot of help through prayer, and I'd pray to God many times. And I also talked with my Christian friends, who would give me their perspective, and that really helped. And finally one day--and at that time I was deeply involved with the Holt International in Eugene, Oregon as a board of director, working with Grandma [Bertha] Holt in serving children in many countries, so I was learning a lot about adoption. My term was coming to an end, so in two or three years--I was on my last term, last leg of the three-year term, and one day I prayed to God, "What is the purpose that you sent me on this earth for? And why did you allow me to go through all this pain and hardship in early life, and to bless me with adoption? What's the meaning?" And after lots of prayers, I believe God spoke in my heart in a way that, "I didn't let you go through all those painful experiences without any reason. There is a purpose."

You know, human beings make mistakes. My father made mistake, right? But despite those circumstances, you go through it and then you come out like gold, like Bible says. So even though it might not be his desire for me to lose my parents, and yet because the choices that my father made with his drunkenness and abusing of my mother and breaking up the family, being irresponsible, yet despite that, God decided to bless me. And the message that I got in my heart was that all of that painful experience would serve me in the future, for how would I know or how would I understand the hurt of homeless children without first going through those experiences? How would I know being abandoned or being homeless and the pain and the despair that those children suffer, if I hadn't experienced those things? How would I know about growing up in orphanages? And how would I know about not knowing where next food would come from, when I was roaming the streets before the orphanage?

And I know what it feels like to live without hope, being ridiculed for being an orphan, disparaging remarks that adults sometimes make. You know, it's really cruel in Korea in those days. I hope it is not that now. But orphans are considered like second-class citizens. They're disparaged, they're belittled. Ordinary people who have daughters would not let orphan boy date them, or marry.

Yes, sure. Right.

Orphan boys, they don't have chance to get to a good school, good college, good education, even good job. They choose--I heard a lot of stories where they check their background and examine what kind of background you come from, and if you come from an orphan background, it's like an automatic black mark. So a lot of people, knowing that, would tell me, "No matter how hard you study in Korea, how hard you work, you will not be able to succeed." So I remember hearing those comments. So I think it's pretty gloomy, and naturally you kind of give up. And through adoption, it really brought me out of the depth of that gloom, gloomy situation, into a new home and a new beginning, new opportunity. It's just been a great experience.

So at that time when I was asking these questions to God, one question that came to my heart was that all these experience was not in vain. Now, the question is, what will you do for them? And that's when I was, oh, it's like new revelation or new realization, and I couldn't quite answer. I thought I was pretty good boy, working and paying taxes and giving tithe at my church and things like that, serving. That's when I realized, you know, there is meaning in this. Even though I had those unfortunate circumstances and painful memories of the past, I can make some difference in the lives of children that are in Korea.

And some years before that, like in 1988 there was Olympics in Korea, and I might have shared this story with you before, but of all the beautiful images that were being broadcasted throughout the world, there was one segment on Korean orphans, how they were still being adopted abroad. Did I share that story?

We talked about it in our pre-interview meeting, off tape, so you haven't shared it as part of the record.

Yes. So there were a lot of criticism by Korean professionals, Korean people in general, news media. "This is a national shame, that we have to put a stop to this. We are now able to host an Olympic. We cannot do this." All the while, they weren't even lifting finger to help those homeless children. So that's when--it was like '88, and then I was still serving at Holt as a board of director. That's when I get to seriously think about, why don't Koreans adopt? What's blocking them? And I knew immediately it had to do with culture. So in 1995, when I heard the voice of God in my heart, "And what will you do for them?", that's when I said, "I'd better change Korean culture, adoption culture." There's a strong negative social stigma attached to orphans, adoptees, and the concept of adoption, that not too many Koreans would want to adopt children because of this strong, anti-, negative social stigma.

And because of that, I thought about, they need to change that. And that's when I decided, I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life in changing their culture to bring about positive change to Korean adoption culture, so that all the homeless children will grow up in homes. That was in 1995. And I was given chance to speak in many churches, both in Korea and in the United States, the Korean American churches, and I would go to the churches where I got invited to speak, and I would give my testimony, my life story. And I can remember like one couple coming up to me, and they would look at me like with a beam and big smile on the face, and, "We have decided tonight to adopt," because they didn't have children. And today they have two children, and they're one of our members. I have another member who I spoke at her church, and her church was Seventh-Day Adventist, and so I spoke on Saturday, and they decided to adopt, and today they have two children also, and they're very, very happy.

And I went on many, what do you call, speaking tours, I guess. I would go to Korea. I would get invited to some small, some big churches, and I would speak. But despite that, not too many minds were being changed, and every now and then they would decide to adopt somebody, a child or two. So I said, "How do I do this in more organized fashion, to be more forceful? How do I do this to make more impact?" So after long thought, I decided to organize an organization, establish an organization called Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea, with acronym MPAK, M-P-A-K. And even then I didn't have any idea how I was going to do that. I just know that's what I wanted to do, but I didn't have the means or the know-how.

But at that time--this was in 1999--I was invited by one of the adoption agencies in Korea to come and speak at some sort of seminar of about four hundred professionals. There I gave my adoptive perspective in Korean adoption, and it was well, well received. And so many people congratulated me. They remarked they never had even thought about the things that you said, perspective coming from Korean adoptee, so that's in my website. You go to mpak.com, you should be able to see that. That was in 1999.

But to backtrack--I'm kind of jumping--I got married in 1995, met the most beautiful Korean wife [Jody Morrison], Korean woman.

How did you meet?

Through a mutual friend of mine, and they introduced us together. And she is beautiful. She's like a model. Now, no pretty girl would want to date me or marry me, but then she, being so beautiful, she has such a beautiful heart, and she said that she'd been waiting for a guy like me to come along. She has two younger sisters. She let them get married earlier, because in Korean society, that's sort of like a big pain in the mother's side, and her--

Yes, right. It's like most of those cultures. I know the first daughter has to get married before the other ones can. Yes, wow, a lot of pressure.

Yes, but she let them go first, and I guess she was hanging on to the best guy, which was me. [laughs]

Yes. Wow.

And I'm modest here, right? [laughter] So, yes, she was wonderful, and we're still very close. I love her very much, and she supports 100 percent of what I do, and she is a strong advocate of adoption now. She and I, between her and I, we've got three children by birth and one child by adoption, so we're actually planning one more, older child.

Now, what's her background? Is she also, then, from Korea, or was she born here?

Yes. She came over when she was around twenty years old. She left in her middle of her college year.

Okay, so she was still speaking Korean then.

Yes. She would be considered first generation, and I'm considered 1.8 generation.

Yes, right, exactly. I'm curious to know--during this period when you're now living in L.A., you're working, you become aware of the Korean American community here, you're going to Youngnak Church, and you're eventually speaking in these churches about this issue--how would you describe how well or not well you were maybe at least initially accepted by a lot of the community here, being an adoptee, being a former orphan, being raised for part of your life by Caucasian Americans; what was the response like from people in the community when they found that out?

Well, for the most part, Koreans were very nice toward it. The only thing that might have happened, which, you know, they don't really display those kind of emotions outward, they kind of think in their head, and I know what goes through their head--they probably, maybe not everybody, but many of them probably looked at me with pity for having been adopted or having orphan background, and I won't be surprised. And I'm sure as much as there were girls who liked me, Korean girls who liked me, there were some girls that didn't want to get involved with me. I'm sure they probably--those are some of the attribute of me that they didn't like, I'm sure. So I'm sure there were some cases like that, but those were--I've never really directly been impacted.

One time a friend of mine tried to introduce me a girl. Girl was okay with me, but her parents objected because I have one bad leg. And I believe one time another person might have rejected me because of my background, so I can't say that it wasn't there, it was never there. I think it was there, but there were far, far more people who were so encouraging, so accepting, than those few people who couldn't accept me. So I feel pretty blessed.

Being in the community and working also for Holt for a while, how many, if any, other Korean adoptees in the area did you meet? I'm particularly interested to know what your take would be on many of the adoptees who grew up being in homes with Caucasian Americans from the time they were very small, and therefore essentially lost their culture, lost their language. Do you have any experience with that, and if so, what were your feelings about that?

Well, both good and bad. It really depends on how you look at it. I've seen so many of them. I've attended some camps and some social gatherings where there were adoptees who came when they were babies. And at one time I kind of envied them, because they didn't have to go through all those painful experiences of being hunger and cold and being homeless and all the insecurity. I envied them because they came without all those painful things. And it wasn't until later I realized, me having gone through that has made me the way I am and the way I feel toward homeless children in Korea, and I began to think, thankful, how great that experience was. So I looked at it from both spectrum, and I think one is sort of like an immature spectrum or perspective. The other one is like when Steve Morrison, the mature perspective, and that was the last and final view, which should be, really.

I feel so grateful that I went through that experience, and that experience has helped me in my work with the Holt organization, being a board of director. That was one of the motivation and inspiration, and for me to find the MPAK to promote adoption in Korea and also Korean American community here, and that really served as like a stepping board, an inspiration. I know what it's like being homeless. I know what it's like to grow up in orphanage, and there's got to be something that I could do for them. So I had both perspectives.

Some of the adoptees who grew up with a very different experience from yours, those who came here when they were very young, wound up being quite bitter and resentful in some cases, and I'm curious to know, based on your own feelings, what your response is to some of those people and if it had any impact on your decision to try to work to change the adoption culture in Korea, because needless to say, these people wouldn't have lost their culture or their language or anything if they had been able to be raised in their own country.

Yes, that's a very good question. The way I see it is that I've met many adoptees who are somewhat negative, and some very negative. You see their writings on blogs and things like that.

Yes, a lot of anger.

A lot of anger. But I think really to be frank with you, a lot of those angers are really baseless and unfounded, because they don't know what it would have been like had they stayed in Korea to grow up in orphanages, and all the insecurity, all the ridicules that they might suffer. Only 3 percent of the orphans who come out of the--who turn eighteen or nineteen, go to college; today maybe 5 percent at most, with government aid, I don't know, maybe 5 to 10 percent. Over 70 percent of adoptees who came from Korea go to colleges in United States. That speaks volumes. We're talking about opportunity. And those people who criticize Korean adoption, some of them even have got Ph.D. degrees, and there are Korean orphans in Korea who would die to get that kind of opportunity. It's just that they're ignorant of what might have been their case had they stayed. They don't know what the alternative might have been had they stayed in Korea, so all they can think is that they were displaced into another country, without their approval, some would claim, as if you could ask that question to a little tiny baby, you know? So they complain about being displaced, being out of culture.

But I really think Korean government and adoption agencies, they really made the best decision for those children. They made the decision to send those children so they'll grow up in homes, because Koreans were not willing to adopt them. Otherwise they would grow up in orphanages. A home in the United States is far better than growing up in an institution. A home with Caucasian parents is a lot better than growing up in orphanages. So that's my perspective. So whenever I meet these adoptees who are kind of grumbling, I tell them, and sometimes they'll e-mail me, and I would respond with what would have been the alternative, and when I share all these things, then they become quiet. I notice that.

Interesting. Wow. So evidently your wife's family didn't have any trouble accepting you, or did they?

I think their Christian faith has a lot to do with it, very devout Christian parents and big heart. They love their oldest daughter more than the other two, and it was very evident. So they accepted me like their family with no problem. And I'm sure by then, you know, me having gone through college with master's, Purdue, and aerospace engineering working status, all those are kind of--you know, you have to have some attractive quality within you for them to--

Right. And that plays right into what they value.

--entrust your daughter into the hands of a man. So I have some negative aspect with my physical leg, with my background being orphan and adoption, but they looked at me for who I am at that time, not what I'd been. And my wife said, "You have great qualities that far exceeds any of your, what you might consider negative qualities," and that's why she was appealed to. So I turned on my Irish charm, like my dad.

Right. And you set me up for my next question, which is, during this period, how did your relationship with your adoptive parents fare? How were things going and how often did you see them? What was your relationship like as you got older and got settled here and started your own family?

You know, they became more and more precious to me. I loved them more and more, and I appreciated them, what they have gone through. The more mature I got, the more I was thankful of what they'd done for me. Because I've seen this. I mean, to work in a high-tech company that people in Korea would dream about, to go to graduate school with a fellowship program, and to live in the greatest country in the world, and these are things that people would dream about. And so I've always said--and, of course, to have a wonderful family that I had. So the more and more I matured, the more and more I appreciated my parents, my father, and especially being a man I am. And the more I just yearn to see them.

So every Christmastime, similar sometimes summer vacation, where would I go? I can't go to Acapulco. For what? They don't interest--Europe--I want to go where my family is. You know what I'm saying? What would I do with myself in Paris within a tower of Pisa, I mean or the Eiffel Tower? So I go to family to be with them, to mingle with my mom. And the funny thing is that when I was at home with my parents, I noticed that I would eat more. It's like all of a sudden you become hungry. It's like, of course, my mother loves that.

Yes, yes. That's how it's supposed to be.

And when I am sleeping, she would come over and just massage my shoulders and would just softly speak about day's happenings and some of her things that happened, some funny stories and some things, and I remember just falling asleep like that. It was just wonderful. And my dad, there would be times when he would play some Irish blarney on me. [laughs]

Oh, no.

And I really, really appreciated that, because just practical jokes, and we were very, very close, and I would call them every week, sometimes several times a week. And my mother was--at that time I was single. My mother, she being a devout Christian, she always wanted me to get married and as soon as possible, so she sent me lots of books on Christian marriage. So she sent me James Dobson's "What Wives Wish Their Husband Knew About Women." I even recommend that to you. It's a great book. [laughs]

Okay.

"Singles, Sex, and Marriage," there was a book on that [by Herbert J. Miles], "The Act of Marriage" by Tim LaHaye, so so many books. And then I read through all of those, and I thought I was pretty expert by then, but I guess I wasn't.

Yes. It's kind of like becoming a parent. You know, you can prepare all you want, but then when you finally do, it's kind of like, whoa, this is very different.

Yes.

Did your parents ever come out here?

Oh, yes, yes. They visited our family, especially when our first daughter was born. Oh, they came out and they just loved every moment, and especially when we had the first birthday. In Korean culture, first birthday is called dol, and that's like child's biggest birthday. You survived one year. In old days of Korea, surviving through first year was a big thing.

I'll bet.

So we had about eighty people at a restaurant, and we spent some money, and my parents were there. They just loved it.

So how often did you get into Koreatown as it was changing and growing?

I think because of my involvement with the Youngnak Church--at that time it was in Fairfax Avenue, close by Koreatown. Right now it's in north of Chinatown, but so I would get into Koreatown every week, have lunch with my students and teachers, so I'd mingle. By then I was fully, fully into the Korean community. And right now I'm still pretty heavily--and I don't serve in any community board or anything like that, but I get invited to come and speak at a summer youth school or an educational institute, and I get asked to come and speak to young students about having vision in your life. And, of course, I'm involved with this church [ANC Onnuri Church], which is part of the Korean community. I serve as a leadership position in this church, as an elder.

And I have been very blessed being back in the Korean community, and through my involvement in the Korean community, even though I got a lot of good things from the community, the community got also something from me. That was exposure to adoption. Yes. Now more people are aware of adoption. More people are interested in adoption. More people, their minds have been changed because of my involvement with the community, because a lot of times I'm featured in the newspaper, TV broadcasts, and this is especially in Korea, where I've been on all three major networks there, KBS, MBS, SBS, at least twice through documentaries, human stories, new segments. So it's kind of scary walking in the streets of Korea sometimes. People would recognize you, like even a year or two after the broadcast. I guess they had--and I asked them, "How can you remember me?" "Well, your story was very impressive," you know, like that. So I would hear things like that. And I would get on a subway. An elderly woman would be looking at me intently, and then I'd look back at her and then she smiled. "I saw you on TV last night." [laughs] So it's very interesting, yes.

Yes. It would seem that the church is the ideal forum for the subject that you're so passionate about, and I'm curious to know, particularly since among Asian countries Korea has a lot of Christians, and certainly in the Korean American community here it's majority Christian, and it's maintained probably still as by far the most active and vital social and spiritual center of the community, and yet--and this is one of those things that I think is so difficult and confusing about different cultures--it's probably hard for non-Koreans, for example, to think that people who consider themselves really good, faithful, devout Christians would have such prejudices about somebody like an orphan or somebody, or have these wrong perceptions about adoption and what that's about--

Oh, even people of different races even.

Yes, right, right. How much--this is kind of a twofold question--how much do you think the church is now and will continue to be not only an ideal forum for changing people's attitudes about adoption, both in the community here and in Korea, and how much generally do you see the church remaining a viable and an important, vibrant social center in the Korean community as the generations move forward and become more American, for example, over here?

Most of the Korean churches, unfortunately--but unfortunate as it is, it's mostly social gathering. No matter how much the church says, "We're not for social, our primary purpose is for spiritual purpose, to help people get closer to God," although that is true, but I think social purpose is really what's in the minds and hearts of the Korean Americans. If they were so inclined only for spiritual purpose, why not go into different churches? There are a lot of excellent American churches. Now, maybe because their language--so Korean Americans going to Korean churches is naturally understandable, not only to develop social networks but also for their spiritual growth as well. So there's really nothing wrong, nothing wrong for Korean Americans to go to Korean churches.

Like if I was a Korean, Korean American going to a local Crenshaw [District] Christian church there, what sort of impact would I make? Maybe not so much. So it's quite natural for people to associate with like color, like social background, so you cannot ignore that.

Right.

So I think Korean churches will continue to be the center of social gatherings, and what's good is that through that network of churches and Christians in southern California, we are able to--the Korean Americans are able to now send lots of missionaries to other parts of the world, and what I'm hoping is that Korean Christians would be a little bit more outreaching rather than kind of close knit towards themselves. That's why I'm kind of hoping for younger-generation Korean American Christians to really become part of the mainstream American Christian movement, that they'll become leaders as well. So I'm hoping that there'll be another person like Daniel or Joseph or Moses or Paul, who would really help turn this country around spiritually, even though it kind of looks pretty bleak the way it's going right now.

So those are some of the things that I continue to pray for, that God would have mercy on America. Now, so I'm continually hoping and praying that Korean Americans, that they're not just contained themselves and become just social networking and spiritual networking themselves, but to be able to reach out to mainstream American Christian communities. That would be great to see that one day.

So as far as the adoption is concerned, even though there are a lot of great Christians, they know in their heart what is the right thing to do. But knowing what is right and being able to carry out that which is right is two different things for not only Korean Americans, but for all the Americans, all the Christians, I guess. They know that adoption is good, and they know that there are a lot of children who need homes, but they're just not able to bring themselves to be convinced of that. Or they know it would be the right thing, that God would bless them if they did, but they just don't have the courage, and it's because they're afraid of something unknown, which is typical of a human reaction to something unknown.

Sure. Right.

And they have a tendency to think of negative aspect more than the positive aspect. I met all the adoptive parents, Korean Americans, and after they adopt, all of them regret, regret that if adoption was this good, why didn't they start earlier. That's how they regret. So it's really hard to convince them. You can only experience the joy in adoption. No matter how much talking I do, how much convincing I try to do, there will always be some people who will not be convinced or don't want to be convinced, and it's kind of unfortunate, because as Christians, we are to be benevolent to less fortunate. And even Book of James talks about religious, that God considers most holy is to look after orphans and widows in distress.

Yes, right.

And in Mark, Christ said, "Whosoever welcomes the least of these children in my name, welcomes me." So they know all these things. Knowing and actually carrying out is two different things. And sometimes what I notice is that one party is interested, but the other is not. I just recently met a woman who wants to adopt eventually, but after she gets four children.

Oh, man.

They've been married like five years with no children. That's as good as saying that they're not going to adopt, to me.

Yes. But how much do you think appealing to people's, not just their own benevolence but their involvement as Christians, helps leverage them more in favor of adoption? Do you think this is one of the things that has really, in this case, helped your mission?

Oh, yes, definitely, because I've noticed that a great majority of the people, Korean Americans at least, that adopt, most all of them are Christians. Maybe one or two families are not. So I've noticed that. But I just feel that they can do more.

I see. Okay.

There should be more adoptions by Christians. Even the Bible doesn't say specifically or command us to adopt, but they do have a lot of indications that God would be happy with adoption, just by the things that I just told you, what Jesus said about homeless--the least of these children. So we can speak of Christ's love, but exercising it in our real life and making it part of our life is quite different. We can speak of it, we can discuss about it in a conference, or even pray about it. Without those real actions, it really doesn't quite measure up to the love that God intended for us to practice. So that's why I feel that adoption is the greatest form of human love to another human who is in need of family.

Or let me look at it this way. A friend of mine, a pastor, one time said this, and he was a pastor. He said, "If we reduce the gospel of Christ into one word, Book of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and James into one word, it would be this," he said, "adoption." And I couldn't quite understand what he was talking about, when he said, "God adopted all of us believers through his son Jesus Christ he sent, and through him he adopted us while we're sinners. So we're all adoptees in a sense." So that was so true. So adoption is God's idea, and I believe, I strongly believe that adoption is like really practicing God's love in reality, and I just pray that there will be more who will do that.

While reaching the Korean American potential adoptee community is, I think, effectively and maybe in some ways easily done through the church, because there are so many Koreans who go to church here, in South Korea, where there's still a lot of Christians but not as many as there are in the community here, how, if at all, are you able to get your message to non-Christians in South Korea?

Our MPAK organization is in Korea, and we have an office in Seoul, and we have four full-time employees, and activity of MPAK is so much busier over there than here, which it rightfully should be, because that's where the homeless children are being generated. And we have been making so much impact past ten years since its inception, and so many people, news media, educational institutes, government even, are crediting us for bringing about so much changes in the Korean adoption culture and turning the anti-social stigma into so much more positive way. So we have come a long way, and we still have a long ways to go. But we're the only agency established in Korea to dedicate to promoting adoption.

There were some leadership in Korea who, when we needed some funding, you know, short on fund, why don't we become another adoption agency so we can charge adoption fees? And since we're promoting it, a lot of the people know of MPAK by now. So that's when I said, "No. There are twenty-six other agencies in Korea, four doing overseas adoptions, four big ones, and twenty-two other smaller ones doing domestic adoption only. Already there are plenty adoption agencies in Korea. They're doing a fine job. Let them do what they're doing. Our job is only to change heart and minds of Koreans so they're adopting." So in essence, we're helping the adoption agencies, but more than that, children to find homes. So our focus is children-focused, not so much--after that, family focused.

And going back to your question, I've noticed that for our MPAK families that are adopting, about 80 percent of them are Christians. It's surprising. I don't know why it works out that way. So I guess in a sense that Christian attitude, Christian upbringing helps in many ways, so they are people who are actually practicing their faith, which is great to see. Do we have some families who are Buddhist, or who have no religion at all? We welcome them in our adoption community, to our membership as well. So they come in and then the love for children shouldn't be different, whether you're Christian, Buddhist, you know. It shouldn't be. So we don't limit them. We don't put any barrier. We just welcome them all.

Yes. We're actually getting low on time, and I'm thinking that I'm not actually done with you, so we're going to have one other session.

Sure.

I wanted to ask you, going back to this particular subject, if you can update us now as to what we're looking at in terms of the numbers of orphan children in Korea these days, compared to, say, when you were an orphan in Korea, and what, if anything, are the same or different reasons that children are orphaned now versus before. Clearly we don't have the same number of Amerasian G.I.-fathered children and things like that.

That's right. Yes, right. Yes, or poverty even.

But clearly, it's still an issue. Otherwise you wouldn't have to address it. Where are we at now in terms of what the orphan situation is like in South Korea?

Yes. Right now there are about twenty thousand orphans in Korea, spread throughout two hundred and seventy institutions, and in the old days there were a lot more orphanages, especially after the Korean War. And many of them got shut down, because over the years kids grew up and then fewer and fewer children becoming homeless. So there are still many orphanages, but their numbers are kind of dwindling nowadays still, and a lot of it has to do with adoption. Being adopted abroad has a lot to do with it too. So from time to time, orphanage directors would raise some complaints, because orphanage--sometimes they get some financing through donations, plus a significant amount comes from the government, depending on the number of children they serve.

And when I was there, there were lots of orphans, maybe like fifty thousand or more at one time. Like this is like sixties and seventies, and I left at 1970. But now the number is about twenty thousand. Each year about ten thousand children become homeless in Korea. In the old days, it was mostly, well, right after the Korean War, a lot of them had to do with the G.I. babies. But a great many more were a result of losing parents over the war, poverty, things like that.

So nowadays, most of the children are being born out of the wedlock. Maybe some country girls go up to Seoul, get a job at a factory, falls in love, gets into an accident with a guy, so they don't want to raise; they're not legitimate. They haven't married. They're just fooling around. It's still taboo and kind of a great shame for a non-married woman to have children by themselves, so to avoid--you know, Koreans are really into a face-saving thing, so they'll do anything to avoid being embarrassed, in many ways. So they give up the children for adoption, because their parents will not accept the child, and she is still young, and she's got years to go, and if there is a Korean man come along and she loves, and he looks at her with a child, there's no way he's going to fall in love with her. So there's those kind of drawback.

So most of the children are children born out of wedlock. So some would argue, because these children are no longer poverty-produced children, overseas adoption should stop. And I said, "No. Whether they were produced by poverty, whether by divorce, whether by war or famine or unmarried mother, children are children, still need homes. So it really doesn't matter how they came about. The fact is that they are homeless children. They deserve to grow up in homes." So that's what I've been advocating.

And so we have seen in Korea some steady number of children being adopted, but in recent years, even domestic adoption has gone down. And I kept scratching my head. Why? We've worked so hard to promote adoption in Korea. It so happens the reason why that is the case is that there's a great population decline in Korea. Couples just are not producing enough babies.

Yes. It's like Japan is the same thing.

Yes. It's like one child per couple now, and when you have that, when they don't even want their own children, why would they want other children, adopt other children? And because of that, there has been so dramatic reduction in the intake of children becoming homeless, so orphanages are kind of going downhill, with fewer and fewer children. Adoption agencies are kind of worried, because they're not processing enough babies. But in some ways it's good in some ways, because there are fewer children becoming homeless, but I think there's a negative aspect is that there's a great population decline. When the older generation die off, wow. I worry. I really worry for the future of Korea because of that. There are millions of apartment buildings in Korea, and I'm afraid those apartment costs will go down, because there will be less demand because of lack of population.

Right. Same way in Japan. I think it's even worse there. Okay, we're going to have to call it for today, but next time, because I'll be out of town next week, but maybe the Wednesday after that, I want to finish up talking more specifically about your sense of your own identity, being Korean, being American, being Korean American, and how that's evolved for you, where you're at with that now. I want to ask you what your feelings and memories were about the 1992 riots here that affected the Korean American community so much, since you would have been here by then.

Oh, yes. I remember.

And then finish up with some follow-up questions about the adoption situation now and some more to wrap up with MPAK and what your activities are now.

Sure.

Sound good?

Sound good.

Great. Thanks a lot for today.

Thank you.

Today is July 9, 2009. This is Alex Cline once again interviewing Stephen Morrison at the ANC Onnuri Church in West L.A., the Mar Vista neighborhood of West L.A., not Koreatown, and this is our fifth and last session.

Thanks for taking some time.

My pleasure.

I gather you're extremely busy, so this sounds like something of a sacrifice, and I want you to know that I appreciate it.

No problem.

I have a question for you that I could have asked earlier, but I wanted to ask it now. You, in an earlier session, explained how you got the name Stephen when you were adopted by the Morrisons, and I have to say that it is quite novel when one is doing a series on Korean Americans in Los Angeles, and one of the interviewees on the list has the name Stephen Morrison. I wanted to ask you how you felt about having a new name when you got this new foreign name, and now, particularly since you've become more involved with and integrated into the Korean American community here in Los Angeles, how you feel about it today.

Okay. You asked a lot of good questions. That's good. When I got adopted when I was fourteen, having, bearing the name of Steve Morrison, it's really because it is so new and you're just happy to be with the new family, you don't really pay too much attention to it, and it just kind of sticks with you that you're Steve Morrison. Where you go to church, people call you Steve, school and play with friends, and I am Steve. It kind of grows into yourself after a while.

And then it wasn't until in my college days that I started to hanging around Korean friends and gradually getting back into Korean culture, Korean community, that's when I started getting a little bit conscious of my name, because for me to kind of show up in a Korean American, like a student association, Korean Student Association at Purdue [University], where there were about fifty graduate students all from Seoul National University attending graduate school there, and you kind of think about what they might think of me or me having a name like Morrison. So you become kind of conscious of your different name. But they asked me, and I told them what my name was, and I told them that I was adopted. All I know, they were very civil. I don't think I've ever got any discrimination or looked at me like a funny way because I got adopted and that my name was Morrison.

Now, they might have had without me knowing, without me seeing, they might have had some discussions among themselves, maybe pitying me for my orphan background, which is a perfectly natural thing to do, even for Westerners, I think. But I blended in very well with them. I played with them, played baseball and softball with them and attended parties with them, and pretty soon they just saw me as I am.

I had an incident with the professor one time at Purdue where it was like my junior year, and I had this Chinese professor. He's now the chancellor at UC [University of California] Santa Barbara, Henry Yang, excellent, excellent professor, and I really liked him. So I would visit his office, and he and I would talk not as a professor to student type of setting, but like a friend to friend basis, so he would tell me his family and his stories and I with my adoption story. And then I asked him a question. "You know, professor, I was thinking about this, and I'm grown up and I'm going to be--I'm not a child anymore. I'm going to be a man. In a year's time I'm going to be graduating. I was thinking about maybe changing my name back to Chae, which is my Korean name. What do you think about that?" And he looked at me and, "Steve, you shouldn't do that." So that kind of stuck with me. He's, "You know, they sacrificed for you. They invested a lot of their time and their own lives, themselves, in raising you to be where you are today. The least you could be is to be grateful, and you should keep their name." And for some reason after that conversation, I was so ashamed that I even asked that question. I knew in my heart what the answer is, but because he said it, I was kind of embarrassed.

So to go back, it was actually during a summer period I asked my dad that question, whether I could change my name to Chae. And when I asked that question to Dad, he didn't even look at me. He was just reading a newspaper or book, and he didn't say yes or no, but I realized that that hurt him. So after the summer was ended, I went back to Purdue. Then I talked to pastor, I mean the Professor Yang, and that's what he said. "You shouldn't have done that." So I felt so ashamed after that.

And after that, after I graduated, you know, my dad, of course, at that time was recovering from his bypass surgery, and I was nursing him for about a month before I left for my new job, and that one-month period was very meaningful with my life, which I shared last time. And one of the things that we talked about was identity. I explained to him, "You know, I don't really belong in this culture or this Korean culture. I'm not a Caucasian, and I'm not completely Korean." So he kind of saw my struggle, that he saw something was going on in my mind, and then he made a statement which I never forgot, and he said, "Steve, rather than being trying to be a Korean or even being an American, it is more important that you become a good person." And he just stopped that. And then I kind of walked away from that and I thought about that. It really made sense.

So ever since then, my identity problem just went away. I focused more on becoming a person, becoming a good person, becoming a good Christian that God intended me to be, and after that, for some reason, I never struggled with identity. It was like it's so much--you know, you can be a Korean American, you know, and, of course, there are a lot of goods associated with it, but you can be a Korean American and still be very bad in many ways, deceitful, contemptuous, conceited. But you can be an American, you can be just as same, so there's really no difference other than the race itself. However, a higher calling should be becoming a person of noble character, so my dad really helped me on that. So identity issue just disappeared after that. It was no longer me wanting to be a Korean American or American; me wanting to be a good and decent person. So that was really good.

How much impact do you think having the name Steve Morrison has had on your work on behalf of the adoptees and the adoption culture with MPAK [Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea]?

Yes. So going back a little bit, so this was in my twenties, working now, attending Korean American church, a large one, and being involved with the youth ministry there, and every now and then because of my work, I'm given an opportunity to give a presentation to Korean Scientists and Engineers Association, KSEA, which they had it at Caltech [California Institute of Technology] and UC Irvine or UCLA, so I presented my work. And when I was preparing the charts, the very first chart, what do you see? Title and your name, right? There, as I was putting in my name in that, Steve Morrison, I kind of hesitated a little bit, because some Korean people know me as Chae Sop Choon, my Korean name, because that's what the Korean church teachers, they would all call me like that. They don't call me Mr. Morrison. Only the kids were calling me Mr. Morrison. So I hesitated a little bit, and then I remembered the conversation I had with that professor. I said, "I'm proud of this name. I'm proud of my dad for what he's done." So I still remember when I presented that technical paper at Caltech, I proudly stated, "My name is Steve Morrison." [laughs] I emphasized that. And there are all the Ph.D.s and graduate students from all universities, and it was a very, very good moment.

And after that, I became more and more proud to be labeled as Morrison. So every now and then you would hear some adoptees, they go back to their old birth names, because they feel they don't want to be looked at differently by their Korean American peers. So they want to blend in, so they want to adopt their Korean name. So I've seen a lot of people do that. But for me, after that incident with the professor at Purdue and with that lecturing experience, I became totally, totally proud of my name, Morrison. So even now, every now and then when I meet certain people who, you know, newspaper reporters who interview me, or TV reporters that interview me, I emphasize the name Morrison. "Call me Steve Morrison, not Korean name."

So because I feel so proud to be the son of a Morrison, John Morrison, who really, really impacted my life, so when I married my wife, she didn't have any problem with becoming Morrison.

You walked into my next question again.

Yes. And she was very happy to meet me, and I was very happy to meet her, and we're just a perfect match made in heaven, like they say, and it truly was, and beautiful and just great personality. And then children came along, and as they grew up, are growing up, every now and then I think about, you know, they're going to grow up, go to schools and colleges, and everybody is going to look at them as, "Why is your name Morrison?" "Because my dad's name is Morrison." "Were you adopted?" "No." So what I thought in my heart was that they have--their middle name is Chae. I gave them middle name is Cahe, and thankfully my parents kept my middle name as Chae, so Stephen Chae Morrison.

I see.

So I really appreciated that. So for them, for my children, as far as me is concerned, I feel obligated, I feel proud, and I feel bound by the love of my parents to stay rest of my life as Morrison. But in the future, when my children grow up, and if they want to change their name to Chae, I wouldn't mind. So I don't think Grandpa Morrison or Grandma Morrison would get offended by that. So I'm open to that.

Yes. It's pretty tricky. It's a very unique position you're in. Related to that, I wanted to ask you, one of the unique aspects of your situation is that you do actually have a very intimate experience of living as part of the dominant culture in this country, Caucasian American culture, while not being Caucasian, being perceived by others as being, in some cases, the other, in this case an Asian American. You said that you were not someone who experienced a lot of discrimination in your growing up here in the years that you were in junior high, high school, and college, but what, if any, insights do you think you've gained from having this unique perspective of, especially now that you've integrated yourself more into the Korean American community, but the experience of the dominant Caucasian culture contrasted with the so-called minority-Asian culture in this country is like?

Let me see if I understood the questions correctly. So I'll go and answer what I thought I understood. To me--

I'll just say something to set it up that might help you. I just got it a little bit clearer. Most Asian Americans, so-called minorities, don't have an experience of the dominant culture from the inside. You do. How does that affect your perspective on living in this country?

It has blessed me tremendously, and I wouldn't trade that for anything, having lived in a Caucasian family under the name of Morrison. First of all, just because I'm different from the rest of the family, you just don't think about that. Once you've lived with a family, when you feel that you're being loved and cared for, and the fact that you're adopted, it made me forget about it, the adoption. I rarely thought about that I was adopted. I just blended in right into it, just became part of the family. And when you do that, then you have truly been adopted, that you have truly become a family. If you have to think about that you've been adopted, that you're different, you have to remind yourself that way, then there is a problem. I think there would be a problem.

So for me, my parents really made me loved, feel loved and very comfortable. I just melted right into the Morrison--I really became a Morrison, and my mother and father would brag about me as being the number-one son. And so at times I would think--I have a Caucasian brother [Mark Morrison], and he was a biological son. At times I'd think, it seems like they seem to like me more. [laughs] And that's what my friends said, and then that's sometimes what I felt, because all the words that he would say. But then deep in my heart I knew, how can he think anything different for his biological son, his own flesh and blood? But I just knew that they loved me just the way as their own flesh-and-blood son.

So having been in a Caucasian family, having lived in Caucasian community, gone through Caucasian schools and churches and now coming back into the Korean community, that experience has really made me a lot more tolerant, a lot more open, and a lot more understanding, especially the experience of having lived with African American Amerasians in Korea, in an orphanage, sleeping with ten of them or twenty of them in same room, going to school together, eating, playing together. That really made me become very tolerant of African Americans, and I think that was one of the reasons why I was able to become a Big Brother to an African American kid for eight years. I saw him for eight long years, until he moved away. I saw him from when he was six years old. He moved away when he was fourteen. I would see him like a half day every week.

When was that?

Oh, this was 1982, yes, about three years after I graduated. A great kid; I miss him. His name was Arsenio Johnson. Oh, he was good with football, as I saw. We used to play catch with football, and he would run faster and farther and catch better, so I could really see him growing. So I had heart for African Americans. I really--and I came to their defense. Even in Korean churches like Youngnak [Presbyterian Church], you would run into some Korean Americans who are prejudiced, all the way from Korea. They call blacks a derogatory name, like [unclear]. That's sort of like a Korean version of the "n" word. They would use that a lot. And then every time, I would have to remind them, "Oh, no, no, they're called [unclear]," meaning African American, or at that time it was "black." And I would emphasize in the classroom--my students, there were about twenty-five, thirty students in my Sunday school class--and remind them, "If you ever see somebody, either your parents or anybody in the church, speak or label blacks as [unclear], you should remind them not to call like that. How can we as believers in Christ, supposed to love one another, how can we have that kind of prejudice? Even adults are like that. I don't want you to be like that. You be different." So I'm really proud to teach stuff like that in those times.

So having been in a mainstream American community, coming back into Korean community, I have the best of both worlds, and because of that I feel much stronger in my standing in both communities.

What about your feelings about some of the manifestations of more traditional Korean culture, after being essentially immersed in a culture that's not traditional Korean culture; when you reintroduced yourself to the Korean American community here, what were your feelings about some of the other attitudes and different manifestations of that point of view?

I think I was fortunate in a way, that because I grew up in Korea and left when I was fourteen, it allowed me to see what Korean culture really was, what their attitude toward orphans were, what their attitude toward adoption is and even adoptee, and it hasn't been positive at all. There's a strong social stigma attached to against people of orphan background, so I was aware of all those things. So if I ever went to a Korean community, like Korean church or Korean market, if they find out that I'm an adoptee, that I have an American name, if they have some funny way of looking at me or looking maybe some different--you can sometimes tell by their eyes or attitude--it wasn't surprising, because I already knew. That's normal. So but because of that, because by that time I was already a grown up in my twenties, it was me rather who was understanding of their misunderstanding of who I was, so I didn't really expect them to look at me.

But on the other hand, I had a great many, much greater number of friends who are very positive towards me, took me as I am.

In 1992, the Korean American community in Los Angeles was placed into the living rooms of the nation in a way that was unprecedented when we had the civil unrest here in Los Angeles. In the wake of the Rodney King verdict, much of the Korean American community was victimized by riots and looting. I'm guessing, based on what you've shared so far today, that this must have been a very interesting experience for you. What do you remember about where you were when that happened and what your feelings were when it did?

Well, I'll tell you. That particular 1992 year, I made a New Year's resolution that was, I'm not going to watch TV for a whole year. So I put my TV into the box, put it in a storage room, and every night I would read, do computer and do other things that was more constructive. And one day, you know, I would go back and forth to work, of course, and to church, and one day--of course, because I wasn't watching the news, I just wasn't aware of what was going on. Now, of course, I would listen to news channel every now and then. Usually I listen to classical music station.

And in the morning one day, I woke up and I opened my garage to get in the car. I smelled something burning in the air. I've never smelled it that strong, burning. So I went out and looked around. Nothing was burning, but the cloud was kind of smoky. The area was kind of smoky. And then I turned on the radio and found out that there's a riot going on. So I went to work with listening to the radio, and then at work they released us early for the safety. We did a half day and we went home.

Where were you living then?

Marina del Rey. And I got so curious as to what's this all about, so I took the TV out of the box and watched it, and that's when I saw the police beating of Rodney King and how that--and all the burnings, riots, and I still remember some guys showing up in the camera, "This is the judgment day," that kind of, "This is the payday, payback time," or something like that. These some gangs, you know. And then I would hear about all the Koreatown, I mean a lot of Korean businesses being burned, and I thought that was really sad. I think they were just taking anger out on--I think they were just caught in a wave of violence. I think if they were sane at that time, they wouldn't do those things. But I think they were basically good, but they were just caught in a wave with friends and maybe the mob.

So a lot of tragedy happened. A lot of businesses burned, and what really saddened me was when stores--I saw the signs on the stores "This is not Korean owned," or, "This is black owned." It's like, wow. This really racial issue. And then after that a few people got killed, and some Korean American got killed, and then I do remember the time when Rodney King came on the tube and said, "People, could we just get along?" I remember watching that.

So I realized then--also, there were some Korean American businesses that were protected by blacks because their owners were good to them, to the neighborhood. So I'm thinking, there's faults on both sides. There's greater fault for black or gangs going through the mob scene, destroying all these properties. That was bad. That was wrong, clearly the wrong thing. But on the other hand, I thought about, had the Koreans invested more into their community, in terms of helping, some freebies, and maybe donating to the community or church rather than just make money, just--

Yes, and take it out.

--go to the suburban and just live in a good house, and had they done that, I don't think they would have suffered this much, and that was a unfortunate thing. So that was a wake-up call for lots of Korean American businesses. When you come into their neighborhood, you do business, you treat them like kings and queens, and if you really love the customers, respect them--you know, my brother and his wife does a beauty shop business in the black neighborhood. Sure there are lots of good customers, but there are some really bad ones. They would just come and destroy, steal. My brother one time got beat up on his face so bad. There are some bad elements, and I think it's because of that a lot of Koreans tend to kind of shy away, to be more protected rather than open up and give.

So it's a real tricky thing. It's really hard to have clear answer and a clear solution. But the bottom line is that it was a wake-up call for Korean Americans that making money isn't just for us or for them. It was more for community effort. Inasmuch as you've got something, you need to give back to the community. So I hope a lot of businesses are doing that.

How much do you think it changed? Or how did it affect the community after that, from your perception?

I think there's been some changes, but maybe in many respects not much has changed. I think it really depends on the personality of the people doing the business. So if you have the community in mind, and that's what, if I was in a business seminar giving a lecture, I would recommend. Consider your community where you are, and invest yourself not only on your store, but in the community as well, and you will get even higher profit because of that.

So the 1992 L.A. riot, I didn't have any personal involvement or getting involved, because I was way out in the west, living in Marina del Rey, working in El Segundo. I was more of a bystander.

And I think like every unfortunate event, as unfortunate as situations those experiences, on the other hand, it opened up a lot of positive steps, and I was encouraged to see a lot of Korean leaders and black American leaders sit down and Korean churches getting together with the black churches, having a common worship of understanding. To me, I understood the black community because I grew up with those children, and I had a little brother who was black, and I could understand their pain. But still, it doesn't justify all the violences that had to go. So I just hope that in the future that there be continuous dialogue, that there would be a lot of exchange of cultures maybe, back and forth, a sharing of events maybe with Korean churches and black American churches and come to a better understanding.

One thing that, since you mentioned L.A. riot, I do want to say something to--I wish I could tell something to black Americans, that I wish they would do away with victim mentality. I think that's what's really suppressing their progressiveness. As long as they have victim mentality, blaming everything on whites, their progress in American society will be slower, I think. So they need to kind of--you know, there are a lot of immigrants who had even less opportunity than they have. They came, they worked hard, and they got successful. So I wish--I hope to see more African Americans who are progressive and not think, dwell too much on that they're victims of a white community, even though that is true, that they're--it's not that I'm denying it. It's just that you can't live in that. You've got to say, "So what? This is a new world. I'm going to change. Despite those difficulties, I'm going to make something out of myself." So the best way to shame other race is to be the best you can be. Then they have nothing to say against you.

That's why I really dislike two reverends, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I don't think they should be even called reverends. All they preach is division between whites and black. It's just very unfortunate.

Certainly the Korean community in L.A. since the riots has, if nothing else, grown and grown more sort of impressive and opulent, a lot of economic growth in Koreatown. What is your take on how Koreatown has developed, and where do you think it might be headed?

The unfortunate thing about Koreans, and Koreans even say to themselves, is that, well, this is what I would usually hear in Korea, while living in Korea, they compare Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, and they say Chinese are very shrewd businessmen, and Japanese, they're very united in certain cause. For Koreans, this is Koreans saying on Koreans, they would say Koreans are really good individually. When they work, when they compete individually, they can probably beat a lot of people, most people, business, economic. But they don't have unity. They don't work too well together, and so their unity, because of that lack of unity, they don't have a common strength. I heard that so many times.

So when you hear about Chinatown, you actually go to Chinatown, you can really feel Chinatown is there, because there's a shared community of pavilions, stores, that really look like they came together and built Chinatown. When you go to Little Tokyo, there's a Little Tokyo landmark. But there's nothing like that in Koreatown. That's the--so Koreatown now has two big shopping malls, but there's nothing that you could say and pinpoint, say, "This is the middle of Koreatown. And if any event happens, this is where it happens." And I'm just sorry that for Koreatown, Korean community, there's no such place like that. So I think there's been some efforts in the past to bring Koreatown in more line with a unified image like that of Chinese and Japanese, but I don't think they've succeeded, and I think they still have a ways to go.

One of the things I think that really characterizes the Korean immigrant community, if they're going to compare themselves to, say, the Chinese or the Japanese, is the vast number of Christians. How much do you think the shared religion might play a role in uniting the community at some point? Bearing in mind that the churches, too, are rather famous for splintering off and sort of multiplying.

Yes, right. Well, those things are good in some ways, bad in some other ways. Good because they're splintering off to either serve as another church elsewhere, two different places, but bad in a sense that they're supposed to be united and they can't work together. That's a shame. The Korean church plays a very important role. A lot of the events announcement comes through Korean churches, so if there's any big force in the Korean American community, it's got to be the Korean American churches, because they do have a network of pastors of churches, so if there's some big event, I am sure that Korean churches would play a big role in calling people, uniting, and come to the need of, say, what's needed in L.A.

So I think some of the things that they have done was the voter registration. If there is like a Korean American candidate for council or some board of supervisor or school board, they tend to kind of come to their aid and have a--usually those events happen in church, not at a school, but usually fundraising, things like that happen in churches. Yes, so church would play a really important role.

But Korean American community really needs a strong leadership, somebody who can be a strong leadership and really transform the Korean American community, that will unify the entire community and have a place of their own where they can call, "This is the heart of Koreatown." And I'm still waiting for that day.

How much do you think this picture could be changing as the generations move forward and as the younger generation becomes certainly more American, possibly more distanced from their culture and from their language, particularly as--and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that still the majority of the Korean ministry is in the Korean language.

Yes.

How do you see that developing?

I think the younger generation is moving away from Korean community. They're being more integrated into the white community. That's one of the reasons why so many Korean American youth, when they would follow their parents to church in their younger years, when they graduate from college, they don't even go to church, not even white church. About 90 percent, I hear. That's unfortunate.

Really. Wow.

So that's partly because their Korean American parents, it's their mistake, really. They haven't really invested time and energy into spiritual condition of their children, and that's one of the reasons why I stress very heavily to my children having their Christian heritage. A lot of church-going Korean Americans are going to church for social reasons rather than spiritual reasons, and because of that, they may have some knowledge of spiritual aspects. They may go to church for years and years, but they don't really know what true gospel is about. That's the unfortunate thing, and that truth is not passed down to younger generation. They don't see that. They don't see that in the lives or examples of their parents. So, unfortunate to say it, but a lot of the younger generation of Korean Americans are moving away from the mainstream what you call Korean American community.

I'm headed straight into talking about your own family now. First of all--

We forgot to talk about MPAK.

We're getting there.

Okay.

You mentioned your wife last time, but we didn't get her name for the record.

Oh, her name is Jody Morrison, J-o-d-y.

And you had children together, and you've adopted a child as well.

Right.

Tell us about your children and bring us up to date, how old they are now, what their names are, and what they're doing.

Okay. My oldest daughter is twelve. Her name is Helen [Morrison], and she just graduated from elementary school, going into seventh grade, and I was very proud to be at her graduation, because she represented her class, gave a graduation speech, so that was a very high honor for her. I was very proud. And I have a son who is also twelve. Him, we adopted. So between him and Helen is only like two months difference. Yes, so his name is Joseph [Morrison]. And our third child is Kay [Morrison]. She is ten years old, very intelligent, very smart. And my fourth child, of course, what I call "oops" baby, because she came unexpectedly, and she really puts a lot of joy in my heart. She is very, very cute, just love every moment that I spend with her. She's just a pleasure and blessing.

What's her name?

She's four years old, and her name is Jane [Morrison].

All right. We talked just a moment ago, a little bit about your passing on the spiritual teaching to your children. What about their culture and language? How do you approach raising a young Korean American generation of children here in the L.A. area?

I think maybe due to my past experience of having lived in a Caucasian family, I don't have too much expectation in terms of my children needing to stay with Korean culture, or to keep their language in Korean. Even though they speak English a lot better, they speak some limited Korean. I would want them to marry a very good--my daughters to marry good Christian Korean American husbands and live happily, and my son to marry a great Christian Korean woman. That would be great. But I'm open to them marrying Caucasians or even different races, even African American if they want to. I just want them to be happy, whoever they wind up with.

Did I answer the question? What was the question?

Yes, you did. It's just how much of an emphasis or non-emphasis you place on continuing the Korean culture and language in your own family.

Yes, we do send them to Korean-language school on Saturdays. They have it here. And we do talk to them sometimes in Korean, but they always reply back to you in English.

Right. That's typical.

But what I hope to do is when they grow a little older, especially my boy Joseph, I would like for him to visit his orphanage when he gets to be about around sixteen or seventeen and do some volunteer work during a summertime, help out with the children, play with children, and then in so doing that he will discover himself. And I would be more than happy to--money would be no limit to do that. So I'm just waiting for the day when that happens. And other children, maybe I'll send them to Korean-language, Korean-culture programs that they have for Korean American youth in college campuses. These are like a month-long thing. They live in dormitories. So maybe I'll do that. Maybe they'll learn some cultures and languages that way.

So I think for them to keep Korean heritage is important, but maybe it's because of my upbringing, my background or my past experience, I don't emphasize it as strongly as most Korean Americans.

Right. Well, your name is Steve Morrison after all. You talked last time about starting the Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea, MPAK, and you started to give an indication as to the kind of work that MPAK does and the impact that it's starting to have on the adoption situation in South Korea. If you would, I'd like you to just sort of fill in the blanks a little bit and just describe, from the time that you formed it up until now--and you mentioned, for example, what your function is in South Korea, the office that you have there, the way you're working there--how you actually took this inspiration that you had and transformed it into something concrete, and what form that took, and just essentially kind of a description of what MPAK is and what it's presently doing, maybe a little of its history.

Okay. MPAK stands for Mission to Promote Adoption in Korea. Acronym is M-P-A-K, and we do have a website, mpak.com, in English. MPAK's mission is to advocate the needs of homeless children in Korea and to bring about positive changes in Korean adoption culture, both in Korea as well as in the Korean American community, and to help Koreans overcome fear in adoption, because this strong social stigma they have built up over the years, to help them to remove those social stigma and to overcome fear in adoption, and also to promote transparent adoption rather than secret adoption, which has been going on for many, many years.

So out of that, part of the inspiration behind that is, you know, I told you about Mr. Harry Holt and his legacy, his work on homeless children. As a boy six years old to fourteen years old, watching him--of course, he died not too long after when I was eight or nine years old, he died, so I didn't get to spend too much time with him. But still, after the fact, because I was still in the orphanage that he created, he established, that I was still being benefited by his work and the memory of him. He's the one who really implanted in my heart that it is important to look after somebody who is in need of help. Now, he's the one who showed me by example, and especially when I was a benefactor of that example.

And when I came over to United States, having met my parents, they became my inspiration, and I saw how wonderful adoption was. Remember, I told you when I was a teenager, I had a dream that someday I would grow up and have a family just like them, the Morrison family, and adopt a child, so all that dream just came true. But on the way to that dream, I had an opportunity to serve in the board of directors for sixteen years with Bertha Holt, the foundation [Holt International] that Harry Holt founded, and while I was on the board of directors for sixteen years, I learned so much about adoption.

And at that time, in 1988 there was an Olympics, and I told you about that story last time, and that's when I really began to seriously think about, how can I change this aspect? This aspect being Koreans not adopting their own children, in such way that so many of them would have to be adopted by foreigners. So I'm thinking although it's good that Americans adopt many of them, and I was always grateful because I've seen it, I've experienced it, but then I got to thinking, but how long must this go on? Koreans need to step up and take care of their own children. So all those things thus came into my mind, and that's when I decided that I need to promote adoption in the Korean American community.

I wasn't 100 percent sure how I was going to do it, and it wasn't until when I visited Korea one winter that all of a sudden it dawned on me. Domestic adoption in Korea, or adoption in culture in Korea, did not improve because of one thing. That was because of social stigma, because of secrecy in adoption. So secrecy in adoption you can understand. A woman without children kind of look like they feel embarrassed, so they hide. They even fake their pregnancy. And they have stigma against homeless children or orphans, kids with orphan labels or adoption labels. So a lot of parents are kind of shameful of those, and so they hide, and that's why they don't open up their adoption. And what happened was over the years that has become so completely woven into their thinking that adoption was something wrong, something to be afraid of, something to be shameful.

That's when I got to thinking that as long as they hold that view, domestic adoption in Korea will not improve. To break that, I have to promote transparent adoption. So I worked with a few families, a handful of families who are willing to open up their adoption, and then, thankfully, the good lord sent us a lot of media attention, and we had this family go on the TV, this family go on a documentary, I went on several times, and all of a sudden people are getting more and more interested in our organization, and it began to grow and grow and grow, and more children started finding homes. And people, they were looking for model families. They never had one until we came along.

So that was in 1999, when I first established MPAK in Korea. I established it in the United States first. Then I took it over to Korea, and I had really a good leadership there that I met. She herself was an adoptive mother, and her and her husband really, really worked very hard, and they shared my vision. I shared with them my vision, and we planned like an annual conference to promote domestic adoption in Korea. So for ten years--this is going to be the tenth year, so I'm going out in November to participate in the tenth-year anniversary, and so we've been doing it. So it started out like at 400 or 450 at first conference, and then when we had the biggest one, it was 1200 people. It's just a big event.

And even Korean government, when I first approached them to apply for a nonprofit organization, they kind of shunned us. It was so easy in America to set up here, so I got that IRS 503 tax nonprofit status, but I couldn't get that in Korea. So my MPAK Korean president kept going to the Ministry of Health and Welfare to get permission. They would shun us. And it wasn't until our organization kept growing, and we had now spread throughout the regions in South Korea, started out with four different regions, that grew to ten, now that grew to twenty-four regions now. Now, Seoul is such a big metropolis we subdivided, so they meet together, families meet together every month or bi-monthly, and then they share their experiences. And then once a year in this big conference in November, we come all together and we have a lot of students from academia, a lot of volunteers, a lot of church folks, a lot of government folks, and it's just we are given credit for changing the adoption culture in Korea. So we have come a long way. And you ask anybody in Korea right now what adoption culture was ten years ago and what it is today, every single one will tell you it has improved so much, dramatically, and we're being given credit for that. We're so honored. So much so, in 2004, the first lady of Korea [Kwon Yang-sook] at the Blue House, she invited us MPAK families, two hundred of us, to the Blue House recognition lunch.

Wow.

So I got to sit at the same table with the first lady, and I can still remember when I parted her, she held my hand tightly, "Thank you. Thank you so much. If you need anything, don't hesitate to contact," and I really, really appreciated that. In the history of Korean government, politics, that kind of gathering was the historic first, and we were part of that, and I was so grateful. And we were so instrumental in helping Korea to bring and establish National Adoption Day now, May eleventh. So we were a big part of it. So we worked with adoption agency, and we got all together and worked together.

So I go there every year on May and November, and it was a real thrill to see--when I first started this organization, when I went to Korea I visited an adoption agency, a big one, and I kind of asked them, "What is the percentage of people who adopt transparently?" And he said, "Probably less than 1 percent." And then he's the one who kind of tried to discourage me starting this organization, saying, "Oh, that'd never happen. Oh, transparent adoption, no, that cannot happen. You know, it may be fifty years." And I kind of said, "You watch." [laughs] So adoption agency, that even shunned. Only one [unclear] adoption agencies that really bought into it, that supported us, so it was very interesting. So 1 percent, less than 1 percent of people were adopting transparently. You know what it is today? Close to 50 percent choosing to adopt transparently. We've come a long way.

You know, people, children don't get adopted because parents were afraid, and because we shared our family stories, through the meetings and through the events, through picnics, through camps for children as well as families, through education--a lot of our parents now go around to different schools, elementary schools, high school, college campuses, lecturing on adoption. We're invited to come and lecture. They call it [inaudible] meaning like class to overcome prejudice or social stigma. So we're invited to that, and we teach them about adoption and really try to teach them that adoption is good. Adoption is a beautiful thing. It's nothing to be ashamed of. And, of course, there are challenges that come with it, but then that's normal. Other families have that same thing. Teenagers, adolescence problems, we all have that, so we're really not so different. Adoptive families are not so different from other families.

So that kind of message is kind of just through lots of mass media. Just over the past ten years, our office has been inundated with calls and request after request after request by major networks, major newspapers, radio stations, magazines, just countless, and those things has really been instrumental in promoting adoption. And not to brag. In 2007 during the National Adoption Day, Korean government then president [Roh Moo-hyun] decided to honor me during the National Adoption Day as the recipient of the Civilian National Medal of Honor.

Wow.

Yes. And that was very special, that they would recognize me because of that. And then I got also honored by current president Lee Myung-bak, who was then a Seoul mayor, mayor of Seoul. He honored me with the Seoul Citizenship Award, so that was very special. So I have a picture of him and me in my office. [laughs] So I've come a long way.

I didn't expect to see results happen so quickly, but then it came so quickly even I'm--my wife was surprised. My wife Jody, when I first shared with her how I wished to change Korean culture, adoption culture, she said--she's very--she tried not to discourage me at all. [laughs] But she said when I first said that to her, she said in her mind, in her heart, "That's like throwing an egg into a boulder." Well, I can say in all honesty, after ten years with God's help, that egg broke open the boulder, and we're there and thriving strongly. And even Korean government in 2004 finally relented, gave us nonprofit status, yes, after having seen what we are doing. And a couple of years later, they decide to fund us, saying that, "You are doing what we were supposed to do."

Interesting.

It's like, "What we were supposed to do. And thank you for doing it." And so I remember going to the Ministry, and they were thanking me. "You are doing something that Korean government should be doing." So they were funding us, and we're using that to educate, to hold conferences, to conduct camps, to teach classes. It's just a marvelous, marvelous opportunity that has come to us, and we're so grateful. And now ,I can honestly say through our organization, we touched the lives of several thousand homeless children and helped them to get adopted in Korea, so I feel really, really blessed to have been a part of this, and especially that God has chosen me to start this organization, and it would not have happened had I not met Harry Holt, had I not met my parents, or had I not been homeless early years and grow up in an orphanage. So I guess you might say that I'm one of those cases where tragedy can be really turned into good for others.

For sure. You're in a very uniquely perfect position to be doing what you're doing.

Yes.

How would you compare the level of success or what the reception has been like toward adoption in South Korea versus with the Korean American community here?

I notice that at first you would think that Korean Americans would be less prejudiced or would be less a social stigma. Maybe in some cases they do, but in general, I notice that they're exactly the same as people living in Korea. I couldn't see any difference. They still have the same prejudice against adoptees or people with orphan background. Any people who lived over there, they have that kind of prejudices. Every now and then I meet somebody who's really open minded, but every now and then I meet people in Korea who are really open minded, so I saw that there really wasn't too much difference in the way they thought about orphans or adoption. Yes, that was surprising.

Interesting.

Maybe I haven't met the younger generation too much. Maybe they'll be different.

Sometimes you hear about particularly immigrants who have been here for a while, they, in a sense, kind of wind up being somewhat frozen in time. South Korea is changing very rapidly, and actually over here they're perhaps changing less rapidly. How much do you think the rapid growth and change in South Korea has played a role in the change in attitude that you're seeing?

I think rapid growth and change has really nothing to do at all with the way they view adoption. I remember in '88, during that Olympics, when they showed an image of Korea still sending children abroad, a lot of people were furious, and their main argument was this. "How can this be? Korea is no longer poor. We're an economically developed nation. Look at we're even hosting Olympics. We have arrived. Korea is not like the old Korea, so how can this thing going on?" The problem is that they were not adopting. So just because Korea has evolved over the years through economically and through technology, through culturally, it doesn't mean that their attitude is any more warmer toward homeless children. That's something that has to be awakened through promotion, sharing that with them. "Here are the needs of homeless children. This is what it can be in adoption. It's not like what you all thought about. It's different."

It's exactly the same. You hear these parents professing, "I just cannot live without [unclear], and what a blessing it is to have been a parent." I know one woman, one couple who they couldn't bear children. They adopted four children, and she continuously professed to me, like, "Oh, I'm so glad that I was a parent. Otherwise, I would have never experienced the joy in adoption." And she was professing things like that. So promoting adoption and helping them to see the true meaning of adoption has really helped, and especially through example. They became role models.

So when you see someone say, "Korea is no longer a poor country. This shouldn't go on," he doesn't know. He's far from understanding.

Interesting. Wow. Speaking now from this shore, from here in this country, here you worked very closely with the Holt organization, and the Holt people were certainly pioneers in transracial adoption. And last time you talked, you answered some of the Korean adoptees who developed a certain bitterness towards their being deprived of their own culture, having grown up in the dominant culture here in this country. Some people might look at transracial adoption and think, looking at it from the point of view of seeing the dominant culture's perhaps position of privilege, see it as being something presumptuous or at worst even arrogant. How would you respond to that point of view?

All those things are wrong. Right off the flat I'll say that. I don't think it's being presumptuous, I don't think it's because they have a superiority complex, I don't think they consider themselves better. It's unfortunate that there are a lot of adoptees who attack overseas adoption programs using those kind of illogical reasoning. Just doesn't work. The fact of the matter is that children become homeless. Whether through war, whether through poverty, whether through sexual indiscrimination or mistakes, children become homeless. They can't raise those children. They're too young. They want to go to college. They want to be accepted by the families and the society. So because of that, there are so many children who become homeless. So children need homes, and there are families over here that want them.

I say, "Let them have those children." And if they're not adoptable in Korea, they should go overseas. So at MPAK, we always advocate domestic adoption first, higher priority. And if that doesn't work, then those children should be adopted abroad. I always advocate, "When should you close the overseas adoption program in Korea?" "Only when you promote domestic adoption as much as possible, and stop it only when there are no more children to be sent abroad." That is the perfect solution, to me.

So going back to the question, I've met many parents, Caucasian parents who adopted Korean children.

You would, working for Holt, lots and lots.

Yes, and many, many of them. I've heard many, many of them, the great majority of them, actually, they thank Korea for sending those children to them, for giving them the privilege and opportunity to have raised those children, because without them, their life would be meaningless they say, so they thank. You know, Korea did them really a big favor. That's how they see themselves.

These adoptees, I don't know where they went wrong, the negative adoptees. I don't know where they went wrong. Had they stayed in Korea, they would have been in a lot worse situation. These people who complain, they got college education, some Ph.D.s, and some even have experience of teaching. It's crazy, where they get this notion. And yet there are orphans in orphanages in Korea who would die to get their privilege, get Ph.D.s like they have, you know? To get college education like that.

I just recently met an orphanage director who visited me and my friends two weeks ago, and I asked her, "What is the rate of orphans who graduate from your orphanage, go to college?" And she said only like 5 to 10 percent. And we did a survey of Korean American adoptees. About 70 percent go to college. That's incredible.

Yes, that's a big difference.

That means opportunity. If you stay in Korea, very little opportunity. So just for that alone, being adopted abroad is so much better than to live in Korea in an institution.

Sure. So what about people on this side of the shore who would say to these adoptive parents, "Why don't you just adopt people who need homes who are from here? Why adopt somebody from another part of the world, even a different race? What's up with that?" How would you answer that?

You know, I think a lot of them adopt from abroad because they see the need in the children that they see. But sometimes they're parents with no children. They just want to adopt. For some reason, adoption is complicated within the United--maybe there just aren't children available, and so they feel that--and also sometimes maybe through TV or maybe somebody saw somewhere a mother pushing a child in a cart, a girl who looked like a China doll image. Maybe that kind of image played a role, I don't know. But there are a lot of factors I think that went in, but definitely they may have some thinking about, "Hmm. We're a Caucasian family. Do we want to really adopt Asian children?" So maybe they had some wrestling with themselves and somehow they were able to get over that, and once the children came, they just fell in love with them.

So to that question, sure, there are a lot of needs in the United States, and, sure, there are opportunities, and for them I think adopting from overseas may have been at that time the only viable alternative. Here you hear about potentially children returning back to mother who may want later. Disruption. And you hear this image of child being torn from their adoptive parents, given to a--put in a van or a car. They're afraid of that. So I think a lot of people choose. In overseas adoption, that is a clear-cut case. They cannot come over here and claim. So I think a lot of them has to do with that.

Right. It's a personal choice.

Yes, it's a really personal choice.

So you have a full-time job, you have a family, you're running this organization. How do you do that? How do you do all that? You're involved in the church here.

Well, that's why the given time you have--and this is what really happens. I work all day at work. When I go home, I eat dinner. I play sometimes with the children, help them with homework. Usually they got to bed around nine or ten. I stayed up to twelve o'clock, sitting on my computer doing MPAK work. So that's my normal chore. And, of course, I travel to Korea, and I get on a phone call to Korea, talk to Korean leaders on MPAK, talk to government reps, so even last night sending e-mails back and forth, trying to help certain Korean Americans adopt.

Just recently there was a twin in Korea, twin babies, baby girls that one couple in Colorado wanted to adopt, and some for technical reasons, Korean government wouldn't grant them. So I worked with an American embassy, wrote them and e-mailed, explaining all the reasons why Korea should send these children, and this couple in Korea, mother was an adoptee, Korean adoptee. She and her sister were twins. They got adopted. So she had all the more interest in wanting to adopt these twin girls, and they adopted a boy earlier, and it so happens the same birth mother of that boy gave birth to these twins. Somehow they heard about the twins. It just--

What are the odds? Yes.

Well, I guess they went to the record and searched out this birth mother, one time gave birth to this boy went to this family, and then they matched it. So they were at first contacted whether they'd want these two twin girls. Of course they want those two girls. But then some technical reasons, they were not adoptable. So I rolled up my sleeves, went to Korea, and even the couple went with me. We went to the Ministry; they didn't grant us. Came back. Six months later I went back, kept pushing, kept meeting, kept writing letters to the vice minister, to the rep, and even sometimes going on the news media. "We have this situation." So finally, finally they approved those two twins to get adopted. It was one of my highlights.

And in my pipeline, I've got thirty-six families waiting to adopt children from Korea. These are older-aged Korean Americans. Technically, if you turn forty-four years old, you cannot adopt from Korea.

That's right.

But I have been doing a campaign for older-aged Korean Americans that Korea allow these Korean Americans to adopt, because they are allowed, older-aged Koreans, Korean nationals in Korea, to adopt up to the age of sixty. And why not allow for Korean Americans? The rationale that I use is that even though Koreans may feel embarrassed that their children go to a Caucasian family, if they find out that they go to Korean American families, they wouldn't say anything bad about it. They wouldn't be ashamed of it. So I've campaigned so hard, and I'm still in contact with the Ministry even as of two days ago, and I heard the good news that they're finally going to change the adoption law to include older-aged Korean Americans.

Really. Wow.

It's just amazing how things work out.

It really is.

So I'm so happy that I'm making a difference in the lives of so many people, and I feel so privileged and blessed.

I have just a couple more questions. I know we're going a little later than usual. But one is, there's been quite a bit more media attention on the idea of transracial adoption or inter-country adoption because of certain celebrities and their interests in adoption, shall we say. How much, if any, effect do you think that has had on the perception of that sort of adoption in the culture that you're involved in?

Well, case in point with Angelina Jolie and Madonna, I believe.

Right, and there are others, but they're certainly the most prominent.

You know, it was their choice to adopt, and it was the government of the sending country to allow that, so it's hard for me to judge about their adoption without having really talked with them personally. I'm sure they'll make loving mothers. I know they're not the mother that I would prefer to have. I would prefer to have stay-home mother like my mother was, like my wife is, but I'm sure they can be just as loving. I just hope and wish that their adoption experience will be a real big success. And I hope and pray that those children that are under their care will grow up to be normal individuals, that they'll become successful citizens of this country, and so time is the only way to tell whether it'll work or not. But it would be unfair for me to judge.

Sure. Well, I just wanted to know if you thought maybe the high profile of that has kind of started to change any minds.

But even in Korea, some celebrities have adopted.

Oh, really.

Yes, movie stars, TV personalities. There are several of them. I met a few of them, and they get great national recognition, and they make great--I think there isn't any celebrity adoptive parents in Korea who are not good parents. In all the things that I read about, hear about, it's really working out very well, and their kids are really happy and growing healthy. They're all married. I don't think they allow single adoption, single-woman adoption in Korea like they do here. Certainly Madonna and Angelina Jolie would not have the same luck in Korea as they had in other countries.

Interesting.

So I think, you know, family should be mother and father, and man and a woman. I think it's more wrong--I know you didn't ask me this question. I think it's really morally wrong to place children into homosexual couples. They're not given an opportunity to grow up in a normal family background, but kind of thrust into that environment, which is not of their choosing, and I just don't know. Media seems to portray that they're doing good, but I just hope and wish that children would adapt well to those situations, just hope maybe they'll prove me wrong. Maybe they'll turn out to be good citizens.

So celebrities adopting in Korea has really worked well, and I hope that same will work with Madonna and Jolie.

Okay. And my last question. You said at the beginning of our session today that you basically kind of let go of the question of your own identity, Korean American, American, Asian American, however you want to think of yourself, so maybe you've already answered this, but I just wanted to ask. Now, these days right now, how do you prefer to think of yourself? And how do you define yourself, or do you even define yourself in any particular way?

I am foremost American--I'm proud to say that--before I'm a Korean American, before I'm a Korean Korean or anything. I am proud to say that I'm an American, and I'm very proud to be living in this country, to call this my homeland, and I'm very, very happy that adoption has given me the opportunity to be adopted to a wonderful family and to grow up in love and grow up healthy and really enjoy all that life has to offer for me. I have a very happy family, great children, a lot of great work, good job, and great ministry with MPAK. I just am very, very grateful for the opportunity that I had in America.

You know, America is melting pot of all people, nation of nations, people of people, and it's really, really neat to live in this country in a sense that so many people from different parts of the world try their best to get into this country. Why? Because of the freedom and opportunity to be who they can be. America is like a land that people who, from all walks of life, come from all over the world, and this call this a place called America. They come to this place called America, and by coming into America and becoming citizen and being part of the community and the nation, they themselves become Americans.

America is like--it's hard to describe in words. It's like at times like this I wish I was like [President Barack] Obama. He's very articulate. That's one thing that I really respect him for that. America is like a place where people can come and claim that this is their home, their country. America is made out of people from all walks of nations, all different countries, and they like to be in a place where there's freedom and free to express, free to worship, free to be who they are, they want to be, and they saw that beauty in America, and that's attracting them to America more than anything. America is the greatest country on this earth, bar none, and I'm just very, very happy to be part of this great nation. And if America ever calls me for some service, let's say far-fetched idea, Obama calls to be one of his Cabinet members, I'll say, "America, I'm at your service." [laughs] So I would do anything for America. It's just the love of my nation.

A couple of days ago, you know, we have these early morning prayer meetings at this church, and we just had celebration of Fourth of July, and it was my turn to speak to a few congregation who attended early morning, five-thirty a.m. service. And I did some researches, and we have like a planned scripture text that we go at certain days, but I did away with it and spoke on America and early founding fathers, their faith in God, landing in Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, early settlers, of George Washington kneeling down to pray for the divine providence during the hard-fought Revolutionary War; basic Constitution of the United States, which was really Christian based, and how unfortunate it is nowadays to see like an ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], organization like ACLU trying to spearhead and remove every identity, Christian identity, the cross, the commandment, drag away from public buildings, sue for nativity scenes. It has become so crazy, so anti-God, anti-Christian, and they don't have so much prejudice against Buddhist or Muslims or Hindus or Islams. It seems like all of a sudden they have become anti-Christian wherever you turn, and I don't believe that was the intention or the desire that the founding fathers had in early days.

A lot of--I think the faith in the founding of this nation was kind of indispensable. No matter what people might say, separation of church and state, President [George] Washington even declared, "You cannot separate God and Bible from the governing in affairs of men." So if you said stuff like that nowadays, man, you would be attacked left and right by the media. So unfortunate as it is, today's condition, people think that they love America, they love all the opportunities, but I think in order for them to really truly love, they need to love how it was founded, by who it was founded, in what condition they were founded.

That's the way I try to be with my MPAK staff in Korea, and whenever I go, I try to speak to them, remind them, "Why are we doing this? Why this experiment in adoption, like experiment in democracy with the United States? For who are we doing this? We're doing this for homeless children, so they can--we're not necessarily doing it as much for parents' sake, but we're doing it for children's sake, parents second." And I try to drive home across that they need to really go back to the founding spirit of our organization, and to be empowered. And I think today's leaders need to do some of that with early American history, to really put themselves in a right perspective, how we were able to come where we are today.

And just I'm afraid that a lot of that is being lost in today's world, so I pray for America, because I love America.

What do you think the Korean American community can contribute to today's L.A., today's America?

Korean American communities are contributing a lot, especially tax monies. Now, they need to kind of get away with the cloistered clique within their own church or family or community, and kind of--and that's why I feel so fortunate to be educated young and now in a mainstream American culture, where guy next door to me in my office is Caucasian, and across me is another Caucasian lady, and across there is another Chinese, you know, Indian. So Koreans need to kind of get away from their comfort zone and try to mingle more, but I know that's easier said than done. So I'm counting on a lot of younger-generation Koreans, that there'll be some leaders who'll come around, and they'll really be a factor in helping Korean Americans to be more involved with the rest of this community.

Even a lot of Christian organizations, it's just for themselves. You know, they get empowered to do God's work. They send missionaries. In order for them to do even well and more and greater work, they need to reach into American mainstream and involve Caucasians, blacks, and Hispanics. So Koreans need to open up and share more of who they are with the rest of the community, and in so doing, they'll be able to contribute so much more.

So I'm out of questions. It's been almost two hours here. Is there anything we haven't touched on that you really want to talk about before we end this interview?

Well, Alex, it's been a nice five sessions of interview. I don't know who might listen to these tapes, but God bless them, and I'm just glad to be a part of this project that you're in, where I can share some of my life story, my perspectives. Whether they like it or not, but this is my life, my story. Thank you very much.

Well, it was my pleasure to record it, and thank you very much. And on behalf of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research, thank you for your time and for sharing all that you did.

Thank you very much. My pleasure.