The mystery of Minor’s birth place was really bugging me, so I made a few calls to the adoption agency and spoke with the Korea program director, who was extremely helpful.

I asked her to confirm the source of the information on the adoption decree, and she said it comes from the birth place named on the Korean legal documents. Our agency does not provide these to the parents, although other agencies do. She said that these documents routinely list the child’s birth place as Seoul, even if the Korean agency knows the child was born elsewhere. (We didn’t notice this with Aitch, because he actually was born in Seoul.) This is a holdover from the bad old days when placement for adoption was seen as shameful, and the child’s existence officially began the day he was turned over to the adoption agency in Korea. Apparently, many older adoptees who are just starting to dive into their personal history are surprised to learn they weren’t born in Seoul, like it says on their birth certificates.

I am not the first parent to notice this discrepancy, but she does not know of any parents who have been successful in changing the birth certificate. That would require getting revised legal documents from the Korean government, which they will not provide.

Regarding the conflict on the referral papers, she offered to confirm that Minor was born in SouthernCity, not OtherSouthernCity, which was terribly nice of her. She thought the mention of OtherSouthernCity might have been a translation error.

I’m happy to know that Minor’s record isn’t damaged forever because of some mistake I made, but I’m sorry that both the boys have inaccurate birth certificates. I may have not stated this clearly in the last post, but their birth certificates, issued by Port City, do not identify us as the boys’ adopted parents. They identify us as simply the father and mother, which is good and correct and all that, but…it is the BIRTH record, not the parenthood record. We weren’t in the picture at the time of their births; listing us as parents without acknowledgment of their other parents is withholding a big part of the story.

I thought that their birth certificates would look something like the one my parents kept in their bottom drawer when I was a child: not just the parents and the date but also the time, place, and hospital of birth, along with an adorable baby footprint. Since birth parents are generally not identified for Korean adoptions, I thought their names might be somehow redacted or anonymized. I didn’t know that birth certificates were re-generated for adopted children with the names of their adoptive parents, and I never anticipated this half-fictionalized birth certificate.

I keep thinking of that scene in Robert Cormier’s young adult book I Am the Cheese where Adam discovers his two birth certificates and figures out that his parents have changed their identities to enter the Witness Protection Program. I picture Minor finding it in a drawer and saying, wait, is this me? I thought they told me I was born in SouthernCity, not Seoul! And then the Mafia will kill Husband and me and put Minor in a mental hospital.

Sorry if I spoiled it for you, but really, you should have read it when you were 13.