Many Lives Intertwined: A Memoir

ISBN: 0963847295

Author: Han, Hyun Sook

Condition: Used

All those children crying, though, I could not look into their eyes and acknowledge such sorrow. Instead, I whispered to them: "I will come back and help you. Somehow, I will find a way to help you."

Hyun Sook Han was born in Korea during a time when the Japanese occupied her country, prior to World War II. She was still only a child when the Korean War broke out and she had to flee Seoul with her family, hurrying south on foot with her baby sister on her back. In the horror of that experience, passing thousands of abandoned and dead children, she made a promise that she would come back to them as soon as she could. Somehow, she would find a way to help.

In the chaos and poverty of post-war Korea, Hyun Sook Han started on her path to fulfill that promise. She resisted family pressure to become a lawyer and politician, and instead began her life-long career as a social worker, with the welfare of children as her highest priority.

In Many Lives Intertwined, Hyun Sook Han related the very distinct lives she has led, and how they've all come together in one amazing whole. Daughter, student, refugee, wife, emigrant, social worker, mother, Korean, American, and adoption pioneer. Those who know only one of her lives will be fascinated to read about the others. Anyone interested in Korea or international adoption will find her story engrossing.

Her story moves from her happy childhood with loving parents, to the brutality and turmoil of the Korean War and its aftermath. She tells of her school days, her college career, and how she met and married the man with whom she would spend her life. Mrs. Han relates not only the difficult birth of her daughter, but how she and her husband openly adopted a son at a time when families tried to keep adoptions secret. We also get wonderful insights into joys and sorrows of leaving one's native country for a new one, as she and her family settled into an American way of life.

Her stellar social work career began in 1964, after graduation in 1962 from Ewha University, Korea's renowned private women's university. Mrs. Han worked for 11 years in Korea's newly-forming child welfare field to support children and birth parents who needed to consider adoption.

In 1975, Mrs. Han joined the Children's Home of Minnesota staff, and teamed with other CHSM staff to expand Korean adoption in Minnesota and provide a wealth of service experiences for families with children of Korean descent. Mrs. Han was the bridge that allowed CHSM to create direct working relationships with Korean child welfare agencies, the Korean government, and other agencies.

But more than anything else, Mrs. Han is beloved for all the families she helped make, finding well over a thousand families who wanted children, and matching them to children who needed a loving family. She has given here entire energy, time, and effort for children who need homes, for 40 years of her life, and has touched each of those hearts.