When Kate Pitsch was a kindergartner, she wondered why she looked different from her parents. Then she began to realize what her parents had been trying to tell her.

Pitsch, an international relations senior, was born in Seoul, South Korea, and adopted by her American parents when she was 3 months old.

Her parents didn't hide her roots from her. Instead, they had always tried to bring her origin to the forefront. But the little girl couldn't understand what it meant until she was exposed to her friends and their families.

"I never really understood it until I saw that other kids look like their parents," she said. "For me, growing up with them (her peers) was really difficult because I always thought that I was special."

The confusion over her identity continued through her middle school years, sometimes causing her to be angry and frustrated.

"For a long time, I was really upset at my birth parents," she said. "I didn't understand why I was given away."

Although as a child Pitsch felt alone among her peers, the circumstances that brought her to the United States are not uncommon for Korean adoptees. There are about 150,000 Korean adoptees in the United States, according to research by anthropology doctoral student Tae-Sun Kim.

Kim, who has been working on a dissertation for two years, said the first phase of Korean adoption into the United States occurred during the 1950s, after the Korean War ended.

The war produced many war orphans, and bi-racial children were born out of wedlock from U.S. soldiers and Korean women. Many of the children were adopted by families in the United States because South Korea's economy was devastated by the war and the population was too poor to accept the newborns during the period, Kim said.

The second phase occurred during the 1980s, Kim said, when South Korea was going through rapid industrialization and westernization. Korean children adopted during this period now make up the college-aged population.

Kim said as the Korean society was going through a transition from an agricultural society to an industrialized society, having children became so costly that poor single parents couldn't afford to raise them.

"Before industrialization, Korea was an agricultural society, and to have many kids was beneficial to people and the society," she said.

When single parents were socially discriminated from getting welfare and jobs, international adoption introduced after the Korean War became an attractive option for single parents in South Korea, Kim said.

As a result, Korean adoption became a business throughout the 1980s, she said. She added that it became such an epidemic that the Korean government declared it would stop the practice in 1988 to improve its national image.

But she said adoption still continues.

"Go to the Detroit airport," Kim said. "You'll still see American parents waiting for their Korean babies."

Experts commonly cite a lack of a social welfare system and social stigma attached to adopted children in South Korea as reasons why Korean adoption hasn't stopped.

But Kim said Korean families often put their children up for adoption to give them a higher quality of life in the United States as well.

"They were told, 'You can't provide these things to them. You are doing the most responsible thing for your child,'" she said. "They wanted to give the best opportunity to them. Unfortunately, international adoption is the only choice for them now."

Pitsch said curiosity and frustration guided her to form a network of other Korean adoptees looking to learn more about their heritage.

"I wanted to make things better," she said.

Pitsch said she wanted to make more resources available for younger Korean adoptees like her two Korean brothers who also were adopted from different birth parents.

"Giving them the resources I didn't have when I was growing up is important," she said.

Now Pitsch is the co-president of Student Korean Adoptees Association on campus. The organization was founded in the spring 2003 by Pitsch and three other Korean adoptees at MSU.

Pitsch said her organization brings together people interested in issues involving Korean adoption.

"We try to represent both cultures because we think Korean culture is ours as much as American culture is ours," Pitsch said.

Korean adoptees and experts in the field say Pitsch's experience of having an identity crisis and overcoming it at a later age is not unusual among Korean adoptees, but it's hard to generalize their experience into one pattern.

Another Korean adoptee Rachel Jones, Michigan coordinator for the young adult program for the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network in California, said Korean adoptees, including herself, generally have identity issues at some point in their lives because of their looks.

"I wasn't white enough, but I wasn't Korean, either," said Jones, an American studies sophomore at the University of Michigan. "Every adoptee goes through that kind of problem."

Like Pitsch, Jones tried to learn more about South Korea and its culture through on-campus organizations and classes as a way to find who she is.

But she said it's still hard to completely get past the problem.

"I don't think it's something that'll just evaporate," she said.

As a way to learn more about their origins, many Koreans visit their birth country. But the trip is not always pleasant to everyone. To some, it adds to their frustration and fury about the society.

Kinesiology junior Amandajo Sanders called her trip to South Korea this past summer her "personal hell."

"I would never recommend any adoptee to go back to Korea at the moment because they are not ready to accept us back," she said.

Sanders added that she saw too many negative aspects of the Korean society, which she could easily speculate were reasons why many Korean babies were sent to the United States.

Pitsch has heard about both positive and negative aspects of South Korea, and still plans to visit the country with her brothers. She also hopes to find her birth parents.

"Part of meeting my birth parents would be just to tell them 'thank you' for giving me these opportunities, not being selfish, not keeping a baby they couldn't support, doing what was in the interest of the child," she said.

Pitsch sheds a positive light on her life in the United States.

"The person that I am now is the product of my parents and how they raised me," she said. "I'm my parents' child. I only have praise and thanks for my parents for all they've done for me and all of the opportunities.

"Family is about love, not about blood. Family is about history, love, a relationship you create with people."

Jun Yang is a State News intern. He can be reached at yangjuns@msu.edu.