TRAUMA THERAPIST

“I was taken from my homeland when I was just a toddler.”

I was born in South Korea and raised in the U.S. It wasn’t until adulthood before I began to question what had really happened to me. “You were adopted” explained it all. Growing up, I believed everything I was told and was told to believe everything I heard. After half a lifetime, I have learned that I’m among 250,000 Korean children who were taken and “exported” around the world. I continue to seek ways to reconcile the pain that comes with being put into a global child supply market. Should I be proud of being used to revitalize my country of birth after the Korean War? Or do I have the right to be outraged at the for-profit trafficking scheme run by a criminal industry?

The truth is this industry exists globally while operating locally and has produced millions of victims. As a trauma therapist and activist, I use all my knowledge and experience to educate other survivors and assist them through their restoration process. I’ve started public awareness campaigns and provide trainings for mental health professionals and human rights advocates. These are key elements for community-wide recovery from this industry. Writing and speaking about the numerous impacts of human trafficking, slavery, and abuse has not only been therapuetic for me, but informative to the communities I serve. Through The Truth Guide, I collaborate with experts and organizations to offer valuable resources for survivors, their loved ones, and the global society at large. I speak from a deeply personal place with the loss of Lark, Tam, and Thaddeus whom I grew up with and shared a common spirit of survivorship. You can read my tributes to them on my social media platforms.

Today, I speak truth to power as the industry continues to grow its profits and expand into new markets. It must be fully criminalized as human trafficking and modern slavery to ensure a future that is free from an industry seeking to exploit the entire human race by turning everyone into disposable commodities.