U.S. Chronicle; The Littlest Immigrants

In the next few moments, the Kelly's lives will change forever. But think of it from the child's point of view, 11-year-old Noah Wu saying, will walk down a short gangway and become 11-year-old Danny Kelly. In a transfer process, taking perhaps 30 seconds, his entire life will change before his eyes. It is an exciting and confusing and scary moment. Every year, some 5,000 children come to the United States to start their young lives all

over again. With new names, new mothers and fathers, new brothers and sisters, new words to learn and say, new customs to learn and follow. They come from countries like India, Colombia and Costa Rica, but mostly from South Korea. Korea, for its own special reasons, has many orphans that cannot be placed with Korean families as adopted children. It is a circumstance that is just fine for a growing number of American couples who for special reasons here are unable to find American children to adopt. So working usually through church agencies, the two wants are met. The foreign youngsters want of a home and a family, the American couples want of a child. The children are placed all over the United States, but the largest percentage go to homes in Minnesota. Homes like that of the Kelly family and suburban Minneapolis, a Catholic priest in South Korea, was the intermediary between the Kelly's and their new 11-year-old son. Their story is told now by Bill Handley of KTCHV St. Paul Minneapolis. A busy airport, a noisy concourse, and a couple waits to bring a son they've never met

home to a house he's never seen. In the next 30 minutes, the lives of Jack and Barb Kelly and their five children will have changed dramatically. For an 11-year-old Korean boy named No Who Sang, life will have been turned absolutely upside down. The Kelly's live in suburban Minneapolis. Jack is a stockbroker, Barb is a homemaker, and they have five children. Jim 20, Mary K. 17, Jane 14, Paul 15, and an older son, Stephen, away at college. When their youngest son arrives, he will be called Danny. The father died when Danny was a baby. The mother tried to raise him and support him, and then remarried, I think, like three or four years ago, and it just did not work out. This death father didn't accept him. We've both worked hard to get what we have from a material way and so on, and our kids

have been healthy. We've been just lucky in so many different ways, and we just want to give a little bit back, and this is our way of doing it. But along with the Kelly's positive feelings about the adaption, there were also some fears. I think the only one right after the bat that said you didn't want to do it was Paul. It's just, you know, maybe a different race, or, you know, a Korean, or maybe my friends would make fun of them, or things like that might happen. Did you feel they were going to make fun of Danny, or did you feel somebody might make fun of you? Both. You know, like, you're adopting a Korean, you know, it's just, and then they'd be making fun of him, you know, a chanker, you know, things like that. Well, I'm excited and anxious, but I'm scared too. I'm scared.

I'm scared of just of the fact that he's coming and what it's going to be like, and will I do a good job? In the next few moments, the Kelly's lives will change forever. But think of it from the child's point of view. 11-year-old No Wu Sang will walk down a short gangway and become 11-year-old Danny Kelly. In a transfer process, taking perhaps 30 seconds, his entire life will change before his eyes. It is an exciting and confusing and scary moment. The priest in whose home in Korea, Danny, has lived since March, is Father Ben's

waber, he accompanied Danny on the flight to Minnesota, and during the trip, what was he talking about? I'm happy to be here, I love you, glad to meet you, and I think you did very well. I'm happy to have you with us. Jimmy, did you say hello?

This is Jimmy. Jimmy? You know it's him? It's him. The people are new, the relationships uncertain, and the language unknown. Little wonder then that Danny Kelly looks so scared, in a very short time, he is going to have to come a very long way. From here in the heart of South Korea, it's easier to understand the fear that you see in the eyes of Danny Kelly and children like him. Every one of them, bring with them the imprint of a culture which is both literally and figuratively, worlds apart from anything they're likely to see in the United States. The life of a child in Korea is a good life.

Discipline is usually stricter than in the U.S., but families are generally close and caring. For a thousand years, a premium has been placed on the bond between blood relatives. But it's just that facet of Korean society, the strict loyalty to blood relatives, that makes life for orphans here so uncertain. Orphanage. It's a word and an institution which have all but disappeared in the U.S. But here in Korea, orphanages like this one still flourish. This is the Kyungdong babies home in Suwon, South Korea, 30 miles south of Seoul. When we visited late last April, there were 61 children ages 1 to 6 awaiting placement. Most would go to homes in the United States and Europe. Many of these children were born out of wedlock, in a society which places a premium on the bloodline of the father. And it is usually next to impossible for the mother to keep the child. Adoption remains a foreign concept to most Korean families, so the people of Suwon City

send their children here to wait. Mrs. Wee-soon-chung and her husband lost both of their children to chickenpox during the Korean War. For 30 years, they have run the Kyungdong babies home. Is this a happy place for kids, does she think? Well, she tries her best to make this a happy place for children. But here they can't really get all the love that they need whereas the child in a family receives much love from parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers. So she thinks that it's best for the children to be placed with a family as soon as possible. Though orphanage life in Korea is often hard on children, the orphans here in Suwon

at least appear happy and normal. Healthcare is maintained through the presence of a full-time nurse and by regular visits from a doctor from Suwon City. Korea is a largely Christian nation, so meals here are preceded by an orderly, if not somber prayer. Through little things, you can begin to see that these children are being ready for a life very different from the one here in Suwon. Though the food is Korean, the utensils are Western. And in other small ways, the caretakers or bombs prepare the children for the shock that awaits many of them. A shock that begins as soon as the child has been matched with a waiting family in the United States. She prepares the children, the bombs prepare the children with the letters and pictures that the adopted families send, the child, the names of the family, the sisters and brothers,

they're going to sleep, the cars, the adopted families usually send pictures, and the bombs teach them to have to greet and to behave. So she thinks they're very well prepared. For this little girl, there is but one week left with her friends at Kim Dong-won H. Next week, she goes to take up her new life on a farm in Michigan. She says how much they wanted a girl, and they're very happy that this girl has been found for them, and they're so excited, they named her Allison, and here's a picture of the plane, the plane, so she would know which airplane she's going to ride in when she goes

lives for a family, so she won't be afraid. Most children think that America is just one step above heaven, it's really a great place to go to, and even the name, me, is beautiful country. Because most kids, sometime in their life, want to go to America anyway. She wears about a little older children, or a big post to different people, different customs, different lifestyles, different foods, the difficulties that their health, until they adjust to their lives over there, she worries about the incision period. As with almost all older foreign children, that transition period for Danny Kelly would

last for months, and probably years, but it began in the early hours of his first night at home. So you're going to go to school on Monday? Monday or Tuesday? Gang, I say, I got Chi, Nolara. I play with the puppy. Play with the puppy. The immediate first fear that I always hear is a language. Everybody is so afraid that they're not going to be able to communicate with a child. That turns out to be the smallest of the problems once a child arrives. The cultural problems turn out to be the bigger ones. OK, water, chin-che, chin-de, chin-de, all water, bet. OK, Paul, you and Danny can lay down. Lay down. Lay down. More. More. Isn't that fun? No, it says on a shirt there. No.

What does the shirt say? Yeah, but no star. No. What does it say? That's an American word. No stars. No stars. No stars. No. And Korea. No. It's in the middle. Yeah. It's a pretty shirt. Beautiful shirt. I don't understand. What is this? Bird. Bird. Bird. Yeah, you're going to be good out, too. I can talk right now. And you don't have to talk loud. His day has been flooded with new experiences to both frightened and amaze even the toughest 11-year-old. Though we can't express it, Danny must be feeling tired and scared and very lost. We're tired, don't we? We're going to sleep. We're going to go to the very bottom of the bed. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go.

To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. To go. What's this? What's this? What's this? You don't have to put this over. Are these pajamas to sleep in? To sleep? To sleep? Sleep? Yeah. Okay. We'll put these on, is this? Where's my book? Now to find out, is that—is this underwear? That's heavy. Is it for bed? Is it for bed? Is it for bed? Or this? Okay. Here, that says,

For bed? Or will you take it off that means? I don't think that means that. I think you should just sleep in this tonight. We'll save this for tomorrow at least pajamas. Those look like pajamas that you have on to me. Okay. You want to kneel down and say your prayers? Kneel down. Say your prayers. Kneel down. I don't know which prayer you meant. Very good. Okay. I'll put this here. You want the pillow? Yes. You like that? Okay.

Is it warm? Yes. It's comfortable honey. Okay. Good night. I love you. With a straight edge, this vertex, with this intersection. Have you got it done? Three days after Danny Kelly arrived in the United States, he was in Meadowbrook Elementary School, sixth grade. Right, that's a shirt and you see this is a shirt that you have right here. Sure. What would this be? Bands, right? Bands, you have bands? Right here. Yeah, brand new and Levi's. There is part time tutoring for Danny and the other children for whom English will be a second language. But for the major part of every day, he will be in a regular class with regular kids. He is in for a real struggle. But one which thousands of other Korean children before him have also faced. When I arrived at the Minneapolis airport,

there was a black lady greeting me and I thought, oh wow, she's really weird. I mean, she can't even talk Korean. She can't even talk, right? I do absolutely nothing about America. I thought America was part of Korea. Actually, I thought Korea wasn't the only country in the world. It seems so big then. Jung-ah Peters has traveled the same path which now awaits Danny Kelly. Seven years ago, she left what she remembers as being a very poor section of Seoul, South Korea, and arrived in Minnesota. I feel thin and right now. But at first, that was just a part. That was very shy. And girls helped me a lot to get along, to classes, to classes. And play with me in recess time. But I think the boys were a little off. And they were teasing. They were out of teasing. Did they call you name? Yes. They did call me names, not really mean ones. But the ones that would make you understand that you are different and feel that you are different than not like the others.

A chink. They would call me chink. And they would call me pizza face. Were you interested in making a good impression? I figured that if I didn't get along with American family, I felt that they would send me away or get another child. And I felt that I should, I was really intent on pleasing my American parents. While Jung-ah Peter's knows that the road can be rough for kids like Danny Kelly, so do the parents of foreign-born children. Sometimes the transitions are easy. But sometimes they are very hard. Emily arrived, our second adopted little Korean girl. Arrived not knowing that there was another language spoken anywhere in the world. Not realizing there were white skin yellow-haired people, had absolutely no preparation. So as a result, her right on her upon her arrival, she was extremely angry.

Holly, what about you? We have two foreign-born children and the most difficult has been our oldest who is the most recent. It will be four years in May. Line cheating, stealing, wetting the bed, messing his pants at school. Defiantly? Very defiantly. He is unable to attach. She's a non-attached child. I think where he's at right now is he's feeling attached to us and the poor kids scared to death. I think that there's a great deal of frustration. And that's universal, whether it be Colombian or Korean or what. When you try to fit into a social environment where there's one language spoken and they don't know that language. I guess it was just not being able to cope at first and don't know what's going on. It's all confused. And I was sick because of the foods. I cried a lot, yes. All right, the last three stones.

Can you all make it? Hang on. Take it so it's up straight. Is it on straight? Yeah. Are you tired? Yeah. For Danny Kelly and his new family, Christmas was something of a milestone. There had been some early tears and some hard days at school. But by Christmas, just a month after arriving in the United States, Danny was already showing signs of really fitting in. It is a little fun, isn't it? Do you like that one? That's a swan. Sort of like a gingerbread. For the Kelly's, Christmas was a time of thanks. That Danny had arrived safely and that he appeared happy. But for perhaps thousands of other American couples who might wish to adopt a Korean child during the next few years, the future is clouded by both economic and political uncertainties back in Korea. We don't have any of that here. We got that.

The futures of these Korean orphans will be largely shaped by one single political fact of life. The South Korean government is embarrassed by overseas adoptions. Spurred by recent North Korean propaganda against the practice, the government in Seoul is trying hard to promote the adoption of these children inside Korea. Unfortunately, that government program goes against a thousand years of Korean tradition. Korean families are concerned about more than maybe a family's overseas about appearance and their blood, you know, that because we think very highly of the blood relationship. But despite a thousand years of history and tradition, more and more Korean families, like the family of this Seoul construction worker, are beginning to accept the nation's orphans, either as foster children or as legally adopted children. If this government sponsored change of heart toward adoption continues, the next few years may see an end to the flights of children out of Korea.

And back in the U.S. at Children's Home Society in St. Paul, the executive director argues that because of constantly changing economic and political conditions all over the world, he won't even hazard a guess as to the future of inter-country adoptions. If I were able to answer that question, I would want to run for president. There's no way of knowing what the circumstances are going to be and foreign countries relative to the governmental structure and attitudes of the government's minds, programs like this. So you just take it year by year? Exactly, we have to take it year by year in a sense of what's in the best interest of the children. With spring, it really became apparent that Danny Kelly was going to make it. His English was improving almost daily, complicated only by the fact that his voice was beginning to change. Tell us about what you're going to do this summer. Summer, I'm going to play baseball. I don't know maybe we're going to go somewhere at some place.

Have you gone anywhere since you've come? Have you gone on any trips? Yeah, I've been at Las Vegas. What did you think of Las Vegas? That's kind of nice. When you play baseball, what position do you play? I don't know yet. I'm going to figure out that Saturday. Saturday, you're going to figure that out. That's my day 4th game. You got any idea what you're going to be doing the rest of the summer besides baseball? A track. Track? You're going to help your mom and dad around the house? Yeah, I make some day flowers. They garden. And my son, I did what he wanted. Danny is already planning a summer full of baseball and track and a flower garden which he planted in April. His brother Paul, who was at first so concerned about the adoption, says now that all his worries have evaporated.

Danny, he says, is a good kid. For Jung-ah Peters, the future will hold high school graduation and music studies at the University of Minnesota. But first, she hopes to return briefly to Korea. When you go to Korea, what are you looking forward to seeing? Mainly people again. And in pictures, I've seen beautiful parts of Korea and I've been able to see just slums and gutters. And I would like to travel over all of Korea and see the beautiful parts of it. So I want to have this idea of slums in my head all the time. And we asked Jung-ah if she had any advice for Danny Kelly, especially as he gets old enough to begin comparing his life to the lives of people around him. I don't think he should feel left out or I don't think he should feel below those people. I think he should feel more special because he went through experiences that those people have not.

And therefore, I think adaptive children grew up a little faster because they have these experiences. All I can say is just be himself and try to change his personality to match others. I don't know how you felt, but I wanted to yell, amen, when Jung-ah Peter said just now, I don't think he should feel below those people. I think he should feel more special because he went through experiences that those people have not. Yes, ma'am, Danny Kelly is indeed special. Imagine what it must have been like for him when he got off that plane there in Minneapolis or that morning three days later when he went to school. Or during any of the many other new experiences he has had since coming to Minneapolis to become a Kelly. He must be truly a remarkable young man.

And as his brother Paul says, a good kid to boot. The only problem I saw was his fielding of a ground ball. Somebody needs to tell him to hold the glove face up, not down. Otherwise, he's doing great. And so, by the way, are the Kelly's. And their way, they're special, too. For US Chronicle, I'm Jim Lara. Thank you. Hey, Michael. You want to talk to me? No. I'm just going to talk to you. No. I'm just going to talk to you. Please. Okay. Hi. Hey. Hey. Hey.

Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.