INTERVIEW Emmy Award-winning documentarian explores hidden stories of Korean adoptees
Deann Borshay Liem / Courtesy of Deann Borshay Liem
Deann Borshay Liem's 'Relative Strangers' follows 6 mixed-race Korean adoptees searching for their roots
Deann Borshay Liem spent much of her childhood believing she was an orphan.
Adopted from Korea to the United States in 1966, Liem discovered in the early 1980s that her birth mother and siblings were alive. She also learned that her identity had been switched with another child during the adoption process and that her adoption documents had been falsified.
That discovery found its way into Liem's work as a documentary filmmaker, through which she explored her own past and the broader history of Korea's overseas adoptions.
"Trying to understand the truth about my adoption was part of the motivation for making my first film 'First Person Plural'," Liem said in a recent email interview with The Korea Times.
Released in 2000, the documentary followed her search for and reunion with her Korean family. In 2010, she made "In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee," which traced the identity of the girl whose name had been substituted for hers.
"These two films were intimate first-person explorations of my adoption and a means to recuperate my personal history and identity," she said.
Her work also extended beyond adoption to the broader Asian American experience. Liem served as an executive at the Center for Asian American Media and executive produced the Emmy-winning documentary "AKA Don Bonus" in 1995.
"My interest in the broader history of transnational adoption has endured. Over the years, I've returned to this topic in part to help process my own life, but also to educate the public and contribute to community-building and healing," she said.
'Relative Strangers' cast members Lo Rojon as a young boy with his adoptive mother, left, and Lisa Jackson as a young girl with her Korean birth mother / Courtesy of Deann Borshay Liem
Liem's personal and historical inquiry now continues in "Relative Strangers," her documentary-in-progress following six mixed-race Korean adoptees over nine years as they use DNA testing and social media to search for their birth families.
"Their stories reveal many things that I think are part of Korea's repressed history: the realities of American military camptowns; the social stigma and pressures young Korean mothers faced, along with racial stereotypes about Korean women that led to the removal of their mixed-race children; and the early lives of adopted Koreans in white and Black families in the U.S. and Europe," Liem said.
The film also challenges longstanding narratives about mixed-race children born to Korean women and American servicemen, she added.
Through their own searches, the film's participants learn that not all women who dated servicemen worked in the sex industry and that not all children born to these women were considered a problem by their mothers.
"Relative Strangers" is now in the final stages of production, with Liem raising funds for additional scenes and interviews. She hopes the film will spark broader conversations about wartime adoption and the ethics and transparency of international adoption.
Korean children in boxes await airlift to the United States for adoption in this archival photo. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
Beyond her films, Liem also sought answers about her own adoption through an official investigation into Korea's overseas adoption system.
She was among hundreds of overseas adoptees who submitted cases to Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated allegations of human rights violations in the country's past adoption system. Following a yearslong probe, in March 2025, the commission recognized human rights violations in 56 cases, including Liem's.
"My TRC report states that I was unlawfully substituted with another child and that my Korean mother did not give consent to send me overseas. A variety of my rights had been violated — the right to human dignity and worth, the right to be raised by my original parents, the right to a name, the right to know my identity," she said.
Liem, who is still considering what form of redress she might pursue, said the TRC's findings have only reinforced her commitment to telling the stories of international adoptees.
"No matter what, because I'm a filmmaker, I will continue to tell stories about the experiences of international adoptees and will ensure that 'Relative Strangers' is completed and is seen by as many people as possible," she said.