So I've been saying for ages that I will let you see my little orphan angels who I love so dearly. Well finally! I'm sharing! Remember a few months back, in April, I had a 5-month challenge for myself to submit my work to a magazine and do a portrait series on my little orphan boys (challenges number 1 and 6)? Well I did it! and I submitting this piece to 3 or 4 different magazines. And for political and editorial conflict reasons it was rejected by a couple of different Korea magazines, but I kept trying AND my favorite of the 4 magazines published it! So this is my first official spread in a print magazine. Yay!And a much bigger WOOT! WOOT! to my little angels who put so much joy into my time in Korea! You are surely missed.I did this portrait story on my ancient film Yashica Mat TLR Camera. Which was a fun challenge :) Here is how the story ran in NEH magazine's Aug/Sept Issue. And to read the more legible, full story look below the pictures :)

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An Unlikely Family

By Inge Kathleen

Tucked in the Korean hillside, two hours east from the madness of central Seoul lies a small bustling village of sorts called Shinmang where a family of more than 40 young boys and girls live.This family looks nothing like your traditional Korean family, quite the opposite. Their ages range vastly from just a month old to 17 years of age; they all have unique stories, personalities and aspirations, yet the thread that ties them together is that they have all been orphaned or abandoned.Shinmang Orphanage has been in operation for almost 60 years, since 1952. It has slowly grown to house more than 30 boys, 10 girls, and an assortment of bushy dogs. Shinmang is a place where these children can grow up with a loving family until they reach 18 years old and then they will become independent.Most of these “orphans” still have one or both of their parents alive and almost all have closely related family, but most will likely never return to their families nor be adopted.The children come to Shinmang for a variety of reasons. A few have no parents, others have parents who are mentally or financially unable to provide for them, others have been abused or abandoned or others have single parents who have given them up because of pressures from their family or a future spouse. This pressure is rooted in Koreans’ Confucianist beliefs of bloodline. The blood is an important link between a parent and a child. It is so valued that new spouses do not want a child that does not have their own blood. Furthermore, the idea of adopting a child, a completely unknown one is that much more foreign to many Koreans. This is why adoption is so rare here.“They [Koreans] don’t want a kid from another bloodline,” says Myung Hee Park, the director of the Shinmang Orphanage.When Koreans chose to adopt, however, they usually do so without their friends or family knowing. One way they hide it is by faking a pregnancy and then adopting an infant.Since the 1950s, more than 200,000 Korean children have been adopted with more than 160,000 of these children going to international homes.However, most of the children at Shinmang are much too old to be adopted. According to the U.S. State Department, 86% of children adopted in Korea are under the age of one. Additionally, the parental rights for most of the Shinmang children rest with their families, even in cases when they are abandoned.I began visiting Shinmang Orphanage about a year and a half ago. I found it with the help of my Korean friend. The orphanage is just a subway stop and a 25 minute walk away from the little country school that I teach at.I remember the first time I went. It was a frigid winter day, and the director, Myung Hee Park, came to pick me up at the train station. I got in her car, and almost immediately we turned off the main road in favor of a back road that took us by little farms, worn hanok houses, and frost-kissed rice fields. We then wound up a narrow road and arrived at Shinmangan orphanage that at this time was only for boys.I was there not to teach English. I was there to do nothing but play with them. I was a little nervous about what I would do with them; my Korean language level was barely higher than survival. However, I figured despite this language barrier, I was a child from a family of nine kids, and I would improvise, somehow.Park toured me around the house and then led me to a room with a few little boys inside. She said that I could hang out with them for a few minutes while she finished up some office work. The boys were all gathered around the television enthralled with a Disney cartoon. I went and sat with them for a moment and tried to impress them with my Korean, but they just looked at me like I was a white ogre. Fair enough, I thought, apparently my language skills weren’t the way to their little hearts. I instead managed to bribe one of the smallest ones away from Mr. Walt Disney with crayons and white paper.With crayons and paper at our disposal, we sprawled on the yellow laminate floor, laying flat on our bellies. We began drawing anything and everything we could think of. I would draw a bunny and then he would draw the same one. He would draw a flower, and I would color it in. Then I drew a tree, but apparently it wasn’t up to his standards, so he dramatically scratched it out and then giggled mischievously. Before we knew it, time had flown by, and it was time for dinner.He motioned with his hands that it was time to eat. We guarded our masterpieces in his closet, and then he grabbed my hand tightly and led me up the stairs to the little dining hall. He then told me with grand authority where I was to sit. I must sit right next to him! My heart just melted right to the floor.From that moment forward, he and all his siblings have had my heart. On this day orphans became real to me. These little ones were not from Oliver Twist or the Little Princess. When I left them that evening, the movie didn’t end. They didn’t get to go home and be tucked in bed by their mother or father. They weren’t going to get chicken noodle soup when they had were sick or play catch with their dads. It wasn’t their fault either. There was nothing wrong with these children, they had brilliant personalities, and beautiful hearts, but that didn’t matter.Since that winter day, I’ve gone to visit their ever-growing family almost weekly. We’ve drawn quite a few more masterpieces; they’ve made me the official piggyback ride giver, human horse, tickle monster, and I am even required to give unlimited airplane rides for a nominal fee of 뽀뽀 (kisses) and hugs.After two years in Korea, I only have a few days left until I leave for Thailand to travel and to work with Burmese refugees. It will be sad to say farewell to my friends and all the delicious Korean food that I love so dearly, but I have Skype and a kitchen. These losses can be remedied.My greatest sadness is knowing that gone are the days of walking up the hill toward their house and hearing them scream at the top of their lungs ‘Inge wasayo!’ (Inge has arrived!) Or having them hug me tightly and then spending the evening spinning round and round until we all fall to the floor from blissful dizziness and then doing it all over again!If only I could take a couple of them with me, I pray, maybe one day soon.Shinmang Orphanage is located in Gyeonggido Province in Shinwon-ri between Yangsu-ri and Yangpyeong. For more information about how you can help go to http://www.shinmang.or.kr/ or contact director Myung Hee Park at 031-772-6244, email at shinmang1952@hanmail.net and their address is 경기 양평군 양서면 신원리 산 53번지published in NEH Magazine South Korea