'I teach both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in social work at Brigham Young University [in Utah, United States]. My day probably starts around nine but there's no set time for professors. Sometimes I will not go in until noon and I'll stay until eight or nine at night. It all depends on how much energy I have.
I lived with my grandmother until I was 11 [her parents separated when she was a baby] then I lived in an orphanage for three years. The orphanage was in Seoul but I had lived in the countryside with my grandmother.
[US folk singer] Stan Bronson arranged for [the children] to receive gifts from families in his hometown at Christmas in 1967. From there my future family in the States picked my picture from these little Polaroids. That was the way the families decided which children they would sponsor. So they sent me a box of Christmas gifts and I wrote them a thank you note. They wrote back and we kept corresponding and, about a year later, they offered to adopt me.
It was really wonderful to have a family. The transition was very easy. I didn't have any trouble at all. I thought it was wonderful to live in a family with adults to talk to you, guide you and care about you, to be in a family with brothers and sisters.
I was a novelty. I was the new kid and everybody wanted to be my friend. In Blanding [Utah], where I went to high school, we had two predominant groups of students. One was the white students and one was the native American students and they tended to stay within their own ethnic groups. I was able to have friends in both groups.
Now I live in the northern part of the state, in Provo, and my family's in the southern part of the state. It's about five hours of travel but I do see my mum and my brothers and sisters at least three times a year, sometimes way more than that.
