Precious Objects Of Desire
Deann Borshay Liem, Producer/Director
Synopsis
Precious Objects of Desire is a follow-up to Deann Borshay Liem’s earlier film, First Person Plural. In the film, she searches for her “double” – a girl named Cha Jung Hee – in an attempt to resolve a case of mistaken identity that took place when she was adopted by an American family in 1966. The search for Cha Jung Hee serves as a springboard for exploring complex ethical and socio/political questions involving international transracial adoptions, and the impact these issues have on individuals and families. Specifically, the film probes thorny ethical issues, such as whether children are commodified in the adoption exchange, and the process by which orphans are transformed from "disposable" children in Korea to “precious objects of desire” by parents in the West.
Precious Objects of Desire is produced in association with the Katahdin Foundation and co-produced by Charlotte Lagarde, www.swellcinema.com.
Filmmaker’s Statement
Cha Jung Hee was a fellow orphan at the Sun Duck Orphanage in South Korea in the 1960s. She and I had nothing in common and I did not know her personally. And yet, at age 8, just before I was sent to the U.S. to be adopted by the Borshay family in California, my identity was switched with hers without anyone’s knowledge. I was given Cha Jung Hee’s name, birth date and family history and told to keep the switch a secret. Simultaneously, through a bureaucratic sleight of hand, my previous identity was completely erased. For years, Cha Jung Hee was, paradoxically, both a stranger and also my official identity – a persona unknown, but always present, defining my life. In Precious Objects of Desire, I search for Cha Jung Hee to finally put her erstwhile existence to rest by meeting her in real life and finding out how she has fared.
In the course of searching for Cha Jung Hee, I meet and interview a diverse selection of Korean orphans and adoptees, each with their own quests and extraordinary stories to tell. A biracial Korean-Black war orphan, shunned by Korean society, who as an adult meets potential biological siblings; twins adopted and raised in France, who speak only the French language, on their way “home” to Korea to visit their birth mother; an orphan from the North who was sent with several thousand Korean War orphans to Romania who recalls the painful post-war years and what it was like to grow up in a boarding school in Eastern Europe; and many others.
These stories are contextualized within a history of adoptions from Korea starting with the Korean War. Together, they illuminate how adoptions from Korea are closely associated with U.S. military involvement on the Korean peninsula, the prosperity and optimism of American society following World War II, and Cold War politics, all of which have led South Korea to become the number one “exporter,” and the U.S. the largest “importer,” of adopted children in the world.