Jane Jeong Trenka (born 1972) is a South Korean activist and an award-winning writer. She is the president of the organization TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea).

Early life

Trenka was born in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

, South Korea in 1972. When she was six months old, Trenka and her sister were adopted into an American family in rural northern

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. Her Korean mother found her daughters in 1972, shortly after the girls were sent to the U.S. and before they were legally adopted. Trenka reunited with her birth mother in South Korea in 1995 when she was 23. In 2004, she returned to live in Korea. While applying for a visa in 2006, Trenka discovered that the Korean adoption agency that had overseen her adoption had lied, both about her background and about the people who were going to adopt her. Trenka became an activist for standard and transparent adoption practices to protect the human rights of adult adoptees, children, and families. She officially repatriated to South Korea in 2008.

Career and education

Trenka received a degree in music performance from Augsburg University in

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and became a piano teacher in Minnesota before her return to Korea. While studying at Augsburg University, Trenka was consistently stalked, and she has spoken publicly about her experience in order to raise awareness to the issue, including discussing the incident in her book ''The Language of Blood''. Her experiences were adapted for an episode of the

Investigation Discovery Investigation Discovery (stylized and branded on-air as ID since 2008) is an American multinational pay television network dedicated to true crime documentaries, similar to corporate sibling HLN. It is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery's netw ...

series '' Obsession: Dark Desires''. In 2013, Trenka attended

Seoul National University Seoul National University (SNU; ) is a public university, public research university in Seoul, South Korea. It is one of the SKY (universities), SKY universities and a part of the Flagship Korean National Universities. The university's main c ...

to pursue a degree in public administration. She has written two memoirs on her experiences with international, transracial adoption: ''The Language of Blood'' and ''Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea''.

Works

*The Language of Blood, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003; Graywolf Press, 2005 *피의 언어, Y-Gelli Press 2005; Domabaem 2012 * Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption,

South End Press South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activists, notably Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Win ...

, 2006 * 인종간 입양의 사회학, KoRoot Press, 2012 * Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea, Graywolf Press, 2009 * 덧없는 환영들, Changbi Publishers
2012
ref> Kyobo Books: 덧없는 환영들

Awards

* Minnesota Book Award for Autobiography/Memoir for The Language of Blood * Minnesota Book Award for New Voice for The Language of Blood * Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection for The Language of Blood

References

External links