On March 27, 1980, In-Soo Radstake arrived at Schiphol with eight others from South Korea. Their journey had started about twenty-four hours earlier from the Korean capital of Seoul to Tokyo and finally, via Alaska, ended in the Netherlands. And there a new journey began for him: an inner journey to find his way back to his identity.
I came to Rotterdam for love. As a starting filmmaker, I was actually on my way from Zwolle, where I had studied journalism, to Amsterdam: the beating heart of Dutch film making. But in 2003 I went to Rotterdam to research my first documentary called Made in Korea: a one-way ticket Seoul-Amsterdam? In this documentary I wanted to visit all eight adoptees who were on the same plane with me after almost twenty-five years. I was curious how they had experienced their adoption.
Poster for the documentary 'Made in Korea: a one-way ticket Seoul-Amsterdam?' Photo from personal archive In-Soo Radstake.
And one of those eight would become my girlfriend. I called it love at second sight because not long after our first meeting, in 2003 in a restaurant on the Meent, we fell in love with each other. She immediately made it clear to me that she lived in Rotterdam and did not want to leave here. The city reminded her of another port city, that of Busan in South Korea. The Rotterdam skyline with its tall buildings, the ships that sail on the Maas and the lights that burn everywhere. When she told me that, I had never been to South Korea, let alone Busan.
But that I had never been to South Korea, that was not right. I was born there, spent the first three months of my life in an orphanage in Seoul. Here in the Netherlands a second life began for me, with a Dutch father, a Dutch mother and a non-biological sister who was also adopted from South Korea. So I should have said that I had never been back.