Human Rights: Simply Because We are Human

By Kari Su Rudd

We all matter. We all have a voice. And we all can make a difference.

Between work, family, friends I don’t always have time to think about human rights. Life is busy, and we all have our own struggles.

Being a Korean adoptee isn’t always easy to explain. My feelings about it are complicated. Maybe yours are, too.

Last month, while visiting Seoul, I got a tattoo in Hangul that reads, “Korea’s Lost Daughter.”

Seeing these Korean characters on my arm connects me to the country where my life began. The words are deeply personal. I am a daughter lost to her homeland. But I also see another side to that loss.

 In my own way, I’m saying, “You lost out, Korea.” 

Korea lost me, too. It lost the chance to know me, watch me grow, and discover the person I might have become if my life had taken a different path. In my own way, I’m saying, “You lost out, Korea.”

My tattoo cannot change my past. But it reminds me that I was more than a child sold to another country. I was and am a person with an identity, a history, a future, and a voice.

Human Rights

And that brings me to human rights. Human rights are the basic rights we all have simply because we are human. We don’t have to earn them, and nobody should take them away because of who we are or where we come from. They include being treated with dignity, being protected from harm, and having our identities and voices respected.

What does that mean for us as Korean adoptees?

It means we mattered as children, even when we were too young to speak for ourselves... Why should we care? Because understanding our rights helps us recognize what we deserve—and what every other person deserves, too.

It means we mattered as children, even when we were too young to speak for ourselves. We deserved protection, honesty, and respect. Our identities and personal histories mattered. Our lives were not simply decisions for adults to make without regard for our rights and futures.

Why should we care? Because understanding our rights helps us recognize what we deserve—and what every other person deserves, too.

We don’t have to feel angry or regret our adoption to believe that every child deserves honesty and protection.

Our rights don’t depend on whether we’re happy with our lives today. They don’t disappear because we don’t want to investigate our adoptions. We don’t have to feel angry or regret our adoption to believe that every child deserves honesty and protection.

Your Dignity Matters

You may be happy with your life and have no desire to revisit your past. I respect that. Understanding your human rights is not the same as investigating your adoption. It’s about knowing that you have worth, that your dignity matters, and that you deserve to be treated fairly.

We can learn from the past, support one another, and help protect the rights of adoptees today.

This isn’t about telling every adoptee how to feel or what to do. It’s about recognizing that we mattered as children, and we matter now. We can learn from the past, support one another, and help protect the rights of adoptees today.

We all matter. We all have a voice. And we all can make a difference.