Heritage Speaker
Meredith Seung Mee Buse
Throughout my life I’ve had a single, strong reaction to the Korean language: shame.
As a Korean adoptee growing up in New Mexico, I spent decades avoiding dry cleaners, Asian grocery stores, Korean culture classes and even Asian friends. I got jealous when they appeared to slip so easily between worlds. Proximity to Korean people made me uncomfortable because it reminded me that, although I wasn’t white like my adoptive parents, I also wasn’t quite Korean.
Korean should be my mother tongue.
My mother’s tongue.
The language she spoke to me for nine months in utero. Her cadence and inflections living on in my bones. Just after birth, my infant ears searched for that voice, for my mother, but she disappeared.
Then my Korean foster mother disappeared as well, leaving behind just one grainy photo of me as a baby on her lap, in a faded, blue file folder I wouldn’t see until almost 40 years later.
By the time I was adopted, I already cried in Korean. I tuned out other languages as irrelevant noise, but my survival depended on bonding with a third family who didn’t speak my language or resemble my first or second mothers.
~
Growing up, I was an incongruous Meredith: Mere, to my adoptive family; Mere-Mere, to my friends in high school; and sometimes even Meri to folks who didn’t know me at all. A series of annoying monikers for a name that held no meaning.
After college, I identified mostly by my last name: Buse. I found comfort, or at least familiarity, in this legacy, passed down from my quadriplegic adoptive dad, his experience of hardship due to his disability and the independence he derived from it.
But Meredith? What kind of legacy did my adoptive parents intend for me there? A name with Welsh origins, Meredith was one of those inexplicable fad names whose popularity peaked in the early 80s. Perhaps my adoptive parents chose it for its musicality, or because they liked its meaning: “great lord.”
Good lord.
By giving me a white-girl name, my adoptive parents had articulated what they wanted most for my life: for me to turn into a white girl, or at least really look like one on paper. They ignored the physical constraints and emotional toll on me of trying to be something I wasn’t. They disregarded the dissonance I’d face in attempting to embody someone else’s identity, of seeking to assimilate on the deepest levels of myself, shocked whenever I caught the midnight hue of my eyes or the exuberant curve of my cheeks in the mirror.
They did this unthinkingly, unknowingly and without malice. Such is the power of whiteness: it erases everything in its path without giving a crap.
After 37 years of being a misnomer, I began to build myself up in a different image. Filled in the outlines and brought myself into relief—not a model minority blending into a white background, not someone white-adjacent, close enough to whiteness to almost touch it—but something else.
~
In reclaiming my full name, Meredith Seung Mee Buse, there was, of course, the matter of pronunciation. Never having heard it spoken aloud, I had no idea how to pronounce my own name.
Sure, I googled it. I practiced saying it in the mirror, clutching it like a talisman, my only remaining connection to my birth parents. I whispered it in bed at night like a prayer: Seung Mee. Seung Mee. Seung Mee.
“It’s nearly impossible for someone who didn’t grow up around the language to make certain sounds,” my new Korean friend Sarah said, when, at 38, I was finally ready to make Korean friends. My heart clenched a little at this; it confirmed what I’d already intuited, that no amount of effort would make up for what I’d lost: time.
Sarah explained how to pronounce my family name, Choi.
“Koreans pronounce it ‘Che,’” she said.
Choi Seung Mee: I reveled in the melodic tones of my Korean name, infinitely softer, higher and rounder than anything I’d ever said in English.
“I’ll send you an audio file,” she said, scanning the spelling of my name.
But first, she told me to gather the documents listing my name in the original Hangul. She would verify the spelling and transliteration. I never did—too terrified of what I might discover. Afraid my name might be a misinterpretation. Another chasm to overcome. My body a fossil record, new revelations unearthed with every layer I dug up.
~
Later in my 38th year, I began to prepare for my first trip home to South Korea, a tour with a group of other adult adoptees featuring a birth family search component, community and cultural experiences, and time with a Korean host family.
Before the trip, the tour leader taught me about my Korean name: Seung means victory and Mee means beautiful.
“Beautiful victory,” she said.
I liked the sound of it.
The tour group also offered optional Korean language classes. Emboldened by my heritage speaker status—I already spoke Korean, I told myself, just not very well—I enrolled. My three-week Duolingo head start helped me rock Korean lessons for the two sessions devoted to learning the alphabet. Then it got tricky.
Week after week, I fought through online breakout sessions with bilingual Korean American high school students. A string of 14-year-olds listened to me struggle with one- and two-syllable Korean words.
Um, that’s good, they would say, but just a little softer on your ‘s’ sound.
Not quite, but nice try. It’s ‘ui-ja’, not ‘ui-sa.’
Yeah, that says o.
No, that says u.
Though they treated me gently, aware of their students’ history as adoptees, I ached to explain that I was more than just a chump who couldn’t remember the vocabulary word for dog. Getting my ass kicked weekly by a kid whose voice hadn’t even cracked incited a whole new level of humiliation and, beneath that, envy. Indignation. Rage. My palms sweat as I worked to keep a smile fastened on my face.
If I hadn’t been adopted, I would speak Korean just like them, maybe better.
I hated those kids with their facile Koreanness. For them, this hour was community service. For me, it was an existential crisis. When the instructors launched into the Sino-Korean and true Korean number systems, I gave up. Perhaps my subconscious locked these sounds inside me on purpose, all wound up with the pain of losing my mother.
~
On the third day of my trip to Seoul, my host family complimented my Korean. Riding in the back of their black SUV, my cheeks flushed, and I ducked my head at the praise. I didn’t tell them my tricks: speak quickly enough that the words blur together, extend the last syllable a long time and pair everything with a bow. I did tell them I had mastered only two words, hello and thank you.
“The words you say, you speak so beautifully. I can’t wait to hear when you learn more Korean,” Miyoung said.
I used my new favorite word—wah, Korean for wow—any chance I got. Walking through the National Museum of Korea in Seoul with Miyoung and her husband Jung, everything elicited a Waaaaah! The ten-story stone pagoda of Gyeongcheonsa Temple towering over the atrium. The ancient bodhisattvas in the Room of Quiet Contemplation. Even the gift shop. Wah, wah, waahh!
Between two of Danwon’s paintings of life in the Joseon dynasty, Jung asked about my Korean name.
“Seung Mee,” I said in my most convincing Korean accent.
“Ah,” he said. Then he explained it a bit differently.
“Beautiful, yes,” he said, “but the first word does not mean victory.”
“It means rising. Ascending. Going up,” he motioned with his hand like an airplane taking off.
Beautiful rising.
Now that I can get behind, I thought, as we wandered the exhibit halls. The word victory suggests some finality: a battle fought, won and over. But my story will never be an endless tale of triumph. Unbridled glory, reaching new heights without the intermittent lows. I imagined that maybe when I visited Korea again, I would struggle through a few more common phrases, going from three words to six. Then, I’d return to the U.S. and forget. Whisper kam-sah-ham-nida and receive my change with two hands at Korean restaurants. Take another class—maybe Level 2 this time—learn some more things and then forget them.
I will keep falling, losing and fighting. The spiral of grief, the circular echoes of han inside me, the yahrzeits and anniversaries unending. But maybe I will recognize what’s happening a week, a day, even just a moment quicker. Maybe my ability to stay present will grow. And maybe, each fall will be followed by a rising. Picking myself back up. Dusting myself off. Starting anew.
~
I blink at the social worker seated across from me. It’s just days before I return to the U.S., and I’m no closer now to the answers I want than when I arrived in Seoul eight days and two “file review” meetings ago. Adoptees trying to get their information are like monkeys in the middle, and the people trying to keep it from them include adoption agencies, sending and receiving governments, sometimes even adoptive families and the police.
The room inside Eastern Social Welfare Society is warm, but I’m dressed as modestly as the occasion requires, pressing my stocking feet to the floor. The social worker, wearing a vest that matches the armful of yellow roses I brought her, checks her watch. All the agency staff are outside hosting an event, and she’s spent enough time with me already, deflecting my inquiries about when, where and why I was relinquished, where my birth mother is, and why I can’t contact her despite them having her name, identification number and address. Ms. Kim closes my file and straightens to leave.
“Wait,” I say. “I have one more question.”
My heartbeat pounds in my temples, and I flex and unflex my toes on the hardwood floor. Many of my friends on the tour this week have faced heartbreaking revelations about their names. They learned they were named by social workers, not by their first families—their birth parents—as they wanted to believe. I want to believe this as well, like an adoptee fairy tale: that my mother named me Seung Mee before I passed into agency custody. Part of me wants to leave some sliver of my identity pure, unmarred by this original abandonment. But another part of me wins out. The undertaker in me. That part in the pit of my stomach that—more than prettiness and platitudes—wants the truth.
“What can you tell me about my name,” I ask. “Can you tell who named me? My birth mother?”
“Ah,” says Ms. Kim, adopting a helpful stance now that she’s end-run my best efforts to discover anything useful.
“I think, uh, that a social worker gave you your name,” she says. I don’t breathe while she peruses my 1-inch-thick file. “Well, there are no notes in here to indicate otherwise.”
She looks up.
“So, yes. A social worker,” she repeats, then gathers up the file, the friendly roses and the bags of gifts I brought her.
Oooph. I fight to stay upright at her words. My chin trembles. I stuff my belongings into my bookbag. Stumble to put my shoes back on at the door without bursting out in tears. I almost make it to the stairwell.
~
I return to the U.S. with more than souvenirs to unpack. Turns out, my name does not represent the inheritance, the direct line to my first family I assumed it did. It reminds me of immigrants who changed their names to assimilate. My husband’s maternal family dropped the Abramowitz in favor of Abrams at Ellis Island, and his paternal grandparents became Morley instead of Matulski during the Holocaust. In a parallel universe, my children are Choi-Abramowitz-Matulskis instead of Buse-Morleys. Or perhaps, in that universe, my husband and I have never met.
I once taught a first grader, Heydar or Heydan, whose name posed a mystery. The classroom roll spelled it one way, but his family inked it with thick, permanent marker on his bookbag in another. At dismissal one day, I asked his dad about it, concerned the School District of Philadelphia had codified the child’s name incorrectly on all his paperwork. His dad told me a United Nations aid worker misrecorded Heydar/Heydan’s name in the rush to evacuate American allies from Afghanistan. Now the child will officially have the wrong name, at least until adulthood when he can petition to get it changed.
“Which way would you like me to teach Heydar to spell his name?” I asked, considering all the years I spent as an incompatible Meredith.
“Um, better go ahead and teach him the wrong way so it matches his records,” his dad said. “At least for now.”
~
In Seoul, I discovered the impure origins of my newly reclaimed name. That wrongness now forms part of my identity—making me, like Heydar, officially a mistake. I cannot excise every unwanted or ambivalent part of me. Every piece tainted by capitalism, by adoption. If I did, I would cease to exist. Changing my name proves unthinkable now. Choi Seung Mee remains my given name. Although given to me by a stranger, not a biological relative, it still marks me as Korean.
I remind myself that moving forward sometimes means stepping sideways, going back, running for one’s life or boarding the evacuation plane. Surviving outrageous odds sometimes comes at a cost to our personhood. So we take the hit, change an ‘r’ for an ‘n,’ give up our names, our language, our first and second mothers. Our will to live palpable—not hypothetical.
Like my adoptive dad—who got in the wrong car three days before high school graduation and never stood up again—fighting for each moment of his rich, imperfect life. Whether you see them or not, we all live with scars. The residual effects of imperfect people making imperfect choices and moving our imperfect bodies through an imperfect world.
Through adoption, I lost my family, my country, my language and my name. But by being Seung Mee, I add to the story, too. Bring it new meaning.
I am still here.
Here and hopeful.
A beautiful rising.
I exist.
Author Bio
Meredith Seung Mee Buse is an author, educator and Korean American transracial adoptee. Her debut picture book, Emily Minji Makes Kimchi, is forthcoming in spring 2027, and her essay, Variations on a Theme, will be published in an anthology on transnational adoptee origins in 2026. Her writing reflects the adoptee experience with candor, hope and joy, and has appeared in The Citron Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Komerican Pie, Severance Magazine, and Adoptee Reclaimed.
Meredith received Boyds Mills scholarships in 2023 and 2025, a Sunlit Residency in 2026, and a Periplus Fellowship in 2026. Find her on IG @meredithseungmeebuse or at meredithseungmeebuse.com