A Korean adoptee’s return to South Korea helped her connect to both her origins and her American upbringing, shaping her life and Ph.D. work.

For a Korean adoptee who grew up in the American Midwest, one research trip turned into something far bigger than a flight itinerary: a long-awaited chance to meet her birth mother and finally feel fully Korean and fully American at the same time.

Jillian Kurovski, a 27-year-old Ph.D.. student living in South Korea. described how her path back to her birth country began while she was doing spider research in Guam.. An email arrived with news that her birth mother wanted to meet her.. The timing was unusual but, for Kurovski, emotionally inevitable.. She already had a three-day layover in South Korea planned on her way back to the United States. and her birth mother agreed to see her during that window.

In those three days. the focus quickly shifted from lab work to preparation for a meeting that felt loaded with emotion.. Kurovski spent a week learning etiquette. trying on dresses. and practicing bowing—habits and gestures she associated with honoring the moment and showing up as “the perfect Korean daughter.” Born in Daegu. South Korea. and adopted at eight months old. she said she grew up in a warm. close-knit Midwestern family in Iowa. where her adoption was never treated like a secret.. She always knew she was Korean. but she struggled to find the words to explain what that identity meant in everyday life.

Even with a supportive upbringing. Kurovski described a childhood memory that stayed with her: the feeling of being separated from her family’s Irish and Czech roots.. In junior high, she was assigned to bring an artifact representing her heritage.. She wrestled with what to choose—something Irish. something Czech. or something Korean—yet she didn’t know enough about Korea to make a meaningful connection.. She ended up printing a picture of an Irish friendship ring. but even as she presented it. it felt like “a total lie. ” because the attachment wasn’t real.. She said she mainly wanted the assignment to end.

That sense of distance from her own Korean story remained. until she began a birth search through her adoption agency in 2018.. What started as a spur-of-the-moment decision became the start of a longer journey back to South Korea.. At that time, she was an undergraduate researcher working with spiders and scheduled to travel for her studies in Guam.. Her lab manager told her she could travel via either Hawaii or South Korea. and since she had never returned to her birth country before. she chose South Korea—then spent her three-day layover entirely with her birth family.

Kurovski emphasized that even though the visit was short, it was deeply special.. Leaving South Korea and returning to the United States afterward was hard, and the emotional momentum didn’t fade.. She found herself thinking about how she could come back for longer. to keep learning about her roots rather than treating the experience as a brief snapshot.

That desire eventually aligned with her academic plans.. She applied for the Fulbright Presidential STEM scholarship to continue her Ph.D.. research on spider reproduction, a decision that brought her back to Seoul for a year.. She arrived in July 2025 to begin the program. and this time her birth family was there to pick her up from the airport. underscoring how her personal story and her professional trajectory were converging.

Over the past year. Kurovski said she and her family have started to feel more like a “normal family. ” as normal as circumstances allow.. She lives in Seoul, while her family lives about an hour away in a different city.. Communication works through everyday messages—what she’s doing. when she’ll visit—plus occasional shared interests. including her father sending YouTube videos or songs he likes.. Still, the biggest challenge has been language.. Her family does not speak much English. and she does not speak much Korean. but she said effort and familiarity help bridge the gap.. Her father, in particular, has put significant work into learning English, and her siblings can manage conversations.. With her mother, however, she can feel the distance more sharply.

Kurovski described a hope that goes beyond day-to-day communication: she wants to hear her mother tell a complete story about her life. and she wants her mother to know her life too.. For her. building those connections isn’t just about meeting—it’s about learning each other in full. with time and patience rather than short visits.

Her reflections also extend into how she thinks about her research.. Kurovski said she sees parallels between her work and her lived experience.. She studies an animal that is often misunderstood. and she believes adoptees can be misunderstood in similar ways—talked about in broad terms without real understanding.. She also pointed to the nature of spiders themselves as living “in between,” both predator and prey.. That duality. she said. resembles how adoptees and many multicultural people can feel: not fitting neatly into one box. but existing somewhere between categories.

Because much of her work focuses on reproduction and mating behavior. Kurovski said she thinks often about what it means to bring life into the world.. In her view, that has made her appreciation for both of her mothers deeper.. She framed parenting as something that’s hard in any role. and noted that while her adoptive family remains her closest support system—her biggest cheerleaders—her adoptive mother was even more excited for her to meet her birth family than Kurovski felt in the moment.

Living in Korea helped her make sense of a question that used to come with pain: people telling her she wasn’t Korean or she wasn’t American.. She said she struggled with what those statements even meant for her identity, especially when she already carried both histories.. In Korea. she got to experience the culture firsthand and. for the first time. have her birth family pass it down to her in lived practice rather than theory.

At the same time. Kurovski stressed that her adoptive family is still very close. and that relationship remains central to her sense of self.. She ultimately said she’s learned to love being Korean and to love being American. with room to appreciate what matters in both worlds.. After years of searching for the right language to describe her identity. she described feeling more at peace with how she sees herself—an outcome that began with an unexpected email in Guam and continued through Fulbright scholarship. research life. and an evolving family bond in Seoul.

Korean adoptee Fulbright STEM Seoul Ph.D. student spider reproduction research birth family reunion identity journey