Coming Full Circle: The Journey of a Korean Transgendered Adoptee

Filmmaker Larry Tung's short documentary focuses on Pauline Park, a New York transgender rights activist who was born in Korea and adopted by white American parents. Park left Korea as a 7-month-old boy, growing up in Milwaukee in an all-white neighborhood. Fifty-four years after leaving Korea, Park returned to participate in LGBT pride festival activities in Seoul and to attempt to locate her birth family through a social services agency. While Park's search for her family turns up fruitless, she takes satisfaction in a new extended family of LGBT Koreans who test their country's tolerance parameters. Park's early life story is fascinating, but is touched on much too briefly—Park was adopted with a twin brother, but he is never seen beyond old photographs and we don't know if the two still maintain a relationship. Likewise, the view of LGBT life in Korea would have benefited from more depth than is possible in a short film. And while Park is an articulate raconteur, much of the footage shot in Seoul comes across like a home movie, with too many snapshots of the subject posing around the city, including a long monologue marveling over the city's landmark Sungnyemun gate. Optional. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)