 photographers, but I was a, I am a photographer, but I was a freelance photo journalist for many years and I was very fortunate. I worked for Time Magazine and National Geographic and many publications and I was doing a story many years ago about children who had been fathered by American GIs and I decided to six children in different countries and sort of tell the story of their lives of what it was like to be abandoned. There are 40,000 children every year basically abandoned in Southeast Asia. Wherever the United States, wherever their military troops anywhere in the world, basically there are children that are the result of it. The American government basically says these are the children of wanton women and the local governments tend to say these are the children of American GIs and these kids are left in the middle. One of the children I started photographing was a little girl named Unsuq who lived in a small village. This little girl was being raised by her grandmother, a small village up along the DMZ. This little girl was being raised by her grandmother and the moment I met her I could tell right away there's something different about this child because most of the children I had photographed were almost like concentration camp victims. They wouldn't look you in the eye, they were incredibly timid, they were hunched over. This little girl and the grandmother had this very special relationship. It was really, I'd never seen anything quite like it. The girl didn't seem at all to be aware of how different she looked than the other children in the village. She seemed to be very popular and I made a deal with her. I went with my translator to the village and I asked if I could spend a week there. I didn't speak a word of Korean so I asked through my translator if I could sleep in a little hut outside of their house and I said before my translator left to this little girl, Unsuq, if I ever do anything to embarrass you in any way just say stop and I'll stop taking pictures and throughout the week to delight her girlfriends at school she would look at me every once in a while and go stop and I would stand at attention and all the kids would crack up. I followed her to school this is an early morning getting ready for the the day and what's so remarkable about these children is that sometimes they look completely Korean. In this case she looked completely American. As I said most of the children I photographed that were Amar Asian were very timid and shy, not outgoing, went out of their way to be not looked at. Unsuq was very different. When the teachers asked questions she immediately raised her hand. She was very popular with the other girls. She obviously had very close relationships with the other girls in the village. She was very studious. At recess she was the girl that was choosing the other kids to be on her team. She was obviously a leader amongst these kids. This is walking home after school. And the relationship that she had with the grandmother was just extraordinary. Well I had been there now for a week. My translator came back. I asked her to come back at the end of this week and I started to say thank you to the grandmother. Throughout the week the little girl Unsuq started holding my hand on the way to school. It was really touching. I was 27 years old at the time. It was just sort of cool to have this little kid who seemed to like me. I was getting ready to leave. I sat down with the translator to say thank you and the grandmother started crying. I said to the translator, oh my gosh did I do something wrong? The translator talks to the grandmother and the translator starts crying. I said what's going on here? The translator said all of her life the grandmother's been telling Unsuq that someday her father will come back for her. The whole week you've been here the grandmother had the heart to tell her that you're not her father. All of a sudden all the pieces sort of clicked into place. I suddenly understood why she was showing me off to the other girls. Then she told me the grandmother said she was dying. She wanted to know if I would take Unsuq with me to America and adopt her. I immediately said I'm not married. I'm immature. I sleep on my sister's couch in New York. I don't even have a girlfriend. I also said can I take you to the hospital? Why do you think you're dying? I didn't know if I was being played because there are lots of stories of people in this situation trying to find someone to sort of give them money. But I felt the grandmother was quite genuine and I said if she was serious I would try to find a family for Unsuq but that I couldn't adopt her and I gave her my business card and I wasn't really 100% sure this is really happening but I felt like I gave her my word. So I immediately wrote I left Korea and I wrote to my best friend who some of you known as Jean Driscoll who's been photographing all of you this week and I said you know Jean you haven't heard from me in six months. I've been just finished doing the story for National Geographic. I'm doing about page seven of a 20 page letter. I said by the way I met this little girl and I remember you weren't mentioning that Jean had 11 year old son at the time. Jean was the opposite of me. Jean was Sandy's my little brother. Jean was the big brother I always wanted. I was the eldest of three children. I always wanted somebody to put their arm around me and say kid this is how you do it you know. So I called my pseudo big brother and Jean and his wife astoundingly without even asking for a picture of her said okay and then I went well wait a second I need to go back and talk to the grandmother because this is all moving a little too fast and not really sure the grandmother really wants to do this. So I was going to go back to Korea right after Christmas and on Christmas day I was in Bangkok the group of photographers sitting at Christmas dinner and a guy came down from the front desk and said is there a small in here and I raised my hand and they handed me a telegram and it said someone in Korea has died and left you a child in their will do you know anything about this. I never told time what I was doing. So I went back to Korea and I tried to find her and I went to the villa I went to the house where she lived the house was empty none of the villagers would tell me where she was. Finally a little girl that I had that she played with after school every day I went to this little girl and I said look you know what you saw me here before you know that Eunsuk liked me we're trying to find her nobody will tell us where she is and she very quietly gave us an address in the outside of Seoul. So I went with my translator we knocked on the door of this house and Eunsuk opens the door her eyes are completely bloodshot doesn't recognize me at all just like like a zombie a man comes to the door and sort of starts barking at us really yelling and I said the translator what is he saying and he wants to know who you are. I said well tell him I'm a photographer and she starts talking he interrupts her and she said he says he knows who you are he wants you to go away and I said well ask him who he is and she said he's her uncle and I and he says that he wants her to leave and I said look tell him I've come a very long way it's this is like bitterly cold in the middle of January in Korea it's 20 below zero or something so I I said would you tell him that I've come very long way I'm very cold I'd like to come inside just for one moment and so she very reluctantly let us inside and as he as we came inside I saw that he had Eunsuk bringing food out and taking care of his baby and it was to me it looked like Cinderella it was like this this happy little girl who had all these friends suddenly was in this sort of horrible little slum on the outside of Seoul and I asked him if I could have some tea and we sat down and in talking I said look I promised the sort of girls a grandmother I would find a family for her and I have and he said well I'm her uncle I'm the eldest male in my family she's fine you can leave now and I remember thinking like you know if this was a movie or something what would the hero do because I I knew the moment I walked out of the door this whole thing was over so I changed the conversation I started asking about himself I find when people are getting aggressive with you if you start asking them personal questions sometimes it sort of takes them off the main topic and I asked him if he'd started English and he loosened up a little bit and I said look I'm stuck here for a week I'm so glad by the way I said look I'm so happy you're going to take care of her I just wanted to make sure she had a roof over her head and somebody's looking after her I said you seem like a great guy just right and I said look I'm here for a week because I bought a ticket and I said would you like to come to my hotel and tomorrow you can practice English and you know I'm staying in a nice hotel downtown so he came downtown and I found two older amour Asian children I photographed a girl who was a prostitute she was in her 20s and a boy who was had been in and out of jail and I said look there's a little girl who has a tiny tiny hope of getting out of here and I said you know it's too late for you guys I mean one once you're past like 13 you can't be adopted I said but I want you to tell the uncle what people say to you when you walk down the street what it's like to be an amour Asian here and so he came to lunch not realizing he was about to be mugged and they just lit into this guy I don't know what they said within about three minutes we got thrown out of the restaurant at the hotel they were shouting at him he was completely red-faced we went outside he started screaming at me and I realized I completely blown this whole thing and I said to the translator you know what's he saying now and she said he said how dare you walk into my house with your cameras around your neck you're some rich American with your you know walking here wanting to whisk this beautiful little girl away and know nothing about you and you're accusing me of enslaving my own niece like who the hell are you and I said look you know I I'm really sorry for jumping to conclusions but I said I've been photographing these children all over Asia it's a terrible thing that my countrymen have done we left these children behind and I said I found a wonderful family for her in Atlanta and I said you know is she going to go to school if she stays with you and he said no he said but don't he said don't children help in America don't they help clean up their the homes don't they make tea and take care of the babies and I said well actually probably should do more of that than they do but I somehow convinced him that this that this girl is going to be more of a burden and a problem I also said look you know as much as you may love her everything I've seen it right now in Korea and I understand today it's different in 2010 than it was when I did the story but I said everything I've seen is a matter how much you may love her that your society is very unforgiving there's a tremendous amount of racism against these kids that are mixed blood so he invited me to the funeral it was happening the next day and it was just so it was just broke my heart to see her she was just completely so miserable and so missing the grandmother this is the same child you saw three months earlier and you can see how much older and sort of harder and obviously miserable she is I had photographed the American Mary no priest who was taking care of these children he had 75 children in his house and father keen so I suggested the uncle and I go down there because I said look I want you to feel comfortable that the American authorities will you know interview my friend and I even offered to fly Jean and his family over to Korea to meet the uncle to make sure he was comfortable with it on the way down to father Keen's father Keen interviewed her in Korean he spoke Korean fluently he's one of these priests would actually go out with the GIs and go to the whorehouses and go to the bars and actually say to the GIs you know screw your brains out but don't get these girls pregnant these are two children are unrelated at father Keen's orphanage the kids just took care of each other and you know my assumption was that it was the bad GIs but he said to me you know it's not the bad GIs he said some of the girls want to get pregnant because then they hope the whole family come over sometimes it's the bad GIs he said you know let's not let's not blame anywhere the point is let's find good families for these children so father Keen asked the uncle if she could come and move in with him and then Jean was going to be coming over very shortly so she moved into the orphanage I went off I had another another assignment I came back a week later and father Keen said I have to talk to you about it and so and I said okay what's wrong you said just come to my office so I go in the office and he says I've had hundreds of children come through the orphanage and he said there's three adults here and 75 children at any given time so you can imagine total utter bedlam and he said within two days she had made a list of all the older kids and assigned each of the older kids to one of the younger kids she set up days of who's going to clean which room and he said she's running the orphanage she's been her a week and he said I don't know who the grandmother was but he said I've never seen a child like this she also organized movie days on Tuesdays where she take all the older girls out for movies father Keen had a very interesting saying he said he said there's three kinds of children he's seen come through the orphanage there's glass plastic and steel the glass kids they're so shattered from their experience that they can no matter how much you love them there's nothing you can do for them they're they're just they're they're in pieces he said the plastic kids no matter what happens to them they're kind of who they are and he said the steel kids of the ones he said I've only seen one other child like this where the more adversity the tougher life is the better they get and he said I think that this child is going to have an amazing life all the children that were adopted right back to the women who are running the orphanage and the women had children who had gone over to America as well so the kids would all gather around they'd read letters what it was like to go and live in America so this is Gene started studying Korean like from the day that I wrote to him and Gail and he did a mural in his kitchen in Korean about a little girl who came from the hills of Korea to live happily ever after in Atlanta wrote her a letter telling her he was coming to see her here's Gene and the uncle huddled over a dictionary which is a very frequent site Gene showing the uncle where Atlanta Georgia is the uncle signing the adoption papers so this was a very momentous night we went to a restaurant to celebrate and Gene had brought his son over was also 11 years old the first night we're in Korea we got the kids we stayed in my room because I was paying for all this and the second night we went stayed at the orphanage with the kids and stuff on the floor and the third night we came back and this is Gene teaching she changed her name to Natasha this is Natasha teaching Gene had to use chopsticks so he went back to our hotel room Gene was showing her where Atlanta was it had been really a crazy three days and Gene was sleeping in one bed once the touch was sleeping the other bed I was on the floor in sleeping bag and his son Tim was next to me and the kids fell asleep and we were laying in the dark and Gene and I were talking about what great guys we were we're saying you know God we've done this great thing we saved this little girl's life and we're like heroes and we're so cool and was like yeah we're so cool and we fall asleep and I throughout the whole month I've been staying in this hotel room before by myself before Gene came over I always left that window open in the corner because it was always incredibly hot at night and every night at one o'clock to turn the heat off in the hotel so sure enough one o'clock comes I get up to turn close the window I'm hearing people shouting outside I thought you know the bars must have gotten out or something I get back on my sleeping bag and I suddenly thought wait a second there's a cure for you at midnight there's nobody in the streets in Korea after midnight it's one o'clock so I got and I put my glasses on to see what's going on and there's flames coming up the side of our hotel and the hotels on fire I run over to Gene and I try to wake him up and and I said don't freak out don't freak out I said I think the hotel's on fire he runs to the he runs to the window there's flames coming up now like by our window there's smoke just then you're starting to hear screaming glass breaking these weird thumps and we run to the we tried I remember his son LL being bootlaces and we're trying to put these bootlaces on and we try to we woke her up you know what kids are like when they've been asleep for an hour like they took five alliums and they're like this and we can't even talk to her and we run to the door and it's Gene Tim me and her and Gene opens the door and it's like walking into a blast furnace there's smoke there's people screaming in the halls smoke starts pouring in the room she's holding under the door knob and kicking me and Gene turns around and pushes us back in the room and says we're not going to make it and we're choking the whole room is now filled with smoke I'm just scared shitless and I just remember thinking oh my god I can't believe this is happening and the whole room is filled with smoke I remember Gene's son is lying on the floor I can't even see Gene through the smoke and and there's just you can just hear this level of panic rising through the hotel that along with us and Gene says to me we got to soak towels I said what he says we got to soak towels we're gonna die from the smoke so we run in the bathroom and get towels put them over the kids faces Gene said you have gaffers tape and I can't I said we can't even see each other I had you know this metallic tape that all photographers travel with so I said what he said we got it he said the smoke is pouring under the doors coming through the vents in the wall we're gonna die from the smoke I don't know if we're ever gonna get out of this fire I mean Gene totally saved our lives so we got the room service menus we taped up the walls we but blankets at the bottom of the door we're all now soaked from these wet towels we go to the window and we open the window try to get some air in the room still there's no fire engine no one's trying to get us out of the building it's just unbelievable it's been going for like 15 minutes now and there's people below us that are starting to jump out the windows and we had the kids in the windows will try to get them so we pull the kids off the windowsill and there's a bottle of Kahlua that he and I start drinking we turn the radio on thinking there'll be a report in the air service the American Air Force station and they're playing Chicago's Uptown Woman and it's like this is like totally surreal and the the two emotions I had during this whole thing is that I've just killed my best friend and his son and this little girl and here I was playing God and this is what you get for playing God the fire engines finally came they got everybody out the next day went back to her village where we first met her this is the last night Gina and Tim were in the town this is four months later she went to we go into the airport she flew to Atlanta is like an incredibly long flight Cathay Pacific actually let her sit in the cockpit and the pilot went back after her story and adopted one of the other kids from Father Keane's which is just amazing Giel was three days away from giving birth to her own daughter I promised Natasha that she could cut off my beard when we got to Atlanta Kylie was born three days later it's her bedroom with the first picture I took her for she learned English in three months entered seventh grade at her own age level what took the bus to school first pledge of allegiance decided who's gonna be on her team at recess because she just assumed she would be in charge she's been like this most of her life tense moment in the in the first football game of the season she just absolutely loved her sister Kylie and Taylor baptism you know a lot of families when they adopt try to race their children's past and Gina Gale did the opposite they all bought Korean clothes they started going to Korean church it's quite amazing Natasha's first job Burger King and she used to buy a bright red carmen gear computer camp starting water fights all of her boyfriends were blondes captain of the cheerleaders homecoming queen Jean's annual card she got hired by Delta Airlines and has been a flight attendant for them for many years went back to Korea for the first time and there she is with her uncle her wedding day there's Jean walking his daughter down the aisle Natasha's sort of she's been more matured than me since the day I met her and she now is too wonderful children and that's her husband Jeff and that's the last picture and by the way I decided the best gift I could ever give Natasha was to never publish her story she actually wants to actually do a book now together but before I did the story the most important thing in the world to me was getting published and I realized the best gift I could give her was just to have her life and I'm grateful to to Jean for having raised my sort of first daughter thank you very much jean I think you should stand out