Twenty years ago, Carole Cangiano pursued what she thought was a once-in-a-lifetime volunteer opportunity. The mother of two adopted Korean-born daughters, Cangiano left her 8-month-old and 2-year-old girls home and flew to Korea, where she escorted a Korean baby to its adoptive parents in the United States.

The experience was so wonderful, Cangiano offered to do it again and again, and was soon a regular volunteer for the Korean adoption agency where she and then-husband Frank Balz had adopted their children. She continued to serve as an escort for adopted babies at a time when it was rare for families to fly there to pick up adopted children.

She also went to Seoul on purchasing trips, buying interesting and hard-to-find Korean goods that were then sold to adoptive families in the U.S. to raise funds for the Korean agency. “I used to buy thousands of items, sometimes 5,000 items in one year. I learned where to find the most obscure things at the markets in Seoul. It was fun, and the profits went back to adoption programs in Korea,” Cangiano says.

After about 40 such trips over nearly 10 years, Cangiano decided it was time to introduce her daughters to their homeland. While they had been very active in Korean cultural activities in their own Maryland community, they had not yet seen their native country.

Cangiano spent a year planning a trip that would expose the girls to the culture and history of Korea as well as contemporary society. Daughter Joanna traveled first with her mother at age 10, and Alison went the following year at age 9. The next year, Cangiano started a tour program for the adoption agency, where other families could bring their Korean-born children to explore the country. She ran tours for the agency for two years and then decided to strike out on her own.

In 1997, Cangiano founded Korea Homeland Tours, offering tours for adoptive families and their Korean-born children as well as adult adoptees. Each 16-day tour accommodates a group of 30 people who meet at two pre-trip orientation sessions and inevitably become lifelong friends after experiencing Korea together.

The tour starts in Seoul where the families visit the children’s Korean adoption agencies and explore their adoptions. “People have different levels of interest. Some families try to meet the birth parents, though not all are successful,” Cangiano says. “They all get a chance to meet the staff at their Korean agency, see babies being adopted and meet the foster mothers who cared for them. We go to a home for unwed mothers where the mothers are allowed to make whatever choice they want, to parent their child or to choose international or domestic adoption. They are very interested in knowing from the kids if they feel left out, if they feel different from their peers.”

After six days in Seoul, the group travels across about two-thirds of the Korean countryside. They visit theatres, palaces, temples and historic sites. They have an optional overnight visit with a Korean host family and explore teenage life at a school where the kids have already established pen-pal connections. They go hiking, to the beach, to a baseball game and learn about Buddhism from a monk who joins the tour for several days.

“We also visit communities that are famous for nothing at all. We go to a rice farm, a fishing village, little second-tier cities. We talk about lifestyles in those communities, what life is like in Korea today and what the children’s lives may have been like if they had stayed in Korea,” Cangiano says. “We experience intimate things together and become lifelong friends.”

The tours are typically sold out nearly a year in advance. Originally catering to families in Cangiano’s local community, Korea Homeland Tours now attracts persons from far and wide through its web site, [www.koreahomelandtours.com], as well as advertisements in adoption newsletters and listserves. When tour participants are located too far away to attend the orientation sessions, she provides videotapes and asks them to send videotaped introductions. “We keep in close touch as a group, so people feel they are already friends before the tour begins,” she says.

In addition to her work as a tour operator, Cangiano is co-founder of Korean Focus for Adoptive Families [www.koreanfocus.org]. Established in 1996, the organization today has several chapters and offers educational programs, support and information for adoptive families. Its mission is to help adoptive and multiethnic Korean-American families develop an appreciation of the rich heritage of Korea and the contributions of Korean-Americans to American culture. 

Cangiano is also a certified sign language interpreter for the deaf, which has been her profession for 30 years. She continues to work as a contract sign language interpreter on days when she is not working at her tour business, and she also teaches sign language classes. Her latest work in this arena includes teaching baby sign classes, so children can use expressive language at an earlier age.

Helping other people is simply what Cangiano loves to do, says her daughter Alison (Ali), a University of Delaware junior. “She’s overly generous. She loves what she does. She loves people.”

Ali has been to Korea with her mother five or six times. “I’ve met some families where the kids never learn anything about their heritage, and they get kind of confused,” she says. “By introducing my sister and me to the culture of Korea, it really helped us deal with the adoption. I’ll definitely be going back.”

—Sharon Huss Roat, AS ’87

Carole Cangiano lives in Silver Spring, Md.  Daughter Alison Balz is a junior majoring in animal science. Alison’s father, Frank Balz, is vice president for research and policy analysis at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.