As she searches for her birth parents, two pages of a file change everything

Tiphaine Scholz was born in South Korea and adopted by a couple from Europe. Years later, this turns out to be completely unsuitable. Scholz goes looking for her biological parents. But on a trip to her native country, she learns things she would have preferred never to have known.

An a day in August, Tiphaine Scholz stands in her kitchen and imagines what she would say to her birth mother if they were to face each other one day. It's a simple, conciliatory sentence: "I'm not mad at you." Tiphaine is preparing Korean ribs, a dish that reminds her of the country of her birth. She is sure that her birth mother is blaming herself hugely.

A few months later, in December, everything is different. Tiphaine sits on the sofa. She has made a trip to South Korea, a journey into her past. She experienced things there that overwhelmed her like a wave that first buries what has been washed up and then pulls it back into the ocean. “I now wonder whether women in South Korea have no heart,” says Tiphaine. If she were to meet her birth mother now, she would only have one question for her: “Why?”