Please tell us about you and your work!

I’m Samara, also known as Kim Soo Im (김수임), a Korean adoptee, researcher, writer, and community organiser living on unceded Gadigal land. With a background in international development and grassroots advocacy, my work bridges decolonial feminist theory, diaspora solidarity, and transformative justice.

Currently, I am a PhD candidate at Southern Cross University, researching the embodied politics of intercountry adoption and manufactured orphanhood in South Korea. My research, Families for babies or babies for families? Manufactured orphans in Australia’s global adoption industrial complex, is grounded in lived experience and explores the nuance and complexity of adoption—particularly in light of South Korea’s adoption program, which is currently under investigation for human rights abuses and illegal practices.

I also work alongside A/Prof Kathomi Gatwiri on the ARC DECRA project Beyond Inclusion: Belonging and Racial Dignity for Africans in Australia, contributing to the development of the Racial Dignity Framework.

I’m a founding member of KADS Connect, an adoptee-led collective advocating for a National Inquiry into human rights abuses (including illegal adoptions and trafficking) in Ausralian intercountry adoption.

You can also find me at the Reproductive Justice Network at the University of Melbourne.

Other links:

• Profile – Samara Kim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samara-kim-james/
• Journal article – Complex Encounters of ‘Homecoming’: A Critical Autoethnographic Theorisation of Returning ‘Home’ as a South Korean Transracial-Transnational Adoptee: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07256868.2024.2440469
• Journal article – Reversing the Gaze: An Autoethnographic Critique of Transracial–Transnational Adoption to Australia: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cfs.13293
• Media article – Children in need of ‘rescuing’: challenging the myths at the heart of the global adoption industry: https://theconversation.com/children-in-need-of-rescuing-challenging-the-myths-at-the-heart-of-the-global-adoption-industry-254200

A call to action:

Together with a group of Korean adoptee advocates, we’ve formed KADS Connect to push for a National Inquiry into intercountry adoption (including Korea) in Australia.

You may have seen our stories featured across national and international media this past year across: ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, SBS, The New York Times, NPR, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, CNN, and countless community platforms.

We hope this turning point is just the beginning.

If you’re connected to this space—or have experience influencing policymakers through research—please reach out to me. Your generosity, solidarity, and support️ would mean so much as we can’t do this alone.

You can also support by signing our petition here: https://www.change.org/p/national-inquiry-into-human-rights-abuses-in-south-korean-adoptions-to-australia

For more information about KADS Connect, you can find us here: https://kadsconnect.com/ or @kadsconnect on Insta and Facie.

How did you come to be in AWGSA/What is your role and what is your hope for AWGSA in your term?

I first encountered AWGSA as a postgraduate student at the last conference! I was seeking a critical decolonial feminist research community—one that could hold us in place while we navigate the complexities of lived experience research. I was fortunate to be invited in by my supervisor, A/Prof Kathomi Gatwiri (the former President of AWGSA), who encouraged me to join.

I now serve on the Committee as one of the HDR representatives, where I hope to contribute to building connections, fostering knowledge-sharing, and cultivating collective care—especially for those of us navigating academic institutions as minoritised, racialised, diasporic, or first-generation scholars. I see AWGSA as a space for radical imagination, solidarity-building, and liberatory decolonial feminist praxis, and I’m committed to helping nurture and grow that vision.

What’s ‘feminism’ mean to you?

For me, (decolonial) feminism is a living and embodied practice of disruption, disembodiment, and healing. It involves challenging overlapping systems of oppression—patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism—that dehumanise and subjugate. But it is also about visioning otherwise: reclaiming dignity, voicing our raw truths, and building worlds rooted in care, interdependence, and justice. 

Decolonial feminist theory and praxis isn’t just intellectual—it’s theory in the flesh, “where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity” (Moraga and Anzaldúa, 1981).

Who are your feminist influences and are there any readings you can recommend?

I draw strength and guidance from a range of feminist and decolonial thinkers. Foundational to my thinking are:

• Gloria Anzaldúa, PhD – Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

• A/Prof Kathomi Gatwiri – for her work on Racial Dignity
• A/Prof Yaso Nadarajah – for her work on Critical Reflexivity and Decolonial Methodology

I’m also deeply inspired by adoptee-led critical adoption scholarship, including:
Bergquist (2004); Docan-Morgan (2016, 2023); Domyancich-Lee (2022); Godon-Decoteau (2018); Hübinette (2004); Kim et al. (2017); Kim (2020); Langrehr et al. (2015); McKee (2020); Song & Gustafsson (2023); Walton (2012, 2015).

A favourite book I keep returning to:

• Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1982) – a groundbreaking and experimental work that blends poetry, autobiography, history, and visual media. Dictee weaves together the fragmented lives of multiple women—Cha herself, her mother, Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, and others—against the backdrop of colonisation, war, exile, and diaspora.

What’s one thing you wish others knew about women/gender/[other areas of expertise]?

Adoption is deeply entangled with histories of reproductive violence and a genealogy of the sexual exploitation and trafficking of women and girls. The overlapping oppressions of gender-based violence, racism, classism, and the ongoing effects of colonial capitalism—or what María Lugones terms the coloniality of gender—operate in the subjugation of Korean women and the removal of their children (primarily girls). These children are often commodified and forcibly removed, migrated, and assimilated by nation-states, private enterprises, and philanthropic groups under the guise of rescue and love.

At the same time, I think for myself—and for many others who have been commodified and dehumanised or had their ‘racial dignity’ eroded or denied (Gatwiri, 2025)—it’s the small things that also matter. How we’re looked at, whether we’re truly seen and heard, or whether we’re only ever expected to please and perform gratitude. Our everyday interactions shape us too—from seemingly innocuous questions like “Where are you from?” to moments of outright humiliation and aggression.

What is the biggest issue facing women and people of diverse genders today and how can people help/support/activate and advocate for change?

Big question—and one I’m feeling the weight of.

For me, one of the biggest issues is the persistent devaluation and simultaneous commodification of our bodies, knowledge, labour, and lives. This structural violence is normalised across nearly all facets of society, where both silence and anger are weaponised against us or rendered invisible. I’m also deeply concerned about the rise of violent extremism and backlash against dissenting voices, particularly those speaking out privately in their everyday lives and publicly through scholarship, activism and creative works.