About the Makers

Canaries in the Motherland is the creation of Chistopher Dykas, a half-Korean, half-Polish American from Los Angeles, California. Chris lived in Germany and France before finally breaking through the myth of Euro-centrism to move to Korea, and has been living and working here since July of 2006. Canaries in the Motherland is the combined result of both frustration with life in Korea, the status-quo of English teacher life and the inspiration of fellow overseas Koreans doing great work to support and enrich the community.

Nari Baker is a Korean American adoptee. She moved to Seoul in July of 2007 on a Fulbright research grant and is working on progressive social change on the peninsula, gathering oral histories from international adoptees in Korea, and building gyopo community empowerment. Nari joined Canaries in the Motherland in November 2007 because she feels that the network of Korean adoptees is too often isolated from other diasporic Korean communities, and that the project is an important site for building a broader diasporic solidarity. She is working on another project, Talking to Ghosts, a series of recorded dialogues with her envisioned birth mother from various places on the peninsula.