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Dan Matthews best known by his fans, Asian Americans and adoptees in the YouTube community by his performance name as DANakaDAN who is a YouTuber and alternative hip-hop artist/musician use his music and content on YouTube to talk about his experience with self-identity as a Korean American adoptee. He was born in June 5th 1985 as In Soo Park by his birth name, 2 months premature together with his twin brother he never knew about (who also raps) until his recent trip to South Korea to meet his birth family. He was nursed to health by a foster mother for 7 months before he was adopted by the Matthews family. His journey to meet his birth family including his biological little sister at South Korea in the summer of 2013 plus his Kickstarter campaign of over $34,000, all went towards the production of his documentary film.
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To him it is a very personal topic when it comes to his birth family, he initially didn’t want to film it, yet decided to in the end as he would regret it for the rest of his life. As he was born in 1985 which puts him as an early millennial generation, he currently represents the Asian American (Korean) adoptees of his generation though his music and YouTube both his own channel and ISAtv (International Secret Agents) as the lead content creator and producer which is a collaboration network founded by Far East & Wong Fu Productions. He had his episodic documentary film called AKA Dan about his story of reuniting with his biological family and meeting his identical twin brother during the summer of 2013. In the Daily Northwestern article, Joo-Young Lee, a external cultural chair of KASA said both KASA and APAC used Korea Peace Day as a platform to raise awareness on social issues in both Korean and Korean American communities. Both Lee and the Weinberg sophomore said.
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“We tried to focus on Korean adoption (because) it’s a really big part of Korean society and history that a lot (of) people don’t know about…We hope through this event a lot more people can find out about it.” (5) This issue of Korean adoptees by foreign parents is generally been frowned upon in Korea since the end of Korean War and this topic is often ignored among Koreans. The diverse range of Korean adoptees across worldwide as described by Matthews as widely differentiating multi-experiences growing up in a new culture. Because of his prevalence in the YouTube music scene, the organizers of a conference on Korean adoptees reached out to him which sparked his realization that there is a vast community of adoptees like him and inspired to look for his birth family. “I don’t think I would (have) met my biological family if it wasn’t for my music.” (8) After his experience, he and a team of three traveled to Seoul to document five other adoptees with LGBTQ issues for AKA Seoul. On his recent interviews, he was explaining the process of and purpose for creating the documentary on the article of Daily Pennsylvanian, “I hope to get to know them better and get more people to see the documentary. I think it is good content for the adoptee community…” then he also said. “The hardest part was trying to balance trying to get to know my biological family and how to film them. There was a fine line between balancing trying to be able to get the content versus trying to get to know them and living my life.” (11) On addition to reaching out to the adoptee community, he also hopes to raise the concept of Asian awareness through YouTube despite a very small percentage of Asian-American adoptees. His albums reflects his passion of alternative-infused hip-hop combined with electronic music, and his heavy involvement of Asian American communities especially the Korean adoptee community that even non-adoptees are interested on the adoptee topic.