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By SKT Author

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — They began a pilgrimage that thousands before them have done.

They boarded long flights to their motherland, South Korea, to undertake an emotional, often frustrating, sometimes devastating search for their birth families.

These adoptees are among the 200,000 sent from South Korea to Western nations as children. Many have grown up, searched for their origin story and discovered that their adoption paperwork was inaccurate or fabricated. They have only breadcrumbs to go on: grainy baby photos, names of orphanages and adoption agencies, the towns where they were said to have been abandoned. They don’t speak the language. They’re unfamiliar with the culture. Some never learn their truth.

Lee Hsien Yang, who has been granted political asylum in the UK from what he called persecution in Singapore, as he is interviewed by Associated Press in London, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

I want my mother to know I’m OK and that her sacrifice was not in vain.”

- Kenneth Barthel, adopted and taken to Hawaii in 1979 when he was 6 years old.

He hung flyers all over Busan, where his mother abandoned him at a restaurant. She ordered him soup, went to the bathroom and never returned. Police found him wandering the streets and took him to an orphanage. He didn’t think much about finding his birth family until he had his own son, imagined himself as a boy and yearned to understand where he came from.

He has visited South Korea four times, without any luck. He says he’ll keep coming back, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

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Some who make this trip learn things about themselves they’d thought were lost forever.

In a small office at the Stars of the Sea orphanage in Incheon, South Korea, Maja Andersen sat holding Sister Christina Ahn’s hands. Her eyes grew moist as the sister translated the few details available about her early life at the orphanage.

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She had loved being hugged, the orphanage documents said, and had sparkling eyes.

“Thank you so much, thank you so much,” Andersen repeated in a trembling voice. There was comfort in that — she had been hugged, she had smiled.

She’d come here searching for her family.

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Andersen had been admitted to the facility as a malnourished baby and was adopted at 7 months old to a family in Denmark, according to the documents. She says she’s grateful for the love her adoptive family gave her, but has developed an unshakable need to know where she came from. She visited this orphanage, city hall and a police station, but found no new clues about her birth family.

Still she remains hopeful, and plans to return to South Korea to keep trying. She posted a flyer on the wall of a police station not far from the orphanage, just above another left by an adoptee also searching for his roots.

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Korean adoptees have organized, and now they help those coming along behind them. Non-profit groups conduct DNA testing. Sympathetic residents, police officers and city workers of the towns where they once lived often try to assist them. Sometimes adoption agencies are able to track down birth families.

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Motta’s adoption documents say her father was away for work for long stretches and his wife struggled to raise three children alone. He told her she was gone when he came back from one trip, and claimed his brother gave her away. He hasn’t spoken to the brother since, he said, and never knew she was adopted abroad.

More from this series

An investigation led by The Associated Press and documented by Frontline (PBS) reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving South Korea’s foreign adoption program, which peaked in the 1970s and `80s amid huge Western demands for babies.

South Korea’s adoption system sent 200,000 children to families in the United States, Europe and Australia. Many who have searched for their roots discovered that their adoption paperwork was inaccurate or fabricated.
Western governments turned a blind eye to rampant fraud and sometimes pressured the South Korean government to keep the kids coming. Now many adoptees believe they were stolen.
Adoptees endure emotional, sometimes devastating searches for their birth families. The AP investigation found that children were systemically listed as abandoned, even though researchers have found that the vast majority had known relatives.
The U.S. has brought hundreds of thousands of children from abroad, not just South Korea, to be adopted by American families. But many adoptees were left without citizenship and at risk of deportation because of loopholes in American law.
Readers shared their stories with the AP.

Motta’s adoption file leaves it unclear whether the brother had a role in her adoption. It says she was under the care of unspecified neighbors before being sent to an orphanage that referred her to an adoption agency, which sent her abroad in 1985.

She studied his face. She wondered if she looks like her siblings or her mother, who has since died.

“I think I have your nose,” Motta said softly.

They both sobbed.

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Interactive: “Who Am I, Then?” Stories from South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning.

Associated Press journalist Claire Galofaro contributed to this report.

Nearly four decades after her adoption to the U.S., Nicole Motta in May sat across the table from a 70-year-old man her adoption agency had identified as her birth father. She typed “thanks for meeting me today” into a translation program on her phone to show him. A social worker placed hair samples into plastic bags for DNA testing.

But the moment they hugged, Motta, adopted to the United States in 1985, didn’t need the results — she knew she’d come from this man.

SKT Author

Test SKT : Associated Press reporter covering law enforcement and courts in New York City, including former President Donald Trump’s criminal and civil cases and problems plaguing the federal prison system.

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