Korean international adoptees' desperate search for birth relatives
Arirang News
2018-01-29
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South Korea is the sixth-largest source of international adoptees.
Over 166-thousand Koreans have been adopted by families from other countries, and a great number of them have gone on long, challenging journeys to find their birth relatives.
But unfortunately,... there's very little chance of them actually succeeding.
Our Park Hee-jun had the chance to meet some adoptees currently searching for their roots.
"It was not their choice to leave their country of birth or their parents. But the tens of thousands of Koreans who were adopted by overseas families, often live with an unbearable curiosity about their origins. Many of them return to Korea,... but only to face many obstacles during their quest to find what they're looking for."
Rosita is an international adoptee visiting Korea in search of her roots.
Adopted by a family in the United States as a baby,... she has been doing everything she can for years to track down her biological mother.
But because of a lack of records and adoption agencies refusing to share what little information they have,... the likelihood of succeeding is extremely low.
In fact, according to the Korea Adoption Services,... 71 percent of adoptees hope to locate their birth relatives, but only 28 percent succeed.
"The biggest obstacle was that when my birth mother gave birth to me, she didn't leave her name. Or if she did, there was no written record of it. It makes it almost impossible to track that down so you have to go through other means."
Other means include submitting DNA samples to the police, who collect a database of missing people,... which adoptees and their birthparents can also use.
"I really feel that it's the most important part of my search for my birth mother and my birth family. Because if she does decide to search for me, I feel like it's a pretty logical choice to go to the police station. So if there's a DNA record of me here, she could also leave her DNA and if we make a match that would prove we're related."
To make it easier for the two sides to reunite,... experts say there needs to be a shift in Korea's overemphasis on privacy protection.
"The protection of the birthparents' privacy conflicts with the adoptees' right to know. There needs to be more discussion among lawmakers and experts in the field. There's only so much we can do for adoptees within the boundaries of the law."
It's only when these changes take place that adoptees say they can truly and completely feel like they are at home in Korea.
"Before I came to Korea for the very first time, I had a lot of anxiety about,... would I not like Korea, would it feel weird, would I dislike the smells or the food or the anything. And what was so shocking was,... the minute I touched ground, it was as though the smell of Korea was like a blanket being wrapped around me. Because I think on a base, biological, cellular level, we remember. I can’t remember as an adult, but I remember. Biologically I remembe
Over 166-thousand Koreans have been adopted by families from other countries, and a great number of them have gone on long, challenging journeys to find their birth relatives.
But unfortunately,... there's very little chance of them actually succeeding.
Our Park Hee-jun had the chance to meet some adoptees currently searching for their roots.
"It was not their choice to leave their country of birth or their parents. But the tens of thousands of Koreans who were adopted by overseas families, often live with an unbearable curiosity about their origins. Many of them return to Korea,... but only to face many obstacles during their quest to find what they're looking for."
Rosita is an international adoptee visiting Korea in search of her roots.
Adopted by a family in the United States as a baby,... she has been doing everything she can for years to track down her biological mother.
But because of a lack of records and adoption agencies refusing to share what little information they have,... the likelihood of succeeding is extremely low.
In fact, according to the Korea Adoption Services,... 71 percent of adoptees hope to locate their birth relatives, but only 28 percent succeed.
"The biggest obstacle was that when my birth mother gave birth to me, she didn't leave her name. Or if she did, there was no written record of it. It makes it almost impossible to track that down so you have to go through other means."
Other means include submitting DNA samples to the police, who collect a database of missing people,... which adoptees and their birthparents can also use.
"I really feel that it's the most important part of my search for my birth mother and my birth family. Because if she does decide to search for me, I feel like it's a pretty logical choice to go to the police station. So if there's a DNA record of me here, she could also leave her DNA and if we make a match that would prove we're related."
To make it easier for the two sides to reunite,... experts say there needs to be a shift in Korea's overemphasis on privacy protection.
"The protection of the birthparents' privacy conflicts with the adoptees' right to know. There needs to be more discussion among lawmakers and experts in the field. There's only so much we can do for adoptees within the boundaries of the law."
It's only when these changes take place that adoptees say they can truly and completely feel like they are at home in Korea.
"Before I came to Korea for the very first time, I had a lot of anxiety about,... would I not like Korea, would it feel weird, would I dislike the smells or the food or the anything. And what was so shocking was,... the minute I touched ground, it was as though the smell of Korea was like a blanket being wrapped around me. Because I think on a base, biological, cellular level, we remember. I can’t remember as an adult, but I remember. Biologically I remembe
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