{"id":228431,"date":"2026-10-23T10:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T10:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/adoptees-from-korea-say-they-were-abused-and-isolated-in-the-us-were-they-also-stolen-from-their-birth-parents-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T10:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T10:29:13","slug":"adoptees-from-korea-say-they-were-abused-and-isolated-in-the-us-were-they-also-stolen-from-their-birth-parents-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/adoptees-from-korea-say-they-were-abused-and-isolated-in-the-us-were-they-also-stolen-from-their-birth-parents-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Adoptees from Korea say they were abused and isolated in the US. Were they also \u2018stolen\u2019 from their birth parents? – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, South Korea took responsibility for enabling the \u2018mass export\u2019 of children for sale abroad. Now those uprooted are grappling with false promises of a better life
As international, transracial adoptees in their 30s in the US, Jacquelyn Wells and Lauren White-Gydas have things in common.
They were both born in South Korea<\/a> to unwed mothers in the 1980s. Both were shipped to the US as newborns to join white families who eagerly welcomed adorable, new daughters. And neither knew many other Asians in the towns where they grew up \u2013 Wells in Westford, Massachusetts, and White-Gydas in Salem, Oregon.
But from there, their paths in the US split in dramatic, unpredictable ways.
On a sunny spring day last year, Wells, 39, sat in her cozy home in southern Maine, her babbling, infant son nestled in her lap and wedding photos of her recent marriage to her first-generation Asian American spouse lining the walls. In one, Wells poses in her white gown alongside her beloved adoptive mom, who wears a gold dress, and her Korean birth mother, in a flowing hanbok. They beam, smiles emblematic of more than just the happy occasion.
Wells was reunited with her biological parents, now married, and two full blood brothers during a trip to Seoul in 2018, when she was 31. She met her birth mother first, after reaching out through her adoption agency. \u201cI was so afraid you were going to be so angry with me,\u201d said her birth mother, who voluntarily relinquished Wells during a temporary breakup with Wells\u2019s birth father.
Wells, a singer-songwriter, had a concert booked in the city the next day. Right before she went on stage she got a text: \u201cI\u2019m your brother. I\u2019m on the high speed train, we are coming to your show.\u201d From the stage she saw all four walk in, dressed in black, just like her. She later collaborated on a track<\/a> with one of her brothers, singing in English as he rapped in Korean. \u201cWe became best friends,\u201d she said.
Wells\u2019s experience appears to be the epitome of \u201creunion porn\u201d: feelgood stories of adoptees meeting birth families, which often go viral when shared online but ignore the complex nature of international, transracial adoption. It is for that reason that Wells, who is co-president of Boston Korean Adoptees<\/a>, is reluctant to share hers.
\u201cI feel guilty that I won the adoption Lotto,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I learned the stories of hundreds of fellow adoptees where the outcomes were nothing of the sort.\u201d
Adoptees like White-Gydas.
White-Gydas also has a photo with adoptive parents on her wedding day, but to her it amounts to sugary frosting, hiding rot. There\u2019s no longed-for baby in White-Gydas\u2019s arms, because in 1999, when she was 10, her American adopters left her in a children\u2019s home for failed adoptions. White-Gydas alleges the home\u2019s director put pressure on her to have a surgery that cut out her womb and ovaries when she was 18, sterilising her.
After decades on separate paths, White-Gydas and Wells\u2019s stories have converged again. In March of 2025, South Korea admitted government responsibility<\/a> for enabling private adoption agencies to \u201cmass export\u201d Korean children for sale abroad, sometimes without the consent of birth families, since the 1950s. Now, more than 100,000 Korean-born adoptees in the US are asking themselves questions like: \u201cWho am I, really? And how did I get here?\u201d
The story told in the US of international adoption is often presented as a holy trinity: a woman struggling in a poor country, a newborn in need of a better life, and a western couple with love and resources in abundance. It is familiar to anyone who watched celebrities such as Mia Farrow and Angelina Jolie popularise foreign adoptions. Katherine Heigl, whose older sister was adopted from South Korea, in turn adopted her daughter Naleigh from the same country in 2009. \u201cIt is this gorgeous girl \u2026 born of a young woman who could not raise her but could give her the gift of life \u2026 that made me a mother,\u201d Heigl posted<\/a> on Naleigh\u2019s 11th birthday.
Last March, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)<\/a> convened by the South Korean government acknowledged the underhanded role South Korea played in delivering newborns to western couples\u2019 doors.
It began in 1955, when an evangelical Oregon couple, Bertha and Harry Holt, were \u201cled by God\u201d<\/a> to \u201csave\u201d thousands of mixed-race babies fathered by GIs during the Korean war and left on the streets<\/a> in economically devastated, conservative South Korea. They adopted eight themselves and set up an adoption agency, Holt Children\u2019s Services, to help other Americans do the same. Arissa Oh, a historian of Asian American immigration at Boston College, said a combination of Red Scare-era thinking, an inclination for white saviourism, and promotion by churches drove customers to the agency\u2019s services. \u201cPeople who had little interest in adopting brown babies in America went abroad to \u2018rescue orphans\u2019 from communism,\u201d Oh said.
The original Korean war babies ran out by around the 1960s. But \u201corphan fever\u201d<\/a> had already spread across the US and Europe, where women\u2019s increasing access to welfare, contraception and abortion would lead to shortages of infants to adopt domestically. \u201cThat\u2019s when market mechanisms come in,\u201d said Oh, who authored the book To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption.<\/em> With the Korean government\u2019s blessing, \u201ccompeting agencies sprang up to keep the pipeline going\u201d.
According to Oh, the surge in adoptions became a source of wealth, welfare savings and soft power for Korea, now the world\u2019s 15th largest economy. Its blueprint was replicated by Russia, China, Guatemala and Ethiopia, among many, all claiming to struggle with rehoming children domestically due to poverty, medical needs or policies like China\u2019s one-child rule. US politicians \u2013 including President Dwight Eisenhower, who the Holts lobbied in the 1950s; Senator John McCain, who adopted from a Bangladesh orphanage in 1993; and Hillary Clinton, who in 2012 called international adoption \u201can important matter of foreign policy\u201d<\/a> \u2013 have also championed the framework. International adoption to the US peaked in 2004<\/a>, when 23,000 children landed on American soil. Adopters today pay an estimated $30,000 to $60,000<\/a> per foreign child.
Then in December, on the heels of the TRC, South Korea announced international adoption of its children will end by 2029<\/a>. That means in three years\u2019 time, many of the world\u2019s most prolific \u201csending countries\u201d will be closed for business: Romania<\/a>, Guatemala<\/a>, Nepal<\/a>, Ethiopia<\/a> and China<\/a> have already banned or limited foreign adoptions amid accusations of trafficking children via international adoption.
Months before the announcement, Korea\u2019s president, Lee Jae Myung, offered a \u201cheartfelt apology\u201d to adoptees and birth parents for the government\u2019s complicity in allowing agencies to dismantle generations of Korean families so white people could make new ones in the west.
According to the TRC, which took three years to consider evidence<\/a> from 367 adoptions to 11 countries between 1964 and 1999, young, mostly unmarried Korean mothers felt pressure to give up babies due to stigma and poverty. It confirmed fraudulent practices in 56 cases in which children were adopted without valid parental consent or with falsified records claiming they were orphans even if they had living relatives; the cases were handled by multiple adoption agencies, including the one set up by the Holts. Reporting in 2024 by AP\/PBS Frontline <\/a>went further, alleging children were kidnapped off the street and from hospitals to be adopted.
Susan Soonkeum Cox, vice-president of policy and external affairs at Holt International, which split from Holt Children\u2019s Services (South Korea) in the 1970s, acknowledged that some children were improperly separated from their families by Holt and sent on fraudulent documents, but told the Guardian there was \u201cnot evil intent\u201d and denied that children were \u201ctrafficked\u201d.
She said: \u201cHolt is very concerned about [the Guardian\u2019s reporting] and takes it very seriously. Holt feels strongly that every adoptee has the right to their own story and experience and how they interpret it belongs to them. Anyone who has come forward with experiences that were negative we respect that and we frankly are deeply saddened by it.\u201d
Cox, a Korean-born adoptee to the US in 1956, continued: \u201cHolt has been very determined to provide ethical, professional services. Were mistakes made in the beginning? Of course they were, but we were a very strong proponent of The Hague Convention<\/a> [on Intercountry Adoption, established in 1993] because there had to be global standards.\u201d Holt Children\u2019s Services (South Korea) did not respond to a request for comment.
The revelations caused a wave of mass awareness among Korean-born adoptees in the US.
Katie Bozek, 45, a Korean-born adoptee and couples therapist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said \u201cwaking up\u201d to the dark reality of Korea\u2019s adoption industry felt like being deprogrammed, or entering a multiverse like in the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/a> and becoming aware of infinite parallel lives she might have led.
\u201cThousands of adoptees are popping their heads out of the water, seeing [allegations such as] \u2018kidnapping\u2019, \u2018trafficked\u2019, and going, \u2018where am I?\u2019\u201d Bozek said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to explain to people that phrases like \u2018I just found out my friend was kidnapped,\u2019 \u2018I may have been stolen\u2019 or \u2018my file is a lie\u2019 are not extreme hypotheticals.\u201d
Bozek\u2019s adoption file claimed she was found near a police station in Korea in 1981. In 1982, she was adopted by a white Michigan family whom she loved. But outside the home, she endured painful, racist bullying, and yearned to be blond.
International adoptees are frequently the only person of color in mostly white families. On the advice of agencies to \u201cnot see race\u201d, some families were unprepared to help adopted children deal with intrusive questions like: \u201cwhere did they get you?\u201d or \u201cwhy didn\u2019t your real parents want you?\u201d In decades past, white adopters were more likely to downplay racist comments<\/a> or ignore adoptees\u2019 racial or ethnic backgrounds, leading to incidental promotion of whiteness as \u201cnormal\u201d or \u201cbetter\u201d. Some Asian adoptees reported feeling isolated among Asian people too, who can perceive them as \u201ctoo white to be Asian and too Asian to be white\u201d<\/a> \u2013 a double rejection.
Growing up, Bozek had few Korean role models to teach her about her birth culture. \u201cIt was hard because the dominant adoption narrative says: \u2018You went to the best country in the world! You should be grateful we saved you,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cBut I [feel an] ambiguous loss of something \u2026 When I\u2019m in Korea I can sense it, I can smell it, I can taste it.\u201d
Bozek started searching for her biological parents aged just 13. While she hasn\u2019t yet found them, in 2019 and 2021 she discovered two first cousins through 23andMe\u2019s DNA testing. They are also US adoptees, and half siblings. It sparked more uncomfortable questions: were agencies plucking multiple children off the streets at the same time?
In 2018 Bozek became the executive director of Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN) \u2013 the first leader who is an adoptee, not an adopter. Since the initial TRC bombshell, KAAN has welcomed new members seeking support as they process complex feelings of anger, guilt and loss.
Thousands of adoptees, some of whom are in their 60s and 70s, await their turn to be heard by the TRC. In the meantime, many are trying to track down adoption paperwork in Korea. Despite widespread fraud, these files still contain scraps of evidence, making them holy grails to adoptees hoping to piece together clues about their origins, reclaim lost identity, and find family.
US adoptee Oh Myo Kim, 46, a psychologist in Brookline, Massachusetts, who specializes in adoption, was in Seoul on a Fulbright scholarship when the TRC\u2019s report was announced and felt its full force hit the adoptee community. \u201cJust off the top of my head, I know four Korean adoptees who found out they were stolen,\u201d she said.
The mother of two, adopted by a white family in New Jersey in 1981, became an accidental activist when she co-founded Emergency Action for Records Storage<\/a> (EARS) with other adoptees, after plans were revealed for the Korean government to centralise adoptee files in inadequate storage<\/a>, possibly delaying access for years and damaging or destroying fragile paperwork. In between school runs and work at Boston College, Kim uses vacation days to fly 7,000 miles to lobby a foreign government to better care for the documents \u2013 and identities \u2013 of thousands of strangers, in a language she still speaks \u201clike a child\u201d, she joked.
But adoptees are also searching for something files can\u2019t always provide: a sense of belonging. \u201cI feel like adoptees chase fiction. They chase ghosts,\u201d Kim said. \u201cOn my paperwork it says my parents were married and gave me up as I was their fourth daughter, but there are no parental signatures. Do I have sisters?\u201d
While the TRC surprised many adoptees, activists had sounded alarms since the 1970s, when the first adult adoptees from Korea found birth families and learned the truth of their adoptions. But the advent of commercial DNA genetic testing in the 2010s was the gamechanger, facilitating more reunions \u2013 as well as lawsuits<\/a> against the Korean government from two birth mothers. One, Han Tae-soon, claimed<\/a> her four-year-old daughter, Kyung-Ha, went missing while playing outside in 1975. Mother and daughter were reunited in 2019 after Tae-soon signed up to Korean DNA database 325Kamra and matched with Kyung-Ha, now Laurie Bender, a middle-aged nurse in California.
Bender only took the test because her US-born daughter was interested in their mysterious Korean roots. To her shock, Bender discovered Han had been walking the streets for 44 years, looking for her, until all 10 toenails fell off. \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019ve been living a fake life,\u201d Bender told AP.
Han Tae-soon is suing the Korean government for $445,000, for failing to prevent Bender\u2019s adoption through a children\u2019s home that said she was an orphan despite a missing persons report filed with local police by her mother. A government spokesperson told the BBC in 2025<\/a> that it \u201cdeeply sympathises with the emotional pain of individuals and families who could not find each other for a long time\u201d and would act based on the trial\u2019s outcome.
While adoption agencies sold the dream of a better life, that wasn\u2019t what awaited everyone.
Lauren White-Gydas, 37, was born in Korea in 1989 and at five months was adopted through Holt Korea<\/a> by a white couple from Salem, Oregon. Problems started early. White-Gydas felt she wasn\u2019t the \u201cgirly Asian\u201d her adoptive mother desired. \u201cI was a very explosive, angry child,\u201d she said. Her therapist believes she was suffering from relinquishment trauma<\/a>, a term increasingly used to describe<\/a> anxiety, dysregulation, anger and depression experienced by many adoptees after separation from biological mothers.
\u201cThere was a lot of physical and emotional abuse, constantly screaming at me. I screamed back. They were not prepared for how much trauma I had,\u201d White-Gydas said. \u201cBy the time I was seven I was completely stripped of everything. I was not allowed to have friends or go out or leave my room apart from school.\u201d She has some happy memories of playing with her adoptive father but felt she had to earn her adoptive mother\u2019s love.
In 1999, just after her 10th birthday, the couple put White-Gydas on a plane to Hope House in Nampa, Idaho, eventually terminating parental rights. \u201cBeing possibly abandoned by my biological parents and then abandoned by my adoptive parents pretty much told me \u2026 there\u2019s something wrong with me<\/em>,\u201d White-Gydas said.
Hope House<\/a> was opened in 1976 by Donna Velvick-Lowry, now in her 80s, as a Christian home and school for children from disrupted US and international adoptions, many of whom had severe mental health issues and were labeled as \u201cincorrigible\u201d. At Hope House, White-Gydas joined abandoned adoptees from Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Haiti, Mongolia, Brazil and China. She claims that during her time there, some staff were physically abusive, \u201cslamming\u201d children to the ground, locking them in solitary, and keeping them \u201cdoped up\u201d by a visiting psychiatrist. By age 12, White-Gydas claims she was prescribed, among many medications, birth control to suppress her cycles. Her weight ballooned to 200lb (90kg), medical records showed, and she developed type 2 diabetes.
White-Gydas said Velvick-Lowry wanted her to stay at Hope House beyond the age of 18 as her adopted daughter, and she felt like Velvick-Lowry belittled her to make her feel like an eternal child.
White-Gydas experienced painful periods and intense mood swings, and from age 12 claims that Velvick-Lowry started to \u201cpressure\u201d her into a hysterectomy, taking her to doctors by age 16: \u201cShe said if I didn\u2019t, my hormones would make it so I ended up in jail.\u201d After White-Gydas turned 18, in 2008, she alleges that Velvick-Lowry and the visiting psychiatrist put pressure on her to sign paperwork consenting to the procedure.
The OB-GYN who performed the surgery noted on her intake paperwork that the psychiatrist, whose name appears on the surgery referral, diagnosed White-Gydas with \u201csevere premenstrual disorder with anger and violent behavior\u201d. The paperwork says White-Gydas was \u201cabsolutely certain that she does not desire any children\u201d. White-Gydas was on Seroquel, the paperwork also notes, an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia that sedates patients and causes drowsiness.
Medical notes confirm White-Gydas underwent a total hysterectomy in February 2008, with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (removal of fallopian tubes and ovaries), plunging her into menopause at 18 years and five months. \u201cAs they wheeled me in, it was the only time Donna wasn\u2019t there,\u201d White-Gydas said. \u201cI told the nurse: \u2018I don\u2019t want to do this.\u2019 She looked sad and said: \u2018Sorry.\u2019\u201d
White-Gydas added: \u201cDonna knew the one thing I wanted was a family who loved me, and she took that from me.\u201d
Five adults who lived at Hope House as children in the 1990s and 2000s alongside White-Gydas told the Guardian allegations of physical and emotional abuse by Velvick-Lowry and other ex-staff, as well as being given medication that made them feel like \u201czombies\u201d. Two former Hope House staff, who began working there after White-Gydas\u2019s operation, stated that knowledge of her hysterectomy was \u201cwidespread\u201d among staff and students but did not have personal knowledge as to whether she was pressured to have the procedure. The former Hope House residents and staff requested anonymity to protect their privacy.
Cleve Cushing, chair of Hope House\u2019s board of directors, said in a written statement to the Guardian that for 50 years the organization had provided a home for children in need and given them \u201clove and care, a quality education, and a real opportunity to succeed\u201d.
He said: \u201cHope House takes any concern about the welfare of a child extremely seriously. We are, however, bound by state and federal confidentiality obligations and by our duty to protect the privacy of the children and families we have served. For that reason, we do not discuss any current or former resident or the details of their care. Anyone with a concern about the care of a child at Hope House, past or present, is encouraged to contact the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare or law enforcement.\u201d
Cushing added the non-profit was subject to Idaho\u2019s licensing standards and oversight and would cooperate with any official review.
Velvick-Lowry no longer operates Hope House, now located in Marsing, but is understood to be living on the property, according to former staffers and students. She confirmed to the Guardian that she had been Gydas-White\u2019s legal guardian, but declined to answer questions about alleged abuse or sterilisation. She said she was consulting a lawyer but did not provide their contact information.
She told the Guardian: \u201cI remember loving [Gydas-White] very much and offering her a full-time position after she left.\u201d
White-Gydas left Hope House at age 22, moved to Montana, and started trauma therapy after being diagnosed with complex PTSD. She invited her former adopters to her 2014 wedding, hoping to salvage the only parental relationship she remembered, but it broke down again over their refusal to accept how damaged she was by their actions. She now works with disabled adults and co-owns an animal rescue, but still struggles with her infertility.
\u201cWe\u2019re supposed to be grateful we got this \u2018better life\u2019 in America,\u201d White-Gydas said. \u201cA lot of us didn\u2019t have a better life.\u201d
Transracial, international adoption<\/a> in the US is rife with issues that, until the last decade, were underdiscussed and underreported. Generations of children were funnelled for profit into largely white families ill-equipped to support minority kids, oftentimes in monoracial, segregated or racist communities. Even in loving placements, many adoptees had increased likelihood of attachment issues<\/a>, depression and rage. Some were overmedicated, abused, or illegally \u201crehomed<\/a>\u201d.
A recent AP investigation<\/a> found that, due in part to overdiagnosis of a rare condition called reactive attachment disorder (RAD), adoptees of all backgrounds account for an estimated 25-40% of institutionalised US children even though they are a tiny minority of total children (just 2%). A 2026 report by Winston-Salem State University<\/a> found that adoptees were 35 times more likely than non-adoptees to attempt suicide.
Issues sometimes follow them into adulthood \u2013 and new ones arise. An estimated 35,000 US adoptees lack citizenship, more than half of them Korean-born. Minnesota lawyer and founder of the pro-bono group Adoptee Rights Law Center<\/a> Gregory Luce says a vast majority of Korean adoptees arrived on visas requiring US adopters to apply for citizenship on their behalf. Some didn\u2019t, which adoptees do not realise until applying for passports or college, or even until retirement. \u201cSome [Korean] adoptees were essentially smuggled into the country,\u201d said Luce, who is a domestic adoptee.
In 2016, US adoptee Adam Crapser<\/a> was deported to South Korea after a green-card application uncovered old criminal charges, separating him from his children. He became the first Korean adoptee to sue the Korean government and Holt International<\/a> for not telling his adopters to apply for his citizenship. Crapser won $68,600 in damages in 2023 when the Seoul high court dismissed accusations against the government yet found Holt responsible, but the result was thrown out<\/a> on appeal. Holt and the government successfully cited a 1976 law that sped up foreign adoptions in part by absolving agencies of responsibilities such as ensuring citizenship<\/a> for adoptees abroad. Crapser now lives in Mexico.
In September 2025, the Protect Adoptees and American Families Act (PAAF), intended to close citizenship gaps through which adoptees fall, reached US House committee stage<\/a>; it is at least the sixth attempt since 2015. In light of surging immigration arrests at US airports, international adoptees and groups including Luce\u2019s are urging each other not to fly, even domestically, without a US passport.
Some \u201creceiving countries\u201d are re-examining international adoption. Denmark and the Netherlands \u2013 facing scandals<\/a> over fraudulent adoption paperwork<\/a> and government complicity in trafficking adoptees<\/a> \u2013 have made moves to end participation in the industry. The UK keeps an updated list<\/a> of adoption restrictions on sending countries facing allegations of trafficking and fraud.
There have been no such developments in the US, where the likelihood of a ban remains low, Luce said. Despite international adoption to the US plummeting 94%<\/a> since 2004 and some adopters publicly expressing regret for the role they played<\/a> in funding its continuation, it is simply too popular.
US families get a $17,000 federal tax break per international or domestic adoptee, and positive international adoption stories permeate social media (as with \u201creunion porn\u201d) and pop culture (Grey\u2019s Anatomy, Modern Family, Sex and the City and Sesame Street have featured transracial, international adoption). Kim, of EARS, remembers people in the 80s telling her white adoptive mother, \u201cGod bless you,\u201d as if she were a saint for adopting Kim. \u201cAdoption as this force for good is very strong in American culture,\u201d she said.
Even politicians who support PAAF, like Senator Amy Klobuchar and representative Adam Smith, are \u201csuper pro-adoption\u201d, Luce said. \u201cIf you criticize adoption as a politician, you\u2019re seen as way outside the norm.\u201d
But two recent legal cases have signalled to adoptees an increasing awareness in the US of the dark side of a system that promised them more.
In one, a Chinese-born adoptee was awarded $30m in damages<\/a> by a New Hampshire judge in 2024, after her adopted parents pleaded guilty to criminal charges for keeping her tied up in their basement until she escaped in 2018, at age 15.
And just this summer, ex-Kentucky governor Matt Bevin and his ex-wife, Glenna Bevin, were accused of abuse and neglect<\/a> by their Ethiopian-born adopted son Jonah Bevin, who described being used as a \u201cpolitical puppet\u201d for campaigns and claimed he was sent away to abusive facilities in the US and Jamaica. Matt described<\/a> Jonah\u2019s claims as \u201cfalse\u201d, and Glenna testified<\/a> that Jonah was \u201caggressive\u201d toward his siblings as a teen. The case is playing out in state family court, with Jonah seeking retroactive child support payments.
South Korea\u2019s TRC relaunched<\/a> in February, inheriting 2,100 unresolved complaints from the last commission while accepting hundreds of new submissions from adoptees, and, for the first time, birth parents. They include Lee Aeri Rana<\/a>, whose daughter, Park Mi-ae, was stolen at birth from a hospital in 1993 and sent on allegedly fraudulent documents to the US. Homeless and estranged from her adoptive family, Park died by suicide in 2023 at age 30, the day after legally restoring<\/a> her Korean surname. \u201cThis is a death produced by illegal adoption,\u201d said her grieving mother, who had been told her daughter died as a newborn.
Some activists have called for reparations from the Korean government including restored citizenship, and compensation for travel to South Korea and family searches. But as many adoptees will tell you, you cannot relive a life you lost.
\u201cIt\u2019s very draining, the feeling that I don\u2019t know who I am,\u201d White-Gydas said about trying to digest the TRC\u2019s initial findings. \u201cGrowing up whenever I saw another Asian person I wanted to ask them where they were from, because I knew so little. I wouldn\u2019t even consider myself Korean.\u201d The one sliver she has held on to is the name in her file: Jung Hee June.
So many questions remain unanswered: \u201cI have done DNA tests and found nothing. I don\u2019t know whether I truly was given up or I was stolen. Do I have a mom in Korea who loved me? How did I get here?\u201d
Wells didn\u2019t escape unscathed either. For years she suffered crushing depression misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder when she was 13, leading to unnecessary medication that caused suicidal thoughts. She met her Korean family, but only after 10 years of her birth mother declining to meet or tell her birth father and brothers about her.
Wells, now pregnant with her second child, was not a stolen baby. It does not lessen how adoption affected her, her birth family and her children, another generation removed from Korea. \u201cI feel truly lucky because of the rare hand I was dealt, but I had to fight like hell for my life,\u201d she said.
Some adoptees are reframing the US\u2019s endorsement of international adoption as part of its long legacy of forced family separation.
\u201cAdoption is an amazing analytic \u2026 to look at settler colonialism, white supremacy [and] anti-Black violence,\u201d said Dr Kimberly McKee, a Korean adoptee and critical adoption scholar at Grand Valley State University, Michigan. Her Instagram handle is proudly \u201c@adopteekilljoy\u201d.<\/a>
Academics like McKee argue that the international slave trade, which split up African families for sale to white people, laid the framework for state-sanctioned separation<\/a> that disproportionately affects Black and brown US families today. In the 19th and into the 20th century, thousands of Native American children<\/a> were sent to Indian boarding schools, sterilised,<\/a> or forcibly adopted by white families. Likewise, McKee says international adoption is \u201ca violent institution\u201d that continues this pattern.
McKee married another Korean adoptee, reunited with her birth family in 2013 and has taken her son to celebrate Chuseok<\/em>, a major Korean holiday, with them. She told the adoptee activist Haley Radke on the Adoptees On<\/a> podcast that eating with her appa<\/em>, or father, felt like a \u201cglimmer\u201d of the life she might have led. But being unable to communicate with this genetic stranger left her feeling a \u201cliving grief\u201d \u2013 or han, <\/em>a Korean word for sorrow and rage, resulting from injustice.
\u201cI can order food \u2026 get directions \u2026 [but] I can\u2019t have that sustained deep conversation,\u201d McKee said. \u201cEven though I am in reunion \u2026 there is a grief there and it\u2019s palpable.\u201d
The historian Oh saw a type of han<\/em> walk into her classrooms at Boston College, as adoptee descendants took her course on adoption, looking for their own answers about why their line was cut, and who wielded the knife. She wonders if one day people will talk about international adoption the way they talk about slavery: \u201ca historical phenomena, with a beginning and an end, thought to be firmly in the past\u201d.
<\/span> In the US, call or text the Childhelp<\/a> abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website<\/a> for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org<\/a>. In the UK, the NSPCC<\/a> offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac<\/a>) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation<\/a> on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helpline International<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Last year, South Korea took responsibility for enabling the \u2018mass export\u2019 of children for sale abroad. Now those uprooted are grappling with false promises of a better lifeAs international, transracial adoptees in their 30s in the US, Jacquelyn Wells and Lauren White-Gydas have things in common.They were both born in South Korea to unwed mothers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}