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.
The 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 photographs, names of orphanages and adoption agencies, the towns where they were said to have been abandoned. They do not speak the language. They are unfamiliar with the culture. Some never learn their truth.
Some who make the trip learn things about themselves they had thought were lost forever.
Photo: AP
In a small office at the Stars of the Sea orphanage in Incheon, 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.
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 had come searching for her family.
“I just want to tell them I had a good life and I’m doing well,” Andersen said to Ahn.
Andersen had been admitted to the facility as a malnourished baby and was adopted at seven months old to a family in Denmark, according to the documents.
She says she is grateful for the love her adoptive family gave her, but has developed an unshakable need to know where she came from. She visited the 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.
South Korean adoptees have organized, and now they help those coming along behind them. Nonprofit 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.
Nearly four decades after her adoption to the US, 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 smartphone to show him. A social worker placed hair samples into plastic bags for DNA testing, but the moment they hugged, Motta, adopted to the US in 1985, did not need the results — she knew she had come from this man.
“I am a sinner for not finding you,” he said.
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 has not spoken to the brother since, he said, and never knew she was adopted abroad.
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.
THE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH: Footage of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque has gone viral online after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born in July last year at Ichikawa City Zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother. Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch has turned to the toy for comfort. He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail
‘OCCUPATION’: Hong Kong said it had lodged ‘stern protests’ with Panama’s consulate, and would ‘staunchly support’ the rights and interests of Hong Kong companies Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino on Monday ordered the temporary occupation of two ports run by a unit of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the firm’s concession, escalating a dispute that has become a proxy battle between the US and China in Latin America. Mulino said in a speech that the administration and operation of the two ports on the strategic Panama Canal is to revert to the country’s National Maritime Authority to ensure their uninterrupted, safe and efficient operation. The occupation covers movable equipment at the ports and does not mean a definitive loss of
RSS