Korean Adoptees call for an investigation → Global Adoption News

BBC Sounds: Adoptees from South Korea call for an investigation into false family histories.

“Nearly 300 people adopted by European and American parents from South Korea as children have made applications demanding South Korea’s government investigate their adoptions. They suspect documents about their identities and families were falsified. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Korea has four months to make a decision on whether to open an investigation. If it goes ahead, the investigation would be the country’s furthest reaching into foreign adoptions. Novelist Eva Tind was adopted by a Danish family. For 14 years, she and her adoptive parents believed she was an orphan until: ” I was told that I was sent a postcard from my biological family. And that just sent a huge shock-wave in my life because the whole story that I thought that I was in orphanages is not true”.”

BBC Sounds with an interview with the Author of The Search for Mother Missing: A Peek Inside International Adoption, Adopted from South Korea, Janine Vance.

“What’s it like being adopted into a country far away from your birth and into a family that looks very different to you? International and transracial adoptions both come with challenges for children and parents. Beatriz de la Pava talks to two women born in Colombia and South Korea about trying to fit in and discovering more about their roots. Janine Vance was adopted from Seoul by an American couple along with her twin sister when they were six months old. A trip to South Korea in 2004 to an event marking 50 years of intercountry adoption caused her to think more deeply about her heritage. She found out that while most adoptees had been told they were orphans, this wasn’t the case, and parents were looking for them. She’s written several books about adoption and wants to make the international adoption process more transparent.”