South Korea adoptees endure emotional, sometimes devastating searches for their birth families

SEOUL (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 away from 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.

“I want my mother to know I’m OK and that her sacrifice was not in vain,” says Kenneth Barthel, adopted in 1979 at 6 years old to Hawaii.

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

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.

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.

“I just want to tell them I had a good life and I’m doing well,” Andersen said to Sister 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’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 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.

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.

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.

“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 hasn’t 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.

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This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes an interactive and documentary, South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning. Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.