‘Feeling Like We Belong’: U.S. Adoptees Return To South Korea To Trace Their Roots

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December 27th, 2019

South Korea was once the largest source of children for international adoptions. The U.S. became their main destination. Some Korean-born adoptees feel distant from both the country of their birth and the country where they were raised, but in recent years, many have gone back to build ties with their birth families.

Grace Heejung Kim for NPR

In September, Seattle resident Barbara Kim celebrated Chuseok, the Korean midautumn festival, with her family members in Seoul. Chuseok is a time to give thanks for plentiful harvests, and for Kim, who was adopted by an American family in the 1960s, this was a particularly special occasion: She was able to spend the holiday with several of her birth relatives.

At the celebration, they and a group of South Korean orphans, now in their teens and 20s, dug into platters of bulgogi, kimbap, japche and other traditional Korean dishes.

Kim was among the first wave of a 200,000-strong exodus of adoptees, as South Korea became the world’s first source of international adoptions. She was born in 1955, two years after the Korean War cease-fire.

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