Latest Adoption News
A South Korean adoptee needed answers about the past. She got them — just not the ones she wanted
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Rebecca Kimmel sat in a small room, stunned and speechless, staring at the baby photo she had just unearthed from her adoption file. It was a black-and-white shot of an infant, possibly taken at an orphanage in Gwangju, the South Korean city where Kimmel...
Rebecca Kimmel's search for her roots had an unlikely ending: Tips for other Korean adoptees
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Rebecca Kimmel sat in a small room, stunned and speechless, staring at the baby photo she had just unearthed from her adoption file. Something about the photo — the eyes, the ears, an uneasy feeling deep in her gut — confirmed what the Korean adoptee...
South Korean woman sues government and adoption agency after her kidnapped daughter was sent abroad
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A 70-year-old South Korean woman sued her government, an adoption agency, and an orphanage Monday over the adoption of her daughter, who was sent to the United States in 1976, months after she was kidnapped at age 4. The damage suit filed by Han Tae-soon,...
Did this happen to me also? Korean adoptees question their past and ask how to find their families
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Dozens of South Korean adoptees, many in tears, have responded to an investigation led by The Associated Press and documented by Frontline (PBS) last week on Korean adoptions. The investigation reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving...
South Korea adoptees endure emotional, sometimes devastating searches for their birth families
SEOUL, South Korea (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...
Russian parliament passes first reading of an adoption ban for countries allowing gender transition
MOSCOW (AP) — The lower house of Russia’s parliament on Wednesday gave overwhelming approval to the first reading of a proposed law to prohibit the adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries where gender transitioning is legal. The measure, which would need to pass two...
Asian Development Bank raises growth forecast for region, but warns of risks from trade sanctions
Developing economies in Asia are forecast to grow at a 5.0% annual pace this year, helped by a strong U.S. economy and surging demand for computer chips that power artificial intelligence, the Asian Development Bank said in a report Wednesday. The forecast was revised upward slightly...
Families from Tennessee to California seek humanitarian parole for adopted children in Haiti
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — At only 6 years old, Esai Reed has endured three emergency evacuations from orphanages across Haiti as gangs pillage and plunder their way through once peaceful communities. He is now in northern Haiti under the care of a U.S. organization after the...
Takeaways from AP’s story on the role of the West in widespread fraud with South Korean adoptions
Western governments eagerly approved and even pushed for the adoption of South Korean children for decades, despite evidence that adoption agencies were aggressively competing for kids, pressuring mothers and bribing hospitals, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found. ...
Western nations were desperate for Korean babies. Now many adoptees believe they were stolen
Yooree Kim marched into a police station in Paris and told an officer she wanted to report a crime. Forty years ago, she said, she was kidnapped from the other side of the world, and the French government endorsed it. She wept as she described years spent piecing it together,...
