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

    South Korea was once the largest source of children for international adoptions. Now some adoptees are building ties with birth family members. Critics say South Korean adoption laws need improvement.
    by Anthony Kuhn Dec 27, 2019 5 minutes
    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.

    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.

    In recent decades, adoptees like Kim have been returning to South Korea to find out more about where they come from, build

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