SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to supply some 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas, despite years of evidence they were being procured through questionable or downright unscrupulous means, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found.
Those children grew up and searched for their roots — and some realized they are not who they were told. Their stories have sparked a reckoning that is rocking the international adoption industry.
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Michaela Dietz, an adoptee from South Korea, holds a baby photo of Robyn Joy Park, who was also adopted from South Korea as an infant and whose identity was switched, next to Park's newborn daughter, Rae, while visiting Park at her home in Pasadena, Calif., Friday, April 19, 2024. Park hasn't found her real parents. She thinks often of the girl whose identity she was given, and wonders: what happened to her? (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Ha Kum Chul, one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's investigators, speaks to the media during a news conference at the commission in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Im Hwa-young/Yonhap via AP)
Han Tae-soon's notebook sits on a table at her home in Anyang, South Korea, Saturday, June 1, 2024. Han, who is in her 70s, has notebooks feverishly annotated with English translations, written during countless hours trying to learn her daughter's language. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Michaela Dietz, an adoptee from South Korea, holds a baby photo of Robyn Joy Park, who was also adopted from South Korea as an infant and whose identity was switched, next to Park's newborn daughter, Rae, while visiting Park at her home in Pasadena, Calif., Friday, April 19, 2024. Park hasn't found her real parents. She thinks often of the girl whose identity she was given, and wonders: what happened to her? (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Han Tae-soon, who believed her daughter had been missing for years before discovering she had been adopted by a family in the United States, stands for a portrait at her home in Anyang, South Korea, Saturday, June 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Robert Calabretta holds a picture of his biological mother and brother while sifting through family mementos at his apartment, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, in New York. After Calabretta was adopted as a baby to an American family, hospital officials told his mother to assume he had died. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
In this photo provided by Robert Calabretta, right, he and and his biological father, Lee Sung-soo, stand together for a photo while on a visit in Daegu, South Korea, in August of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Courtesy Robert Calabretta via AP)
The investigation, in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), was based on interviews with more than 80 adoptees in the U.S., Australia and six European countries, along with parents, agency employees, humanitarian workers and government officials. It also drew on more than 100 information requests and thousands of pages of documents — including many never publicly seen before and some the AP got declassified.
In dozens of cases AP examined, it found: Children were kidnapped off the streets. Parents claim they were told their newborns were dead or very sick, only to have them shipped away. Documents were fabricated, leading adoptees to anguished later reunions with supposed parents — only to discover they were not related at all.
Government officials declined to answer questions about its past, saying it will let a fact-finding commission finish its work. But in a written statement, the Health Ministry acknowledged that skyrocketing adoptions in the 1970s-80s were possibly driven by an intent to reduce welfare spending.
The adoption agencies declined to comment on specific cases, but have long defended their practices as a way to search for foreign families for vulnerable children.
Here are further findings:
Korea’s adoption program grew out of the wreckage of the 1950-53 Korean War, when Americans took in the unwanted biracial children of Korean women and Western soldiers. It expanded to include the children of unwed mothers and poor families. Korea relied on private adoption agencies as its social safety net, bringing millions of dollars into the economy.
Korean officials fit their laws to match American ones to make children adoptable in the West, where access to birth control and abortion had caused the domestic supply of adoptable babies to plummet. The government endorsed “proxy adoptions” for families to adopt children quickly without ever visiting Korea. Korea also rewrote its laws to remove minimal safeguards or judicial oversight.
Concerns were raised early. In a 1966 internal memo obtained by AP, International Social Service, a Geneva-based organization, wrote that it suspected the Korean government assessed agencies not by child welfare standards, but by the money they brought in. Korean officials were aware that lost children were documented as abandoned; the origins of alleged orphans weren’t verified; and some were “disguised” by agencies as being born from unwed mothers to make them adoptable, according to records seen by AP. In the early 1980s, the government itself likened the agencies’ child-hunting practices to “trafficking.”
Former adoption workers told AP that agencies paid to have every corner of the country scoured for children. One worker, employed at an agency from 1979 to 1984, said the agencies had no process to verify the backgrounds of children and invested “zero effort” in confirming the child was orphaned.
Private counseling records in a 1988 document prepared by the country’s largest adoption agency, Holt Children’s Services, show that some parents who relinquished their children soon pleaded for them back, with no success. The document, obtained by AP, describes how agency’s workers told parents that their children would thrive in good Western families and may return home someday rich or “with Ph.Ds.”
Humanitarian workers openly worried about what they were seeing. Francis Carlin, who then ran Korea’s Catholic Relief Services, said there weren’t enough legitimate orphans to feed Western demand, which led to “a lot of the compromises, a lot of the hanky panky” involving larger agencies.
“These, I would call them brokers, were going out and trying to get more and more children,” Carlin said. “They would put the legitimate parent on a guilt trip and say, what are you doing? You can’t afford to take care of this child…. You’re so selfish.”
By the 1980s, agencies were procuring most of their children directly from hospitals and maternity homes, which often received illegal payments for babies, according to records seen by AP. Though the stated intention of adoption was to spare children from orphanages, they gathered more than 4,600 children from hospitals in 1988, 60% of their supply.
A government audit in 1989 shows that Holt Children’s Services, the biggest agency, made nearly 100 illegal payments to hospitals during six months in 1988, worth about $16,000 now. Eastern Social Welfare Society gave even more, worth about $65,340, to hospitals over that period.
Despite the agencies' common practice of labeling children as “abandoned,” records from 1980 to 1987 show that more than 90% of the Korean children sent to the West almost certainly had known relatives, said Philsik Shin, a scholar at Korea’s Anyang University. It was “almost customary” to document children as abandoned, said Helen Noh, who matched hundreds of children with U.S. parents at Holt from 1981 to 1982.
Robyn Joy Park, who was adopted by parents in Minnesota in 1982, traveled to South Korea in 2007 to meet a woman her agency, Eastern, said was her biological mother. She developed a deep bond with the woman over several years, but was devastated after a DNA test in 2012 showed they weren’t related.
The AP spoke to 10 others who found their identity was switched with someone else. When children processed for adoption died, became too sick to travel or were found by their biological families, agencies often replaced them with other children, according to former adoption workers. At a meeting with an adoptee in 2021 where AP was present, a longtime worker said Western partner agencies were willing to take “any child of the same sex and similar age, because it would take too much time to start over again.”
Park is among more than 360 adoptees who have asked South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding their adoptions.
Nobody knows how many Korean adoptions were questionable or even fraudulent, in part because of the privacy and sensitivities involved along with the vagueness and unreliability of the documents. Advocates say many adoptions have happy endings.
Ha Kum Chul, one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's investigators, speaks to the media during a news conference at the commission in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Im Hwa-young/Yonhap via AP)
Han Tae-soon's notebook sits on a table at her home in Anyang, South Korea, Saturday, June 1, 2024. Han, who is in her 70s, has notebooks feverishly annotated with English translations, written during countless hours trying to learn her daughter's language. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Michaela Dietz, an adoptee from South Korea, holds a baby photo of Robyn Joy Park, who was also adopted from South Korea as an infant and whose identity was switched, next to Park's newborn daughter, Rae, while visiting Park at her home in Pasadena, Calif., Friday, April 19, 2024. Park hasn't found her real parents. She thinks often of the girl whose identity she was given, and wonders: what happened to her? (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Han Tae-soon, who believed her daughter had been missing for years before discovering she had been adopted by a family in the United States, stands for a portrait at her home in Anyang, South Korea, Saturday, June 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Robert Calabretta holds a picture of his biological mother and brother while sifting through family mementos at his apartment, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, in New York. After Calabretta was adopted as a baby to an American family, hospital officials told his mother to assume he had died. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
In this photo provided by Robert Calabretta, right, he and and his biological father, Lee Sung-soo, stand together for a photo while on a visit in Daegu, South Korea, in August of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Courtesy Robert Calabretta via AP)
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Basketball Hall of Famer Gregg Popovich is recovering from what the San Antonio Spurs described as a mild stroke, though there is no timetable for the NBA's longest-tenured coach to return to the sideline.
Popovich had the stroke on Nov. 2 at the arena where the Spurs play, the team said Wednesday, and has already started a rehabilitation program with belief that he will make a full recovery. The team released no other details, including what aftereffects of the stroke — if any — that he is dealing with.
“It's a difficult time for everyone,” Spurs general manager Brian Wright said. “Coach Pop has been the leader of this organization for the last three decades. We all have come across or know people that just have a different aura, a difference presence about them. Clearly, he's one of those people. When we walk into the building each and every day, we feel that leadership, we feel that presence and so not having him there's clearly a void. And we miss him.”
The 75-year-old Popovich is the NBA's all-time win leader who has led the Spurs to five championships, plus guided USA Basketball to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. He is in his 29th season as coach of the Spurs.
“He's doing well. He's doing well. ... He's tough, he's a fighter and he's going to work,” Wright said. “We're all here for him, but he's doing OK.”
Assistant coach Mitch Johnson has been the acting head coach in Popovich’s absence. The Spurs beat Washington 139-130 on Wednesday night, the the seventh straight game in which Johnson has filled in for Popovich.
“Mitch has been great,” Spurs rookie Stephon Castle said Wednesday, before the team announced the details about Popovich’s health. “Even when Pop was here, he’s always had a voice in our huddles and in our locker room. Our philosophies haven’t been changed.”
Victor Wembanyama, who scored a career-high 50 points in the win over the Wizards, said the team first learned about Popovich’s stroke before the team’s announcement.
“Of course I’m a bit worried about Pop,” Wembanyama said. “At the same time, I haven’t talked to him, but I know what mindset he’s on right on. I know he’s working like crazy, probably to come back with us as soon as possible. I trust him. I trust the people taking care of him right now. I hope he’s not going to be away from us for too long.”
A stroke happens when blood flow to part of the brain is blocked or if a blood vessel in the brain bursts. That deprives the brain of oxygen which can cause brain damage that can lead to difficulty thinking, talking and walking, or even death. Strokes may lead to difficulty speaking, paralysis or loss of movement in certain muscles, memory loss and more.
It is unknown if Popovich is dealing with any aftereffects of the stroke.
Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year.
The Spurs were playing the Minnesota Timberwolves at home on Nov. 2, and Popovich's medical episode occurred there in the hours before that game. Johnson took over for that night's contest, which the Spurs won, after the team said Popovich was not feeling well.
Johnson and Popovich spoke on Nov. 3, and on Nov. 4 Johnson said Popovich is “in good spirits ... he'll be OK. He is OK.” The Spurs had not released much in the way of details since, prior to Wednesday's announcement about the stroke.
Wright raved about the way Johnson and the Spurs have bonded and dealt with the absence of the team's leader.
“It's exactly what Coach Pop would want us to do,” Wright said. “And so, it's on all of us to play our part, to play our role, to continue to lean on each other, support one another and be there for one another.”
Popovich is one of only three coaches to win the NBA coach of the year award three times, Don Nelson and Pat Riley being the others. He’s one of five coaches with at least five NBA titles; Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (9), John Kundla (5) and Riley (5) are the others.
Popovich has been part of the Spurs for nearly 35 years. He was an assistant coach from 1988 through 1992, then returned to the club on May 31, 1994, as its executive vice president for basketball operations and general manager. He made the decision to fire coach Bob Hill and appoint himself coach on Dec. 10, 1996.
He's been the Spurs' sideline boss ever since.
“We look forward to the day that we can welcome him back,” Wright said.
Popovich's 29-year run with the Spurs is a span the likes of which has been nearly unmatched in U.S. major pro sports history.
Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years, George Halas coached the Chicago Bears for 40 years and John McGraw managed the New York Giants for 31 years. Those three tenures — all wrapping up well over a half-century ago — are the only ones exceeding Popovich’s run with the Spurs; his 29-year era in San Antonio to this point matches the tenures that Dallas Cowboys’ Tom Landry and the Green Bay Packers’ Curly Lambeau had in those jobs.
Reynolds reported from Miami.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich gives instructions to his players during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)
San Antonio Spurs guard Chris Paul has a word with Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Utah Jazz, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Egan)
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich reacts after a call by the official, during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Egan)
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich gives instructions to his players during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Nate Billings)
San Antonio Spurs guard Chris Paul has a word with Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Utah Jazz, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Egan)
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich reacts after a call by the official, during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Egan)