After over four decades of determination and disappointment, South Korean Han Tae-soon was reuinited with her daughter Kyung-ha, who disappeared without a trace in 1975. The tearful reunion came at a Seoul airport following DNA tests that confirmed her daughter, now living in the US as Laurie Bender, was abducted and illegally adopted abroad.
In May 1975, Han had left her six-year-old daughter Kyung-ha playing outside their home in Seoul when she went to the market. “I was going to the market and I asked Kyung-ha, ‘Are you not coming?’ But she said, ‘No, I’m going to play with my friends’,” Han said. “When I returned, she was nowhere to be found.” That was the last time she saw her daughter as a child.
In 2019, there was a breakthrough as Han had sent her DNA to 325 Kamra, a nonprofit organization that seeks to reunite Korean adoptees with their biological families. A match verified that her daughter had been adopted and renamed Laurie Bender and was a nurse in California. Laurie then flew to Seoul to reunite with Han, and this brought closure to an agonizing search that lasted a lifetime and was driven by grief, determination, and hope.
Legal Action Against the Government
Han is now taking legal action against the South Korean government, accusing it of failing to prevent her daughter’s abduction and unauthorized adoption. Her case is one of the first of its kind and highlights growing scrutiny of South Korea’s international adoption program, which has come under fire for widespread irregularities.
Between 1950 and the early 2000s, South Korea exported approximately 170,000 to 200,000 children for adoption, primarily to Western countries. A recent probe concluded that successive governments had been guilty of human rights violations in allowing the large-scale exportation of children, the majority of which were sent abroad without formal documentation or the consent of their parents.
Han’s court action may lead to further legal challenges by the victims of the system. Her case will be heard in court next month. A government spokesman told the BBC it ‘deeply sympathises with the emotional suffering of individuals and families who could not find each other for a long period’ and stated ‘deep regret’, vowing ‘necessary actions’ depending on how the case was decided.
Years of Suffering and False Hope
Han and her husband spent years trying every avenue open to them in their last hop was going to orphanages, searching police records, putting up posters, and even going on television. “I spent 44 years destroying my body and mind looking for my daughter. But for all that time, has anybody ever apologized to me? Nobody. Not once,” she said.
She explained the effect the search had on her physical wellbeing, stating, “All 10 of my toenails fell out” from walking around endlessly searching for her child. In 1990, a woman came forward falsely claiming to be her daughter and stayed with the family for a short time before confessing it was a fabrication.
It wasn’t until 2019 that she finally got some answers through 325 Kamra, which placed her in touch with Laurie Bender. The two women were reunited in Seoul in an emotional reunion that brought decades of unanswered questions to a close and launched the start of a legal battle for accountability.
