Korean Mother Reunites With Daughter After Decades-Long Search And DNA Breakthrough
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After searching for 44 years, the woman reunited with her daughter, who had been abducted as a child and adopted abroad.
After more than four decades of heartbreak and tireless searching, a Korean woman finally held her daughter in her arms once during a tearful reunion at the airport.
The emotional moment brought closure to a 44-year-long ordeal that began in May 1975, when Han Tae-soon briefly left her six-year-old daughter, Kyung-ha, playing outside their Seoul home to run a quick errand to the market.
When she returned, her daughter had vanished without a trace, launching years of unanswered questions and desperate hope, according to a report by the BBC.
The turning point came in 2019, when a DNA match facilitated by 325 Kamra—a group dedicated to reuniting Korean adoptees with their biological families—revealed the truth Han Tae-soon had been waiting decades to hear.
Her missing daughter, who had been abducted at the age of six, was alive and living in the United States under the name Laurie Bender. Now working as a nurse in California, Laurie travelled to Seoul to finally meet the mother she had never stopped wondering about.
The long-overdue reunion marked the end of a search that had defined Han's existence for over four decades, turning years of sorrow, longing, and unwavering hope into a moment of healing and joy.
'I was going to the market and asked Kyung-ha, 'Aren't you coming?' But she told me, 'No, I'm going to play with my friends, '" Han told BBC. 'When I came back, she was gone," the mother recalled. That fleeting moment in 1975 was the last time Han Tae-soon saw her daughter as a little girl.
More than 40 years after that heartbreaking day, Han finally reunited with Kyung-ha, now a middle-aged nurse living in the United States. A DNA match uncovered the stunning truth.
Han is now taking legal action against the South Korean government, alleging that it failed to protect her daughter from being taken and unlawfully adopted overseas, according to the BBC. Her groundbreaking lawsuit is one of the first of its kind and emerges at a time when South Korea is reportedly facing growing scrutiny and a national reckoning over its long-standing practice of sending children abroad for adoption, often under questionable circumstances.
As per reports, Han is among a growing number of parents and adoptees coming forward with troubling accounts of fraud, abduction, and human trafficking. These allegations are linked to South Korea's international adoption system, which is said to have operated for decades with little oversight or regulation.
From the 1950s through the early 2000s, an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 South Korean children were reportedly sent abroad for adoption, mostly to Western countries. As per reports, a recent landmark investigation found that successive South Korean governments were responsible for serious human rights violations, having allowed children to be effectively 'mass exported" for financial gain, often without following proper legal procedures or obtaining genuine family consent.
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