Elderly South Korean mother sues government for sending daughter overseas for adoption

In 1976, four-year-old Shin Gyeong-ha (now Laurie Bender) was lured away by a stranger near her home in Cheongju, South Korea. The strange woman told the young Shin that her family “didn’t want her anymore” because her mother had had another baby. Abandoned 50 miles away after a train ride, police placed her with an orphanage — and months later she was sent to America where she was adopted and lived for over 40 years before discovering the truth.

South Korean authorities and adoption agencies have recently come under intense scrutiny and condemnation by adoptees, birth-parents and adopted families. Han and Bender’s story is not the only one. Information in the Associated Press and Frontline (PBS) documentation reveals years of coordinated efforts by the South Korean government, wealthy nations, and adoption agencies to place “around 200,000 Korean children” using unseemly or dishonest means — such as deceiving parents or claiming children had died. 

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Bender’s desperate birth mother, Han Tae-soon, never gave up looking for her lost daughter and maintained a media blitz by placing ads on food packaging and posters in subway stations and on area lampposts. She also searched police stations, government offices, and adoption agencies. 

The search and 2019 reunification with her grown daughter and grandchild were documented in an investigation by the Associated Press. A genetic test taken by Laurie’s daughter revealed the lost connection to her mother, father and siblings.  While thrilled to be reunited, Ms. Gyeong-ha is also anguished over the fact that as a 70-year-old woman, she is unable to speak to her daughter in a common language.

She blames local authorities and the agency that placed her daughter for adoption for failing to take precautions before sending her daughter abroad. To that end, she has filed a lawsuit accusing local police, officials, and the Holt Children’s Services (South Korea’s largest adoption agency) of “facilitating Bender’s adoption without checking her background.”

“It turns out they didn’t make an effort to find her clearly existing parents and instead disguised her as an orphan for adoption abroad. I want the government and Holt to explain to us how this happened,” Gyeong-ha stated.

Unfortunately, as these unscrupulous and tragic activities were taking place, many Western nations ignored the warnings because of a high demand for adopting babies.

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