This article, from Korea Exposé, shines light on the many difficulties and obstacles that South Korean adoptees face in trying to identify and locate their birth families. The article describes the birth family search process of one Korean adoptee, David Zastrow, who was adopted from South Korea to the United States at 4 months old. Zastrow met several roadblocks along the way, including lack of transparency, unhelpful or disorganized agencies in the US and Korea, challenges with privacy laws in Korea, and loopholes in the 2011 revision to South Korea’s Special Adoption Law which was enacted to standardize the birth family search and make it fairer. Ultimately, Zastrow was not able to identify his birth family on his last trip to South Korea.
According to the article, adoptee advocates are lobbying to close loopholes in the Revision to the Special Adoption Law and create a government-run DNA database. “Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is a right to know one’s heritage, name, and identity,” said one activist, Simone Eun Mi. “The Korean government should honor the rights of the UNCRC and properly implement these rights.”