(Movie Review) ‘K-Number’: unfinished search for birth family by overseas Korean adoptees

For over 70 years, South Korea has sent more children overseas for adoption than any other country in the world.

Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, an estimated 170,000 children — some unofficially say closer to 200,000 — have been adopted abroad.

The Korean documentary film “K-Number” takes its name from the identification numbers assigned to these children, written on their adoption records like serial tags on lost identities.

At the heart of the documentary is Mioka Miller, one of many adoptees on a seemingly endless journey to find her birth family in South Korea.

Found on the streets in the early 1970s at the estimated age of eight, she was adopted to the United States and has spent decades trying to piece together her past.

Mioka cannot remember her Korean name and has returned to South Korea multiple times in search of her birth mother — only to encounter forged documents and redacted records at every turn.

Another powerful thread follows Kaylin Bower, who successfully reconnects with her birth mother and visits Korea to see her again.

Despite the reunion, her birth mother repeatedly tells her, “Let’s not see each other again.” Kaylin, who does not speak Korean, relies on an interpreter whose voice trembles as she translates: “It seems this will be your last meeting.” The camera lingers on Kaylin as tears silently well up in her eyes.

What makes “K-Number” compelling is how it transforms individual stories of identity loss and emotional fracture by overseas adoptees into a larger, systemic critique of the international adoption industry. The film explores the structural failures — and active wrongdoing — that made such adoptions possible.

Experts interviewed in the film argue that during South Korea’s authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, overseas adoptions often involved serious human rights violations. According to them, adoption agencies, often working in tacit collusion with the state, routinely falsified records to enable international adoptions. Children who had living parents were reclassified as “orphans” and swiftly sent abroad — mainly to countries like the U.S., Sweden, Denmark and Norway — effectively turning them into commodities. This process has left deep, lifelong scars for many birth mothers and adoptees.

The South Korean government at the time, focused on rapid economic growth, denied any official responsibility, framing the issue as a “private matter.”
Yet experts say the state quietly encouraged the practice behind the scenes.

Despite its uncomfortable subject matter — one many Koreans would rather not confront — “K-Number” grips the audience with its fast-paced, investigative storytelling.

Its tone remains restrained, never descending into sensationalism, yet the emotional impact is immense. As the camera follows Mioka riding through tunnels or gazing at a cold, flowing river, these visual motifs amplify the endless, isolating journey of those who belong neither to Korea nor fully to their adoptive countries.

“K-Number” will open in local theaters on May 14. It was premiered at the 29th Busan International Film Festival last October, where it received the Documentary Audience Award that recognizes audience favorite documentary films. It went on to win the Grand Prize at the 50th Seoul Independent Film Festival the following month.