Home   >   More   >   Hot Links   >   [NY Times] Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea

[NY Times] Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea

January 14, 2015
Laura Klunder in Seoul. She had her adoption case number tattooed on her arm. (Courtesy of The New York Times)

Laura Klunder in Seoul. She had her adoption case number tattooed on her arm. (Courtesy of The New York Times)

[THE NEW YORK TIMES]

Laura Klunder’s newest tattoo runs down the inside of her left forearm and reads “K85-160,” a number that dates to her infancy. Klunder was 9 months old when her South Korean mother left her at a police station in Seoul.

The police brought her to Holt Children’s Services, a local adoption agency, where a worker assigned Klunder the case number K85-160. It was only two weeks into 1985, but she was already the 160th child to come to the agency that month, and she would go on to be one of 8,800 children sent overseas from South Korea that year.

Klunder became part of the largest adoption exodus from one country in history: Over the past six decades, at least 200,000 Korean children — roughly the population of Des Moines — have been adopted into families in more than 15 countries, with a vast majority living in the United States.

[READ MORE]