Korean Mother Reunites With Daughter After Decades-Long Search And DNA Breakthrough

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Last Updated:May 25, 2025, 11:30 IST

After searching for 44 years, the pistillate reunited with her daughter, who had been abducted arsenic a kid and adopted abroad.

In 2019, a DNA lucifer by a reunification radical cracked the case. (Representative Image)

After much than 4 decades of heartbreak and tireless searching, a Korean pistillate yet held her girl successful her arms erstwhile during a tearful reunion astatine the airport.

The affectional infinitesimal brought closure to a 44-year-long ordeal that began successful May 1975, erstwhile Han Tae-soon concisely near her six-year-old daughter, Kyung-ha, playing extracurricular their Seoul location to tally a speedy errand to the market.

When she returned, her girl had vanished without a trace, launching years of unanswered questions and hopeless hope, according to a study by the BBC.

The turning constituent came successful 2019, erstwhile a DNA lucifer facilitated by 325 Kamra—a radical dedicated to reuniting Korean adoptees with their biologic families—revealed the information Han Tae-soon had been waiting decades to hear.

Her missing daughter, who had been abducted astatine the property of six, was live and surviving successful the United States nether the sanction Laurie Bender. Now moving arsenic a caregiver successful California, Laurie travelled to Seoul to yet conscionable the parent she had ne'er stopped wondering about.

The long-overdue reunion marked the extremity of a hunt that had defined Han’s beingness for implicit 4 decades, turning years of sorrow, longing, and unwavering anticipation into a infinitesimal of healing and joy.

“I was going to the marketplace 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 parent recalled. That fleeting infinitesimal successful 1975 was the past clip Han Tae-soon saw her girl arsenic a small girl.

More than 40 years aft that heartbreaking day, Han yet reunited with Kyung-ha, present a middle-aged caregiver surviving successful the United States. A DNA lucifer uncovered the stunning truth.

Her girl hadn’t simply gone missing; she had reportedly been abducted, wrongfully placed successful an orphanage, and illegally sent overseas for adoption; her individuality mislaid successful the strategy for decades.

Han is present taking ineligible enactment against the South Korean government, alleging that it failed to support her girl from being taken and unlawfully adopted overseas, according to the BBC. Her groundbreaking suit is 1 of the archetypal of its benignant and emerges astatine a clip erstwhile South Korea is reportedly facing increasing scrutiny and a nationalist reckoning implicit its long-standing signifier of sending children overseas for adoption, often nether questionable circumstances.

As per reports, Han is among a increasing fig of parents and adoptees coming guardant with troubling accounts of fraud, abduction, and quality trafficking. These allegations are linked to South Korea’s planetary adoption system, which is said to person operated for decades with small oversight oregon regulation.

From the 1950s done the aboriginal 2000s, an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 South Korean children were reportedly sent overseas for adoption, mostly to Western countries. As per reports, a caller landmark probe recovered that successive South Korean governments were liable for superior quality rights violations, having allowed children to beryllium efficaciously “mass exported" for fiscal gain, often without pursuing due ineligible procedures oregon obtaining genuine household consent.

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News viral Korean Mother Reunites With Daughter After Decades-Long Search And DNA Breakthrough