Korean Birth Parents Have No Legal Rights To Look For Their Relinquished Child/ren

Note:

*While this website is mostly geared toward Adoptees who were adopted through the Korean Adoption Agency Korea Social Service (KSS), there is also information here which is relevant to ALL Korean Adoptees, regardless of their Korean Adoption Agency. Please read carefully to note what info. is purely relevant to KSS Adoptees and what is generally relevant to ALL Korean Adoptees.

Korean Birth Parents Have No Legal Rights To Look For Their Relinquished Child/ren.

*Please note that this is written with KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees in mind, but that this broadly applies to ALL Korean Adoptees, regardless of their Korean Adoption Agency.

Other Korean Adoption Agencies (HOLT Korea, ESWS, SWS / Now KWS) will have their own procedures for granting permission for the agency to put the Adoptee in contact with the Adoptee. Please contact your relevant Korean Adoption Agency for more information.

Please DO NOT contact KSS if KSS (Korea Social Service) is NOT your Korean Adoption Agency.

Something which we think is poorly understood by the Korean Adoptee community is that in Korea, Korean birth parents have NO RIGHTS to look for the child/ren they relinquished for adoption: in other words, they have no rights to look for us, the Adoptees.

This is why, even if a Korean birth parent has gone back to KSS or contacted KSS in an effort to look for the child/ren they relinquished, KSS will not notify the Adoptee of this attempt at contact unless the Adoptee has granted KSS written permission for ANY birth family members to be put in touch with the Adoptee.

Only Adoptees have the rights to look for Korean birth parents - Korean birth parents have no rights to look for us. This is why it's so important for us to go through KSS' bureaucratic Birth Family Search (BFS) process, and why it's so important to email KSS and write that you give KSS permission for ANY birth family members to contact you.

Even if a birth family member has tried to contact you through KSS, if you do not give KSS written permission for birth family members to contact you, KSS will not put you in touch with them.

The bottom line is: IF you want to find Korean birth family members, you MUST grant KSS permission via email for KSS to put ANY birth family members in contact with you.

*You should also initiate a formal Birth Family Search through KSS’ Birth Family Search procedures, described in the link below.

Please see the Step By Step KSS Birth Family Search page here which has the contact information for KSS.

“But No One Has Ever Looked For Me”.

Oftentimes, Adoptees don’t do a Birth Family Search through their Korean Adoption Agency because they think that no one is looking for them. While this is of course a possibility, the thing that most Adoptees don’t know is that Korean birth parents have no rights to look for the child/ren they relinquished for adoption. This means that even if a Korean birth parent contacts the Korean or Western Adoption Agency looking for information on the child/ren they relinquished for adoption, that the Korean or Western Adoption Agency will typically not give any information to the Korean birth parents about their relinquished child/ren.

Because the Korean Adoptee alone has the rights to look for Korean birth parents, it is up to the Korean Adoptee to contact her or his relevant Korean adoption agency and give written permission (or sometimes fill out a form) which allows the Korean adoption agency to put the Adoptee in contact with her or his birth parent/s.

There have been tragic cases where the Korean Adoptee returned to the Korean adoption agency for a birth family search, only to learn that a birth parent who had since passed away had attempted contact with the Adoptee through the Korean adoption agency, but the Korean adoption agency had never notified the Korean Adoptee.

Korean adoption agencies typically do not tell the Korean Adoptee that they need to grant them permission for Korean birth parents to be put into contact with them.

For those Korean Adoptees that wish to be put in contact with Korean birth parent/s, please contact your relevant Korean adoption agency, which is typically: HOLT Korea, ESWS, SWS / now KWS, or KSS (Korea Social Service). Ask your relevant Korean Adoption Agency what their procedure is for granting the agency permission to put you in touch with ANY birth family members.

*You should also initiate a formal Birth Family Search through your relevant Korean Adoption Agency’s procedures.

For KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees ONLY, you must simply write KSS an email stating that you grant them permission for ANY birth family members to be put in touch with you. *This should be done at the SAME TIME as you initiate a formal Birth Family Search through KSS’ Birth Family Search procedures, described in the link below. Please see the “Illustrated Step By Step Guide” on the Step By Step KSS Birth Family Search page below:

https://www.paperslip.org/step-by-step-kss-birth-family-search

This is best viewed on a laptop or large screen device so that you can easily follow the graphics for filling out the 2 forms to submit to KSS.

PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT KSS IF YOU ARE NOT A KSS ADOPTEE!!!

Update 1 - February 28th, 2024:

Some Korean Adoptees May Actually Be MISSING / LOST Children + May NOT Have Been Voluntarily Relinquished By Korean Birth Parents.

Such is the nefarious state of historical Korean Adoption practice that when children got lost or went MISSING, they often ended up at police stations in Korea, where police - instead of trying to reunite such children with their parents - almost immediately sent them to orphanages or adoption agencies. From there, the histories of such lost / missing children were OFTEN FALSIFIED and the children were stripped of their original, authentic identities, and ORPHANIZED in their paperwork. We call our site “PAPERSLIP” because the adoption paperwork of so MANY KSS Children said that we were “found abandoned” with either a “paper-slip” or a “memo” in our “clothings” (sic).

Until and unless a Korean Adoptee is able to find a Korean birth parent who is able to tell them the TRUTH about their origin story, many Adoptees who actually got LOST or went MISSING may FALSELY BELIEVE THAT THEY WERE RELINQUISHED AS ORPHANS.

It is for this reason that we strongly encourage KSS Adoptees - and ALL Korean Adoptees - to conduct a birth family search through their respective Korean Adoption Agencies and to take ALL POSSIBLE DNA TESTS.

KSS Adoptees should see: URGENT Info for KSS Adoptees

All other Korean Adoptees adopted through HOLT Korea, Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) - formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society,(ECWS), Social Welfare Society (SWS) / now Korea Welfare Society (KWS) should see: Korean Adoptee Starter Guide

Update 2 - February 28th, 2024:

Recently Exposed Correspondence of KSS’ Danish Adoption Agency Partner “Adoption Center” Sheds Light On Lack of Korean Birth Parent Rights In Attempting Contact With Their Relinquished Children.

A short way of saying this is that Korean birth parents often don't stand a chance in locating their child/ren through the Korean / Western Adoption Agencies, once they have relinquished them for adoption.

Even if Korean birth parents attempted to obtain information about the child/ren they had relinquished for adoption, they never stood a chance of making contact through the Western Partner Adoption Agencies with which KSS worked.

Recent documents from KSS’ Danish partner “Adoption Center” have come to light which expose the hopeless situation which Korean birth parents faced in attempting to contact their relinquished child/ren.

ABOVE: Screenshot 1
Chat GPT English translation of Danish “Adoption Center” correspondence. We have added BOLDS and some Paperslip Notes throughout:

Source: The Facebook page of Danish Minister who is pro-Adoptee rights:

https://www.facebook.com/katrinedaugaard

”ADOPTION CENTER

V1976-41501-2463.

Date 19 JAN 1987

Family Law Directorate Holmens Kanal 20 1060 Copenhagen K.

ECKERSBERGSCADE 17 D800 DENMARK

PHONE DENMARK 185282

TELEGRAM ADOPTION CENTER

Aarhus, January 16, 1987 FLN/TV

Re: Point V (Paperslip Note: 5) regarding inquiries from abroad regarding already adopted children, discussed on January 15, 1987

With reference to yesterday's discussion of the above point at the meeting attended by the social centers and the Adoption Board, where it was decided that inquiries from abroad regarding already adopted children must not be passed on to the adoptive parents by the Adoption Center, we are enclosing such an inquiry in two cases:

Case (Redacted)

and we request that the Family Law Directorate inform us of what action should be taken with these inquiries.

As you will see, the inquiry was received here at the end of October 1986, and we have previously informed our contact in Korea that nothing could be done in the matter until after January 15, 1987, as we awaited general decision-making on the issue.

Yours sincerely,

F. Lund Nielsen (Paperslip Note: Deceased Former Director of Danish “Adoption Center”, which later became DIA, which is now closing / is closed as of February 28th, 2024).

Office Manager

1911 Family Law Directorate 1981 inte

AUTHORIZED BY THE DANISH MINISTRY OF JUSTICE 1987-306”

ABOVE: Screenshot 2
Chat GPT English translation of Danish “Adoption Center” correspondence. We have added BOLDS and some Paperslip Notes throughout:

”DSN/1c

FAMILY LAW DIRECTORATE Holmens Kanal 20. 1060 Copenhagen K. Phone: 01 92 33 02.

Date

044970

1987 Family and Estate Office ref. 1987-3001-49 ⚫ 1 attachment.

Adoption Center. Eckersbergsgade 17. 1st floor. 8000 Aarhus C.

In a series of correspondence, the Adoption Center has contacted the Family Law Directorate, requesting information on how inquiries from abroad from biological parents and other relatives of children adopted in Denmark should be handled. After considering the matter at the Family Law Directorate, it is to be communicated that the inquiries should be treated in the same manner as similar inquiries from resident biological relatives of adopted (Danish) children:

If a child is adopted through anonymous adoption (Paperslip Note: since the vast majority of Korean Adoptees were in some way “Orphanized” in order to make us more easily adoptable, most of us were “adopted through anonymous adoption”), this means that the child's biological relatives may NOT (Paperslip Note: capitalization ours) learn about the adoptive parents' identity at the time of adoption or thereafter, and inquiries about the child otherwise may NOT be expected to be answered by the adoption authorities in Denmark. If the adoptive parents or the adopted child, upon reaching adulthood, contact the Family Law Directorate to obtain information about the biological relatives, the Family Law Directorate will, based on the records in the adoption case, provide information about the biological parents' names and dates of birth, as well as their residential status at the time of adoption, if this information is available in the records. Other information from the adoption case will not typically be provided unless specific circumstances apply.

Since it cannot be ruled out that adoptive parents or an adopted child, in contacting the Family Law Directorate about the biological parents' identity, may be interested in knowing whether the biological parents (or other relatives) at some point wished to establish some form of contact, the Family Law Directorate has no objection to inquiries from foreign biological relatives of children adopted in Denmark.”