Why Adoptees Will Likely Be Stuck With NCRC’s Woefully Inadequate Temporary Storage Facility For ALL Korean Adoption Agency Files In Gyeonggi-do.

Posted to Paperslip — July 4th, 2025.
Promoting Independence of Thought.

Thanks to a Paperslip Contributor for helping us to understand some of the details of this issue relating to the whistleblower from the NCRC.

A spoonful of truth helps the reality go down.

Related:
Now More Than Ever, Safely Back Up Any Documents You Have Which Contain Birth Parent Information!

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Many Korean Adoptees know by now that ALL Korean Adoption Agency files will be transferred to the Korean Government Agency NCRC (National Center for the Rights of the Child) starting July 19th, 2025. We have been diligently following this topic and strongly warning KSS and other Adoptees about the coming file transfer to NCRC since March 11th, 2024, and have been the ONLY organization of any kind to consistently WARN Korean Adoptees about the file transfer to NCRC for the past 15 months — since we have quite frankly always known that the file transfer to NCRC would be a disaster.

We were the first to report on May 2nd, 2025 that NCRC had designated a new temporary storage facility for ALL Korean Adoption Agency files which NCRC will begin to take over starting on July 19th, 2025:

“NCRC Secures Adoption Records Preservation Facility in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province”

A new Korean Adoptee and DoKAD (descendant of Korean Adoptee) activist group recently emerged and began posting to social media around June 12th, 2025 in response to growing concerns raised during a May 31st, 2025 meeting in Seoul — the meeting was organized by the Korean activist group Banet and featured a key speaker: a whistleblower from the NCRC. During a recent trip to Korea, we ourselves spoke with other attendees of this Banet meeting almost immediately following the event in Seoul, and were thus made quickly aware of the issues which were raised by the NCRC whistleblower — specifically, that temperature issues in the cold storage building chosen by NCRC for the storage of ALL Korean Adoption Agency files were definitely not ideal for the storage of fragile, sometimes decades old paper adoption files. We had already been the first to report the address of NCRC’s new temporary storage facility in Gyeonggi-do on May 2nd, 2025, and had reported that the location of the facility was called “프레시로지물류센터물류센터 / Fresh Ji Logistics Center” — which is located an hour north of NCRC’s main office in Seoul and is difficult to reach, even by public transportation — so this information about the facility location and the type of facility it is was not news to us.

Unfortunately, we were not surprised to learn that NCRC’s temporary storage location for ALL Korean Adoption Agency files was inadequate. Since March 11th, 2024 — when we first began warning Adoptees about the impending file transfer — we had anticipated that the process would likely be disastrous:

KSS Adoptee Alert: The Korean Govt Unprepared For Transfer of Korean Adoption Agencies’ Files

The new activist group includes the word “Emergency” in its name — but the real emergency started 15 months ago. That was when Korean Adoptee organizations worldwide could have, and should have, started as we did to WARN Adoptees to request both a birth family search and their Korean Adoption Agency files BEFORE the file transfer to NCRC starting on July 19th, 2025. Paperslip warned the KSS Adoptee and broader Korean Adoptee community consistently, from March 11th, 2024 through June 15th, 2025 (which, depending on their agency, was the last date that Korean Adoptees could make requests directly to their Korean Adoption Agencies) — but we did so ALONE.

NO other Korean Adoptee individual or organization WARNED Adoptees about the coming file transfer more than Paperslip.

The largest Korean Adoptee organization on the planet — IKAA (International Korean Adoptee Associations) — waited until July 4th, 2025 to mention the file transfer to NCRC, in an email sent to its members. That is just 15 days prior to the July 19th, 2025 start date of the file transfer to NCRC. Unfortunately this was FAR TOO LATE to start talking about this issue — coming as it did well PAST the June 15th, 2025 deadline when some Korean Adoptees could still make requests through their Korean Adoption Agencies. One Korean Adoption Agency — Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) / Formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society (ECWS) — began to shutter Post-Adoption Services way back in January 2025.

Egregiously, one activist who is part of the new activist group previously told Adoptees effectively “not to worry”, because they had the NCRC file transfer situation “handled”. We are REALLY sorry for any Adoptees who listened to that nonsense, because no one can “handle” the Korean Government.

And of course, the Korean Adoption Agencies and NCRC provided LITTLE to NO guidance along the way — as usual leaving it up to Adoptees to piece together information about the file transfer on their own.

Paperslip was the ONLY organization to keep Korean Adoptees informed about news relating to the file transfer to NCRC — from March 11th, 2024 through June 15th, 2025. And we continue to do so today. At this point, we strongly believe it’s too late to change the NCRC temporary storage location — though we also believe that any changes to the existing plan may cause nebulous delays which will benefit the Korean Government and further disenfranchise Korean Adoptees.

Currently (as of this writing on July 4th, 2025), the issue which the new activist group has belatedly taken up is the imminent transfer of ALL Korean Adoption Agency files to NCRC’s temporary storage facility starting on July 19th, 2025. Anyone familiar with the issue would acknowledge that the location and conditions of NCRC’s temporary storage facility are far from ideal. The new activist group was hastily formed from a group of existing activists / supporters only after the May 31st, 2025 Banet meeting and, starting on June 12th, 2025, has been actively calling on the Korean Government to secure a more suitable, long-term archival site for ALL Korean Adoption Agency records, which are legally set to be handed over to NCRC starting July 19th, 2025.

Here’s where we disagree with the new activists’ belated approach.

First, it’s OVER ONE YEAR TOO LATE to start talking about the file transfer to NCRC. The real emergency started 15 months ago when it first became known that ALL Korean Adoption Agency files would be transferred to NCRC starting July 19th, 2025. The new activist group held a forum in Seoul on July 7th, 2025 — just 12 days before ALL Korean Adoption Agency files are to begin moving to NCRC, on July 19th, 2025.

Pushing for a change in venue now for the temporary storage of such files, even if taken seriously, could potentially result in nebulous delays which could be advantageous to the Korean Government — since the presumed forthcoming third incarnation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation into Overseas Adoptions — TRC3 — will heavily rely on access to Korean Adoptees’ Korean Adoption Agency paperwork.

Second, we unfortunately don’t think that this new activist group is going to be taken seriously by the Korean Government, which has already quietly squashed an amazing prior July 2024 proposal for the creation of an “Adoption Records Center” in Gimpo. Paperslip previously reported on these developments in July 2024:

Construction of a New "Adoption Records Center" in Gimpo By 2029

4.8 Billion Won Budget Request for 'Adoption Records Center' Rejected By The Ministry of Finance

Third, the new activist group may be targeting the wrong pressure point in its demands to the Korean government regarding a change in venue for NCRC’s temporary storage of all Korean Adoption Agency files. According to the NCRC whistleblower, the delay in moving forward with the original July 2024 proposal to establish an "Adoption Records Center" in Gimpo is not due to budget constraints, but rather NCRC’s ongoing failure to formally request the necessary land from the Gimpo city government.

Korean Adoptees should be pushing instead for NCRC to request the LAND for the proposed “Adoption Records Center” from the Gimpo city government — but as revealed by the NCRC whistleblower during the May 31st, 2025 Banet meeting, NCRC has not done so — presumably in a deliberate and so far successful attempt to cause the Gimpo plan to fail.

But let’s face reality — if NCRC and the Korean Government are not committed to the success of the Gimpo plan — which they’re not — they will ultimately find a way to derail it, regardless of the form or intensity of external pressure.

Let’s also not forget that the Korean Government is not known to act quickly when it comes to matters that seriously affect Korean Adoptees — it took NCRC over one year to identify a temporary storage facility.

While we were the first to report on the fact that the current temporary storage facility is inadequate —especially given its location nearly an hour north of NCRC’s Seoul headquarters, and its less than ideal site as a food storage facility—our points may not align with the prevailing (and hastily assembled) narrative which the new activist group is rapidly promulgating amongst Korean Adoptees online.

To gain clarity on this issue, first it’s important to understand some recent history:

The original plan by NCRC for the file transfer back in July 2024 was to create an “Adoption Records Center” in Gimpo, but according to the NCRC whistleblower, likely deliberate sleight of hand and likely deliberate failures by NCRC and the Ministry of Health and Welfare likely conspired to squash this plan.

To understand this, you have to read the pages linked below. And you have to understand that the Korean Government is never just going to let Korean Adoptees easily win on their turf.

Originally posted to Paperslip in July 2024:

Construction of a New "Adoption Records Center" in Gimpo By 2029
Article published — July 8th, 2024 KST
Article posted to Paperslip — July 8th, 2024

“The (Korean) Ministry of Health and Welfare's request for a 4.8 billion won budget for an 'Adoption Records Center' has been rejected by the Ministry of Finance.”
Article published — July 18th, 2024 KST
Article posted to Paperslip — July 26th, 2024

This original plan to create an “Adoption Records Center” in Gimpo should be the one to be pushed for currently by Adoptee activists — but NCRC and the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) will forever use the excuse of lack of budget to make sure that this Gimpo plan does not come to fruition.

To help explain this complicated sleight of hand on behalf of NCRC and the MHW which was revealed by the NCRC whistleblower during the May 31st, 2025 Banet meeting in Seoul, a Paperslip Contributor writes:

“Without securing the land in Gimpo for the previously proposed “Adoption Records Center”, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) and NCRC cannot receive the funding to create the “Adoption Records Center”. While the Gimpo city government continues to wait, neither the MHW nor NCRC has taken any concrete action to acquire the land. Instead, they repeatedly claim that they cannot proceed with the original plan due to ‘budget constraints’. However, without the land, a proper budget cannot be allocated. As a result, the MHW and NCRC continue to issue misleading statements, and unfortunately, anyone (like the new activist group) who refers to the lack of budget as an excuse for not creating the originally proposed “Adoption Records Center” in Gimpo appears to be indirectly supporting this narrative.

What Adoptees don’t understand is that NCRC only needs to ask the Gimpo city government for the land, and NCRC doesn’t do that. This reason — rather than ‘budget constraints’ — is why the original Gimpo plan for the originally proposed “Adoption Records Center” cannot move forward.”

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*Cue our utter lack of shock that NCRC and the Korean Government have once again deliberately and willfully failed Korean Adoptees.

Frankly, we knew from March 11th, 2024 when we first began to report on the transfer of ALL Korean Adoption Agency files to NCRC, that Korean Adoptees were screwed. We’ve had years of prior experience with NCRC up to the National Assembly level — and we’ve known for years that NCRC was willfully incompetent, and will forever use “lack of budget” as an eternal excuse for their perpetual failures. We’ve even been given this “lack of budget” excuse in person by a former Head of NCRC back in 2021 — they used this excuse to justify why NCRC had just 3 birth family search workers at the time (and during 2020, NCRC was down to just ONE birth family search worker to serve the needs of ALL Korean Adoptees around the WORLD). It is because of our knowledge of NCRC’s years of willful failures that we dedicated the past 15 months to making damn sure that as many KSS and other Adoptees as possible knew to request both a birth family search and their Korean Adoption Agency files from their respective Korean Adoption Agencies BEFORE the file transfer to NCRC. We figured out LONG before anyone else did that the NCRC file transfer — for one reason or another — was going to be a disaster — and we became the ONLY organization to constantly WARN Adoptees about the coming file transfer for over one year:

Paperslip Concludes A 15 Month Campaign To Warn KSS Adoptees About The File Transfer To NCRC

Ironically, we were attending an Omma Poom event in Korea on June 13th, 2025, when — at the conclusion of a film screening — a member of the new activist group took the podium mic and breathlessly informed Korean Adoptees in attendance about the new activist group’s new efforts concerning the issues with NCRC’s temporary storage facility. This announcement came just as we were CONCLUDING our own 15-month campaign to warn KSS and the wider Korean Adoptee community about the impending NCRC file transfer, which we had long known would be a disaster. It's unfortunate that this new activist group never bothered to consult the one organization — Paperslip — that had been sounding the alarm from the very beginning. But this is down to Adoptee politics — since a non-Adoptee DoKAD member of this new activist group previously attempted to accept false credit for our KSS K-Number research, and we had called him out on it publicly.

We’d love to believe that the NCRC file transfer will be easy and smooth — but unfortunately we’ve had enough past experience with NCRC to know better.

The bad but realistic news is that short of NCRC and the MHW moving forward on the land in Gimpo for the originally proposed “Adoption Records Center”, and the Korean Government magically coughing up the funds for the original Gimpo plan (which, spoiler alert, probably won't be happening — since neither NCRC nor the Korean Government are incentivized to do so) we unfortunately think Korean Adoptees are going to be stuck with the woefully inadequate Gyeonggi-do NCRC temporary storage facility we first reported on back on May 2nd, 2025 as the site for the storage of ALL Korean Adoption Agency files — potentially permanently.

But hey — prove us wrong.

Let’s at least be aware that the Korean Government isn’t stupid. It’s not as though they don’t know that Korean Adoptees would infinitely prefer that our sacred adoption files be eventually transferred to a purpose built “Adoption Records Center” in Gimpo, over a hard-to-reach temporary storage facility which is effectively a glorified cold storage unit in Gyeonggi-do, one hour north of NCRC’s main office in Seoul.

In closing — do you truly believe the Korean Government will ever make it easy for Korean Adoptees to access their records? Especially after a well-known Danish Korean Adoptee activist in Seoul — who is strongly tied to the new activist group — publicly vowed, during the widely televised and heavily publicized March 26th, 2025 press event for the TRC2 Interim Report on Overseas Adoption, to use Adoptee paperwork as evidence in future lawsuits against the Korean Government and Korean Adoption Agencies?

If you really believe that the Korean Government is incentivized to enable Korean Adoptees to have easy access to their carefully preserved adoption files in the midst of the presumably forthcoming TRC3 investigation into Overseas Adoption, we have a *great* used car to sell to you…

Unfortunately, the future of birth family search remains deeply uncertain — as we have long predicted — due to two key factors: first, NCRC’s and the Korean Government's continued lack of incentive or commitment to preserving Adoptee records in perpetuity, particularly in the face of TRC3; and second, the unpredictable actions of a small, insular group of gatekeeping Adoptee and DoKAD (descendant of Korean Adoptee) activists whose decisions may impact ALL Adoptees, regardless of broader input or consent.

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What You Can Do.

No matter what happens, Korean Adoptees should take care to BACK UP in multiple formats the adoption paperwork they already have in their possession. This is ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT for those Adoptees who have birth parent information in their adoption documents. But this is ALSO IMPORTANT for ANY Korean Adoptees with any adoption paperwork at all. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on NCRC to properly preserve or be able to accurately identify our adoption records in the future.

Please see:

Now More Than Ever, Safely Back Up Any Documents You Have Which Contain Birth Parent Information!

The Current State of Birth Family Search

DNA Testing
Please take ALL possible DNA tests.

KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees Please See:

NEW! Step By Step KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptee Birth Family Search

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Please note that for US Adoptees, FOIA requests used to be a reliable way of obtaining adoption documents. However, in recent times (since around March 2025), FOIA requests have been coming back around 80% REDACTED. Therefore we cannot at this time recommend that Adoptees submit FOIA requests, unless for dire purposes. We hope that in the future, FOIA requests will rebound. Please see:

FOIA Request For US Adoptees

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For information related to the future of birth family search through NCRC via the KAS website, please see the IMPORTANT DROPDOWN MENU on Paperslip’s homepage called:

”DROPDOWN: AFTER July 19th, 2025, ALL Birth Family Search Requests Must Be Processed Through NCRC/KAS”:

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Conclusion.

Unfortunately, we have known since first learning in March 2024 that NCRC would take over ALL Korean Adoption Agency files starting on July 19th, 2025 that the cliff was coming. We tried our utmost to warn you. We are sorry if you did not hear the message, or were not ready to hear it at the time.

We won’t sugarcoat this — despite the new activist group’s best efforts, we don’t see NCRC remarkably improving in the near future. We attended virtually the July 7th, 2025 forum staged by the new activist group in Seoul, and we came away feeling even more strongly that NCRC will continue in its current plan and that they will continue to conduct business as usual — in other words, saying the right things in these kinds of public events for PR purposes, but in reality, behaving in the exact same manner in which they always have. We’ve unfortunately seen this slippery behavior countless times before.

We hope that Adoptees do their best to try to improve their odds in the birth family search process by following our advice about backing up and submitting their own adoption documents whenever submitting a Petition for Adoption Information Disclosure (birth family search request) to NCRC via the KAS website after September 16th, 2025. Please note that NCRC will certainly not have the file transfer sorted out by then. It will take them years.

Please contact us at paperslipadoptee@gmail.com if you are a KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptee with any questions.