In college, Deann Borshay Liem started to recall images from her past – a small home in the hills, children running around an orphanage and a pile of shoes on a rack.
"At first, I thought they were dreams, but then I realized that maybe they were actual memories," Liem told All Things Considered host Juana Summers.
They were scenes from her childhood in South Korea, before she was adopted at 8 years old by an American family in 1966. Recalling those memories would eventually lead to the discovery that she was lied to about nearly everything: her identity and her family.
Liem is one of more than 140,000 South Korean adoptees who were sent to live with families abroad following the Korean War, when many children were left without families to care for them, according to a statement from the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The actual number of adoptees may be far higher, according to other estimates.
On Wednesday, for the first time, the South Korean government admitted that for decades, the country's adoption agencies were responsible for widespread fraud, malpractice and human rights violations.
The commission released its initial findings after a years-long investigation into the cases of hundreds of adoptees who were sent to live with families abroad. A majority of children went to live in the U.S., Europe and Australia.
After some of her childhood memories began to resurface, Liem went through her adoptive family's records. Documents listed her birth name as Cha Jung Hee and said that she was an orphan.
Among those records, there were two childhood photographs — both labeled with the name Cha Jung Hee. But the images were of two different girls. One of them was Liem and the other someone else.
Liem found that her adoptive parents had exchanged letters with a different child at the orphanage. That child was the real Cha Jung Hee, who had left the orphanage before the Borshays could adopt her. The orphanage sent Liem, whose birth name is actually Kang Ok Jin, in her place.
"It was just a transformative moment in my life to know that I had been switched with another child — my adoptive parents knew nothing about it — and that it took all these years to kind of come to terms with the truth," she said.
In her films First Person Plural and In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Liem documents navigating the truth about her adoption and her journey to reunite with her Korean mother and siblings. In another film, Geographies of Kinship, she tells the story of how South Korea became known for its global adoption program.
"I think we all want to know where we come from and we have a right to know. Who were our parents? Where were we born? We have a right to our identities," Liem said.
According to the statement from Park Sun-Young, the commission's chairperson, a total of 367 adoptees filed petitions requesting an investigation.
"While many adoptees were fortunate to grow up in loving families, others suffered great hardship and trauma due to flawed adoption processes. Even today, many continue to face challenges," she said in a statement.
Liem submitted her own case to the commission for review last year. She said this initial report from the investigation evokes complicated emotions. It's a relief that the government is finally affirming what adoptees have known for many years, but for her, an acknowledgement alone is not enough.
"I think I just felt a lot of anger that this was allowed to happen on such a mass scale and just a tremendous amount of grief," she said.
Ultimately, Liem said, there need to be concrete actions moving forward. Records should be more accessible for adoptees, financial support and social services for struggling and single-parent families in South Korea need to be improved, and adoptive countries need to evaluate their own responsibility.
"I think it's time to end international adoptions from Korea," Liem said.
Copyright 2025 NPR
