As AP found, rampant adoption scams separated generations of South Korean children from their families

Noh, now a researcher at Soongsil University in Seoul, said Holt staff were aware that the agency was charging adoptive parents about $3,000 per child.

“My salary was 240,000 won, which is less than $200 a month,” Noh said. “If you send a child… that amount could pay at least one worker for the whole year.”

Documents obtained by AP show the agencies probably charged even more, between $4,000 and $6,000, but they pocketed some of that money through improper means, such as charging adoption workers for travel expenses while arranging for passengers to transport the babies instead.

Staff tried to accommodate the specific wishes of adoptive families. Some wanted siblings, Noh said, so she and her colleagues competed for the few twins in their networks.

Another former employee, who worked at two agencies from the 1970s to the early 1990s, said anyone facing challenges raising their children was strongly encouraged to give them away.

“Many of the children we took in would have stayed with their biological parents with a little help,” the former employee said. “But what we heard (from management) was always the same: If we don't take the child, another adoption agency will.”

A 1988 document released by Holt, which the AP said was obtained, shows that some parents who had given up their children soon asked to have them returned. Agency officials told them that their children would thrive under good Western parents and perhaps one day return home rich or “with doctorates.”

In one case, a mother came back and asked to see her son. The boy was still in Seoul, but a Holt employee told the mother he had been flown to the United States.

“After being told the lie,” the employee wrote, “the birth mother began to regain her peace of mind, as expected.”

Susan Soonkeum Cox, who has long worked for Holt International, the Oregon-based U.S. arm of the Holt adoption network, denied there were widespread problems. She said the goal had always been to find good homes for children who would otherwise have grown up in orphanages.

“Were there activities that should not have taken place? Probably. We are human and everyone is different. There are good social workers, there are bad social workers, there are good employees, there are bad employees,” she said. “But … I reject the allegation of systematic, deliberate misconduct.”

Seoul-based Holt Children's Services, which split from the American agency in the 1970s, and the three other Korean agencies declined to comment on specific cases.

Holt Korea has denied allegations of wrongdoing in recent years, blaming complaints from adoptees on misunderstandings and problems with Korean welfare. Kim Jin Sook, president of Eastern, said the agency was implementing government policy to find homes for “discarded children.”

But some other local organizations began closing their programs for ethical reasons.

In the 1970s, Francis Carlin ran Catholic Relief Services in South Korea, which arranged about 30 adoptions a month, compared with hundreds at the larger organizations. Demand from the West was enormous, and there were not enough legitimate orphans to meet it, he said, leading to “a lot of compromise, a lot of flirting.”

The larger agencies visited orphanages, taking healthy babies and leaving older and disabled children behind, he said.

“These, I would call them brokers, went out and tried to have more and more children,” Carlin said when AP reached her. “They made the birth parents feel guilty and said, 'What are you doing? You can't afford to take care of this child… Why don't you just step away and give them a better life? You're so selfish.'”

A Korean social worker expressed his disgust in words so devastating that they have stayed with Carlin all these years: “It’s disgusting, just disgusting.”

Catholic Relief Services ended its adoption program in 1974. Carlin remembers standing up at a meeting of humanitarian organizations and saying, “We're starting to slide into the abyss,” he said.

Four decades later, Laurie Bender took a DNA test because her own daughter was curious about her ancestry. In 2019, she received a call: “Your mother was looking for you.”

Bender dropped the phone.

“It's like a hole in your heart has been healed, you finally feel like a complete person,” Bender said. “It's like you've been living a fake life and everything you know isn't true.”

Just a few weeks later, Bender and her daughter flew to South Korea. Her mother, Han Tae-soon, wore her best outfit and lipstick for the first time in a long time. She immediately recognized her daughter at the airport and ran to her, screaming, moaning and running her fingers through her hair.