Finding Korean Orphans from 1967-1974

May 30, 2015 6:02 PM

In the late 1960s and early '70s my mother was part of a group of women that raised funds for an orphanage in South Korea . They kept a scrapbook which includes the letters and photos that were sent to them. I am moving soon and want to pass this scrapbook on to someone who might find it meaningful (the orphanage if it still exists? one of the children? a scholar?) but am not sure who it would be appropriate to give to or how to find them.
posted by vespabelle to Grab Bag (10 answers total)

The documentary filmmaker Deann Liem might be able to help you figure it out. A short piece about her work.
posted by judith at 6:30 PM on May 30, 2015

If you have the name of the organization that ran the orphanage (e.g. Holt, Children's Home Society, etc.) they might be interested. The agencies are usually the first place adoptees start when doing research about their histories.
posted by Coffeemate at 7:45 PM on May 30, 2015

Please don't only pass them to the adoption agencies as they have a pretty dismal history of helping adoptees and orphans access their full records in Korea, Holt specifically. If possible, could the whole thing be digitised and left online as a back up like the Google photos or a flickr album? There's a Korean governmental department in charge of orphanages that should take the actual scrapbook if the children's home no longer exists - Jane Jeong Trenka would be a great person to know where to refer you to and what to do with the scrapbook.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:40 AM on May 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also thanks for thinking to do this. These tiny scraps of personal history mean so much and to have them saved thoughtfully by a stranger is a wonderful gift.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:41 AM on May 31, 2015

Do not give them to the agencies! There is a call for artifact of adoption at the moment, I will get back with the details.
posted by Iteki at 6:59 AM on May 31, 2015

I would digitize BTW but not leave it online, but send the digital copies to ikaa, trak, and goal, will bring thise links when back on desktop too. The docs being publicly available could lead to misuse of the info.
posted by Iteki at 7:35 AM on May 31, 2015

Sorry, was out and about. I would suggest providing digital copies to: GOAL (Global Overseas Adoptee Link), Korea TRACK(Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea) and IKAA (International Korean Adoptee Association). Different local organisations are more in touch with different coordinating groups, partially due to how each umbrella organisation chooses to regard adoption and to cooperate with Korea. GOAL and TRACK operate out of Korea.

As for the orginals, I think you should consult with the organisations above, but the call for artifacts was from the Icheon Migration Museum who have been encouraged by adoption activists internationally to represent the movement of over 150,000 infants from Korea.
posted by Iteki at 9:22 AM on May 31, 2015

And for a magnificent 4 posts in a row, of course many of the children in the scrapbook will not have been adopted or left Korea (one child mentioned was in highschool), so my responses are from a fairly specific angle and set of assumptions.
posted by Iteki at 9:56 AM on May 31, 2015

Try the 23andMe community boards. Tons of adopted Koreans there.
posted by knowgood at 11:50 AM on July 2, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks to info from a memail the scrapbook has been donated to the UCLA Korean studies library.
posted by vespabelle at 6:46 AM on January 1, 2016 [3 favorites]