In the Stars & Stripes they have an article posted about how the Camp Humphreys garrison commander’s wife is a Korean adoptee who has returned to Korea for the first time since she was a baby:
Tara Graves poses between her husband, Army Col. Seth Graves, right, and her birth brother, Kim Hyung-bae, during a recent reunion in South Korea. (Kim Hyung Bae)
Tara Graves celebrates her birthday Saturday in South Korea, her first since she was born here more than 45 years ago.
Graves, 46, a personal fitness trainer and the wife of Camp Humphreys commander Col. Seth Graves, is among tens of thousands of South Koreans adopted to families around the world in the decades following the 1950-53 Korean War.
In 2020, the Army sent the Graves family from Brussels to South Korea, where Seth took command of the largest U.S. military base overseas.
The new assignment hit home for Tara Graves: She had not been in South Korea since she was adopted at 6 months old, she told Stars and Stripes in December.
DNA technology is continuing to help Korean born adoptees find their biological parents:
Yoon Sang-hee (C), twin sister of Yoon Sang-ae, a Korean-born adoptee who is now an American citizen, holds a photo and a poster during a reunion held via a video call in Seoul on Oct. 15, 2020, 44 years after the younger Yoon went missing. Next to Yoon is their older brother Yoon Sang-myung (L) and mother Lee Eung-soon. (Yonhap)
A 47-year-old Korean-born woman adopted by an American family 44 years ago has reunited with her biological family after conducting a DNA test through a South Korean mission in the United States, the foreign ministry said Sunday.
On Thursday, Yoon Sang-ae, now an American citizen, had a tearful video call with her 78-year-old biological mother, Lee Eung-soon, her twin sister, Yoon Sang-hee, and brother, Yoon Sang-myung.
Yoon Sang-ae was three years old when she went missing while at a market in Seoul with her grandmother. She was flown to the United States months later.
She registered her DNA information in search of her family when she visited South Korea in 2016. Her biological mother also registered her DNA the next year to find her daughter. (…………)
It was the first case where a Korean-born adoptee found the biological family after the government began providing a DNA test service for overseas adoptees to help them be tested and register their information without having to come to South Korea.
Here is a good article in the Joong Ang Ilbo about the difficulties Korean adoptees are having tracking down their birth parents in South Korea:
Left: Lida Bouts returned to Korea in February 2016 as an exchange student at Sungkyunkwan University, 22 years after she was adopted by a Dutch couple. Her search for her family failed as there was no response to letters sent by her adoption agency to her birth parents. Middle left: Bouts’ adoption document drawn up in 1993. Middle right: Megan Green as a 2-year-old before an adoption that sent her to the U.S. state of Nebraska in 1986. Right: Green’s adoption document drawn up in 1986. [LIDA BOUTS, MEGAN GREEN]Korea Adoptions Services collects all family search requests from private adoption agencies. It reports that in 2016, there were 1,940 requests from Korean adoptees trying to find their birth parents. Only 102 of them, or 5 percent, ended up meeting their biological parents. The year before, the figure was 91 out of 2,012 requests, or 4.5 percent.
And such reunions are getting harder with time. Parents who gave their babies up after the Korean War were poor and had no choice – and were more likely to agree to meet them two or three decades later.
But adoptions processed in the 1980s and later often involved single mothers, who were afraid of the social stigma attached to unwed mothers. “They have probably found someone to marry after sending children away for adoption, and now have a family,” said Kim. “They are much more reluctant to be reunited.”
In 2016, 880 children were put up for adoption both domestically and internationally. Of the total, 808, or 91.8 percent, were born to unmarried couples.
“While it is important for an adoptee to trace his or her family roots, it is equally important for parents to keep their privacy,” said an official at the adoption bureau at the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
“We have many single mothers in the country, and a large number of birth parents who wish to hide their adoption records. Many have moved on and have families on their own,” the official continued.
Bouts is frustrated because she has a lot of information about her birth family from the time of her adoption, but can’t do anything with it. “I know full names of everyone, birth dates and even the region they lived in,” she said. “I’m not angry at my birth parents for anything. I can even accept that my parents wouldn’t want to know or meet me. I would just really want to meet my sister.”
Bouts’ adoption document mentions a sister seven years older than her.
“I think it would make me more complete if I would meet them,” she said. “I would like to tell them that they made the right choice and that I’m living a very happy and blessed life.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Here is a feel good story about a Korean adoptee and US soldier stationed at Camp Casey who found her biological family in South Korea:
Sgt. Faith Vazquez calls Defiance, Ohio, home, but she also lived in Hawaii and other duty stations with her mother and Navy father. Her then-childless parents adopted her through a Seoul agency when she was 4 months old.
“I never grew up feeling adopted,” said Vazquez, 23, American Forces Network detachment commander at Camp Casey.
She joined the Army after high school graduation. Her first assignment was a one-year tour at South Korea’s Yongsan Garrison.
Vazquez yearned to know more about her heritage but let her tour pass without searching for her origins. “I was 18, and I didn’t feel mentally ready,” she said.
She then set off for three years at Fort Riley, Kan., where her husband now serves in the Army.
She returned to South Korea for a one-year unaccompanied tour in October, conflicted over whether to seek her birth family. She didn’t want to slight her adoptive parents.
But with an adopted co-worker’s encouragement, she contacted the Seoul agency that processed her adoption. Within weeks, the agency phoned: “Faith, we’ve found your family.” [Stars & Stripes]
