"I have no information about my birth family. The only information I have is from adoption records stating that I was found by a security guard in front of the Miryang County Office (now Miryang City Hall) in South Gyeongsang Province."
Jennifer Arndt-Jones, 52, whose Korean name is Joo Yang-hee, was adopted to the United States in 1974. In a story she sent to the Adoption Information Disclosure Support Department of the National Center for the Rights of the Child on Tuesday in search of her roots, she said, "I was given the Korean name 'Joo Yang-hee' by the adoption agency."
According to adoption records, Joo is presumed to have been born on February 26, 1974. She was found in front of the Miryang County Office at around 9:40 p.m. on April 8 that year, about a month after her birth. At the time of discovery, she was 56 centimeters tall and weighed 4.3 kilograms. Records indicate she had dark brown hair and eyes.
Joo was placed in a foster home in Busan before being transferred to Holt Children's Services on April 30 of the same year. She was adopted by an American family in November that year. "I grew up under loving adoptive parents after my adoption," Joo said. "My adoptive parents had two biological sons, and they later adopted me and my younger sister from Korea."
In 1995, Joo studied Korean at the Yonsei University Korean Language Institute and attempted to search for her roots, but did not achieve the results she wanted. However, based on this experience, she produced a documentary titled "Crossing Chasms," which featured stories of adoptees living in Korea.
Currently serving as Secretary General of the Korean Institute of Minnesota, she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and son. Joo said the Korean Institute of Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that has shared, celebrated and preserved Korean language and culture, will soon mark its 50th anniversary.
Approximately 170,000 children have been sent abroad for adoption from Korea over the past 70-plus years since the 1950s. Of these, fewer than 3 percent are estimated to have been reunited with their birth families. Due to various document manipulations and institutional loopholes, searching for birth families is said to be like "finding a needle in a desert."
