About Us.


Paperslip.org was founded in 2020.


We are a volunteer organization of Korean Adoptees adopted through Korea Social Services (KSS), dedicated to helping other adult Korean Adoptees who were adopted through KSS and its Partner Western Adoption Agencies.

We do NOT represent KSS itself nor its Partner Western Adoption Agencies in any way.

Since 2020, we have helped hundreds of KSS Adoptees for FREE through our email account paperslipadoptee@gmail.com and through the private, KSS Adoptee Only Facebook group KSS Cribmates.

We are the first and only Adoptee-led website about KSS history and practice. We blazed the trail in research about KSS, and along the way we figured out how to request and obtain an important formerly hidden document from KSS—which we discovered in 2018 and coined as the “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary” in 2021. We also coined the term “English Adoptive Child Study Summary” in 2021 to describe the English document which all prospective Western adoptive parents were provided by the Partner Western Adoption Agencies of KSS as part of the process of matching a KSS child to a Western adoptive family in the US or Europe. We have helped countless KSS Adoptees request a birth family search and obtain their formerly secret “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary” from KSS.

We also decoded KSS’ secretly encoded K-Numbers in 2020.

Since 2021, we have had involvement in the early stages of birth family search of around 40 KSS Adoptees who have had a reunion with Korean birth family.

Our approach of cross-referencing Adoptee documents and systematically comparing K-Numbers among KSS Adoptees has since been adopted by other Korean activist groups and Adoptees from Korean Adoption Agencies such as Holt and Eastern Social Welfare Society (formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society). However, we were the first to implement this method on a wide scale—and crucially, to make the resulting information (the KSS K-Number first digit codes, not individuals’ private data) freely accessible to the public. In 2024–2025, we provided free methodological guidance to a Holt Adoptee leader for collecting and comparing K-Number data, and offered general advice to an Eastern Adoptee leader based in Australia regarding our advocacy work. We have always been willing to share information freely—unfortunately, however, others have attempted to take credit for our groundbreaking work.

Our groundbreaking research and years’ long work with global KSS Adoptees forms the egregiously uncredited backbone of both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea (TRC / TRCK) Investigation into Overseas Adoption (2022-2025) and the FRONTLINE documentary “South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning” (2024).

Since March 2024 when we first realized that ALL Korean Adoption Agency files would move to the Korean Government Agency NCRC (National Center for the Rights of the Child), we have been the ONLY Korean Adoptee led organization—or ANY organization—to consistently WARN Korean Adoptees about the coming file movement to NCRC, which we have unfortunately always known would be a disaster.

We are directly responsible for enabling hundreds of KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees to request both a birth family search and access to their previously secret Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary — a document unique to KSS, for which we uncovered the process to obtain — prior to the transfer of files to NCRC, beginning July 19th, 2025.

For anyone who missed the boat, we are deeply sorry. We tried our best for one year to warn everyone whom we could.

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*We are NOT affiliated in ANY WAY with DKRG (Danish Korean Rights Group) or any of the *KRG groups.

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Our Mission


We are a volunteer organization of Korean Adoptees adopted through Korea Social Services / KSS (S. Korea), dedicated to helping connect other adult Korean Adoptees who were adopted through KSS and its Partner Western Adoption Agencies:

  • International Social Service (ISS)

  • Welcome House / Pearl S. Buck Foundation - (Pennsylvania, US)

  • Lutheran Social Services (LSS) - (Minnesota, US)

  • Wereldkinderen - (Netherlands)

  • Adoption Center (AC) - (Denmark)

  • Love The Children (LTC) - (Pennsylvania, US)

  • Terre des Hommes - (Switzerland)

  • Family / Foreign Adoption Consultants (FAC) / F&CS Foster Care and Adoption Service - (Michigan, US)

*Note: Click here for a hyperlinked list of ALL of KSS’ Partner Western Adoption Agencies with links to information about each individual Partner Western Adoption Agency.

*Note: The adoptions of some KSS Adoptees were also facilitated through Holt in Korea, and KSS’ Western Partner Agencies in the US.

There is information which you should know if you are a KSS Adoptee which we will not be posting publicly. Please contact us for more info. via email at: paperslipadoptee@gmail.com

You can also contact us via our public “Paperslip” Facebook page here.

For Korea Social Service (KSS) Adoptees ONLY, we recommend that you join our private Facebook group called KSS Cribmates here.

Please note that you must be able to demonstrate that you are a KSS Adoptee in order to join. Please be sure to answer the Membership Questions. If you do not know the answer to some questions, write “I do not know”. You can contact us if you have issues. Those who do not answer Membership Questions will not be accepted. Thank you!

Writers / Contributors.

We consider that Paperslip is written through the lives of KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees adopted from 1964-2012 to the US, Netherlands, Denmark, and Switzerland. Without the many contributions of KSS Adoptees worldwide, there would be no Paperslip. We are grateful to the many KSS Adoptees who have shared their information with us over the years. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.

Why the name "Paperslip"?

Paperslip: Our Mission

The term "paperslip" (or “paper-slip”, as it was written in thousands of KSS English Adoptive Child Study Summaries) refers to the often fictional, non-existent notes which supposedly were found with countless supposedly “abandoned” children in KSS’ system. These fictive slips of paper were often used to erase truth — to orphanize children who had families and histories in Korea.

At Paperslip, we reclaim the word to expose the systemic falsifications that affected thousands of Korean Adoptees. We exist to document, investigate, and support those seeking the truths hidden behind fabricated narratives. Each "paperslip" tells not just a story of loss, but of resilience — and of a community determined to uncover what was taken.

We decided to call our group "Paperslip" because so many KSS Adoptees have this copy + paste Orphanization statement in their Western / English facing adoption paperwork—specificially in what we coined as the “English Adoptive Child Study Summary” in July 2021, when we first figured out that KSS kept a secret “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary”. While the copy / paste terms "paper-slip" and “memo” are unique to KSS, this use of Orphanization language is common not only in KSS Adoptee adoption paperwork, but in Korean Adoptee adoption paperwork in general. This is because in order for Korean children to be adopted internationally to the Western receiving countries in the US, Europe, and Australia, children had to be considered "abandoned", in order to match the Western definition of an "orphan". This is a common practice utilized in Korean Adoption generally known as Orphanization. Consequently, our REAL family backgrounds (if known) and / or information about where we were really born / found / relinquished was covered up by our Korean Adoption Agency, KSS, which secretly kept our REAL records in its file room in Seoul. KSS still has our real adoption records in Korea. They are all housed in KSS' post-adoption services building, which is the last remaining building of its original Seoul campus.

Find out about how to initiate a Birth Family Search with Korea Social Service (KSS) in Seoul here.

Please note that starting July 19th, 2025, ALL Korean Adoption Agency files, including those of KSS, will move to the Korean Government Agency NCRC. KSS will PERMANENTLY CLOSE after July 19th, 2025. From July 19th forward, KSS as well as ALL Korean Adoptees will have to submit birth family search requests through NCRC / KAS.

We are happy to help answer your questions about the procedure.

There is information which you should know if you are a KSS Adoptee which we will not be posting publicly.

Please contact us for more info.

We Wrote KSS History With Our Lives.

It’s ironically fitting that we should have to piece together the history of KSS ourselves, given that many of us have been offered little of our own histories by our Korean and US / European Adoption Agencies. This is an evolving story, with many contributors. Thank you to those who have shared their stories and their recollections with us! Every bit of info. is valuable to us.

Note:

*While this website is mostly geared toward Adoptees who were adopted through the Korean Adoption Agency Korea Social Service (KSS), there is also information here which is relevant to ALL Korean Adoptees, regardless of their Korean Adoption Agency. Please read carefully to note what info. is purely relevant to KSS Adoptees and what is generally relevant to ALL Korean Adoptees.