KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees—Please See The Special Note At The Bottom Of This Page.
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For any Korean Adoptees who already have birth parent information in their English and / or Korean adoption documents, IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO SAFELY BACK UP THESE FILES NOW!
This is because there is the possibility that you may NEVER be able to get such documents from your Korean Adoption Agency or NCRC / KAS again.
AFTER July 19th, 2025, it will no longer be possible to request a birth family search through the 4 major Korean Adoption Agencies, whose Post Adoption Services will PERMANENTLY CLOSE.
The 4 major Korean Adoption Agenices are:
-Holt Children’s Inc. in Korea -Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) / formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society (ECWS) -Korea Welfare Society (KWS) / formerly Social Welfare Society (SWS) -Korea Social Service (KSS)
NOTE: AFTER July 19th, 2025, the two Korean Government Agencies which work together and which will be in charge of birth family search for ALL Korean Adoptees are:
ALL Korean Adoption Agency files for ALL Korean Adoptees move to the Korean Government Agency NCRC (National Center for the Rights of the Child) beginning on July 19th, 2025, and it is widely believed that this process will me a MESS which could potentially take YEARS to sort out. As of May 3rd, 2025, NCRC finally has a TEMPORARY storage facility for the Korean Adoption Agency files which they are supposed to take over in less than 3 months from all 4 of the major Korean Adoption Agencies in Korea.
We strongly believe that there is a high likelihood that during this file transfer process or during the subsequent process of file digitization, Korean Adoption Agency files could get mixed up or PERMANENTLY LOST. We would love to be wrong about this, but unfortunately, we DO NOT think we will be wrong.
It’s also important to know that NCRC spent 10 years doing a TERRIBLE job of digitizing files from Korean Orphanages, where many Korean Adoptees spent time prior to being adopted or transferred to Korean Adoption Agencies. NCRC contracted the creation of a records management system to a vendor who created a horribly non-functional system which renders search through this system effectively USELESS.
Simply put, NCRC is perpetually and likely deliberately underfunded and understaffed by the Korean Government so that the birth family search process for Korean Adoptees is an unnecessarily difficult and nearly impossible process to navigate. The entire system is designed to PREVENT Korean Adoptees from finding their birth parents. THEREFORE IT IS IMPORTANT NOW MORE THAN EVER TO SAFELY BACK UP WHATEVER ADOPTION FILES YOU ALREADY HAVE—ESPECIALLY IF YOUR ADOPTION FILES CONTAIN BIRTH PARENT INFORMATION, SUCH AS NAME AND BIRTHDATE / AGE / BIRTH YEAR. +
To understand why this is so important—let’s say that you are a Korean Adoptee who has birth parent names and birthdates in the adoption documents you already have—whether in English, Korean, or both.
Even if you have birth parent information in the documents in your possession, it is exceedingly difficult to do a search on your own in Korea due to highly strict birth parent privacy law which restricts Adoptees from doing independent searches through Jumin Centers, Police Stations, City Halls, etc. It has always been and will likely always be nearly impossible to do a true birth family search on your own (without the help of NCRC / KAS after July 19th, 2025) if you are not physically in Korea.
This means that most Adoptees are reliant upon either their Korean Adoption Agency (until July 19th, 2025) or upon NCRC / KAS (after July 19th, 2025) to conduct a birth family search on their behalf. NCRC / KAS have access to a database where they can search for an Adoptee’s birth parents’ information, *but they can only search based on the information that THEY HAVE.
THIS is why it’s SO IMPORTANT to back up any documents containing birth parent information which you may already have in your possession! Because you CANNOT count on the transfer of files from the Korean Adoption Agencies to NCRC to be perfectly smooth and to entail no loss / mix up of adoption files. The subsequent digitization of adoption files at NCRC may also be a years long MESS!
IF you already have documents containing birth parent information, you should assume that it will be best to provide COPIES (NOT ORIGINALS) of that information for NCRC / KAS IF you request a birth family search through them AFTER July 19th, 2025. NCRC / KAS will likely NOT be transparent about the information that they have about your history. So try to GIVE THEM the information that you have so that they can do a search for your birth parents through their system!
PRIOR to July 19th, 2025, the Korean Adoption Agencies and NCRC / KAS have collaborated on the birth family searches for Adoptees. However, AFTER July 19th, 2025, NCRC / KAS will be the ONLY OFFICIAL route for a birth family search in Korea. The Post Adoption Services units of the 4 major Korean Adoption Agencies will effective CLOSE.
Since the 4 major Korean Adoption Agencies—Holt Children’s Inc. in Korea; Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) / formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society (ECWS); Korea Welfare Society (KWS) / formerly Social Welfare Society (SWS); and Korea Social Service (KSS)—have for DECADES had SOLE possession of the thousands of adoption files of Korean Adoptees, this means that BEFORE July 19th, 2025, NCRC / KAS does / did NOT have possession of these files.
The transfer of these thousands of Korean Adoption Agency files to NCRC beginning on July 19th, 2025 means that now only ONE Korean Government agency—NCRC—will have physical possession of ALL Korean Adoption Agency files. But the physical transport and storage of these files to NCRC is likely to be a MESS. And this means that many Adoptees’ precious history may beLOST—either in the file transfer process, or the digitization process—or both.
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For this reason, if you are a Korean Adoptee who already HAS birth parent information in your possession, in your English and / or Korean adoption files, you should take GREAT CARE NOW in backing up and preserving this information in multiple digital and hard copy formats—because there is the chance that you may NEVER be able to obtain this information again.
We hope this is not the case, and that our fears about the file transfer to NCRC are totally unfounded—but we have unfortunately been RIGHT about MANY things lately related to the crumbling sidewalk of birth family search. So please take our WARNING very seriously.
After July 19th, 2025, when ALL Korean Adoptees around the world who have interest in search will have to make birth family search requests through theKAS website, you will want to be able to make NCRC / KAS aware of the information which you ALREADY have—both to VERIFY any information *they* may have in their possession, or to REPLACE information which they DO NOT have due to loss of files through the file transfer and / or digitization process.
Because even if you have birth parent information in your possession—it’s usually (not always) only NCRC / KAS which can SEARCH for your birth parents using any available information. So if NCRC / KAS loses your information during the file transfer and / or file digitization process—at least you still have it!
In fact, we think ANY Adoptee who HAS birth family information in their possession who requests a birth family search through NCRC / KAS AFTER July 19th, 2025 should ASSUME IT IS WISE to provide NCRC / KAS with the information that you ALREADY HAVE, at the time of your request (if possible).
If you plan to request a birth family search AFTER July 19th, 2025 and you ALREADY HAVE birth parent information—please be sure to keep that SAFE and to SHARE this information with NCRC / KAS at the time of your birth family search request!
You see? You have to understand conceptually what the NCRC / KAS birth family search process looks like in Korea in order to play the game and have any hope of success.
Good luck out there!
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Special Note for KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptees ONLY:
PLEASE NOTE:
If you are a KSS (Korea Social Service) Adoptee, your most important documents to back up are your:
