A Final Post-Script for TRC 2.
Above — Message posted to a European *KRG (Korean Rights Group) website on March 11th, 2026:
“Termination of cooperation with KRGs
The establishment of the (European) *KRG was linked to a strong desire for cooperation with the DKRG and sister organizations in the various recipient Western countries. This cooperation fell under the established OKRG organization. However, we were informed this week that this cooperation has been terminated by the other KRGs. Accusations have been leveled against the (European) *KRG and members within our organization, which we do not acknowledge and which constitute an attack on our reputation. We regret this course of events, which does not align with our values and our conviction that cooperation as equal partners within the adoptee community is the key to achieving our common goals. The (European) *KRG has always strived to play an active role within the OKRG based on the pursuit of truth, and as early as spring 2025, we have been outspoken proponents of ending the mandate of TRC 2 and establishing a TRC 3.”
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What goes around, comes around...
The two so-called “Korean Rights” groups — whose remaining founders (in the case of DKRG) and a member of the European *KRG (referenced above) who conspired to falsely claim credit for my KSS K-Number research on January 1st, 2023, and excluded me from TRC 2 for three years — have now, according to the European *KRG itself, broken up.
Bummer, mang!
I wish I could say I was sad or even surprised about it, but the way that the people behind these organizations have behaved for years made this break up amusingly inevitable. And while this announcement was only made on the European *KRG’s website on March 11th, 2026, I’ve got enough EARS on the ground in Korea to know that DKRG and the European *KRG member they formerly closely collaborated with during TRC 2 hadn’t talked for months prior to this announcement.
I don’t intend to give the European *KRG group who recently posted this message on their website any attention. I have therefore blocked out their name and part of their logo. One of this group’s key members accepted false credit from DKRG for my original KSS K-Number research on January 1st, 2023. Despite knowing the truth, this European *KRG member allowed that misattribution to stand for over a year.
This individual — who is not even an Adoptee himself, but is the son of two of the European *KRG group’s founders, who are both KSS Adoptees — was happy to help keep me excluded from the TRC 2 movement in order to preserve that false credit assigned to him by DKRG. It wasn’t until I was able to confront him online after over a year of his private denials that he finally publicly admitted he had NO role in my research, which I had conducted as part of my investigation into my deceased twin sister’s case beginning in 2020.
2020 was the same year I first realized I might have had a twin who died at KSS in the mid 1970s. This discovery is the entire reason that Paperslip exists in the first place. I was attempting to dig up the entire history of KSS in order to find out what the hell had happened back when I was at KSS. That was traumatic enough. I really did NOT need the added trauma of having my work, based on my investigation into my deceased twin’s case, attempted to be stolen from me.
What’s more concerning is that this non-Adoptee’s parents, who are both KSS Adoptees, along with another founding member of the European *KRG group, all acknowledged privately that they knew I was responsible for the work and had even witnessed it firsthand. It would have been hard for them to miss, given my research was done over years of time on a private forum for hundreds of KSS Adoptees of which we were all members. Yet they still intensely pressured me behind the scenes to allow the European *KRG member to retain the false credit egregiously given to him for my work by DKRG. I've never received any meaningful apology from these now ousted European *KRG individuals, nor any acknowledgement or apology from DKRG.
Being unable to defend credit for my own work after being blocked from the TRC 2 movement felt as though my deceased twin sister — whose existence I had only discovered by accident in 2020 — had been stolen from me all over again. I cannot adequately describe the depth of grief this caused me during an already grief-stricken period following that discovery.
Both this European *KRG group and DKRG were all too happy to cooperate in keeping me shut out of the TRC 2 movement for THREE YEARS. They have had absolutely ZERO regard or remorse for what that has meant for me personally.
These people have needed all of the limelight for themselves. Meanwhile, if you will notice, I do not even put my name on this website, which I co-founded in 2020. Unlike these unscrupulous individuals, I have never thought that justice in my own and my twin sister’s cases needed to come at the expense of others.
I withdrew my case from TRC 2 in March 2023 due to these abuses by DKRG and by key members of this European *KRG.
I cried tears of anger and frustration when I withdrew my TRC 2 case. But I knew I could no longer trust DKRG — especially since they were not meant to be involved beyond the point of my TRC 2 submission, yet nevertheless remained closely tied to and influential upon the mostly non-English speaking TRC 2 investigators. DKRG conspired to block a trip to Korea I had already paid for to meet with TRC 2 investigators. I had to cancel the trip after DKRG’s interference, thus losing money and a significant opportunity to aid TRC 2 investigators’ understanding of KSS in the process in the early days of the TRC2 investigation into Overseas Adoption. DKRG still retains my private adoption documents, and I believe they keep copies of ALL Adoptees’ TRC case materials submitted through them.
I only recently submitted my case AGAIN, this time to TRC 3. Thank you to Brothers Home survivors — not DKRG — for making TRC 2 and TRC 3 possible. This time, I submitted my case INDEPENDENTLY of any of the so called "Korean Rights" Groups. I would urge any Korean Adoptees to do the same. Submitting your case INDEPENDENTLY preserves not only your privacy, but also your sanity.
A warning to the (remaining) *KRG groups: the path of the European *KRG group which is the subject of this post is the path you are all ultimately on, whether you are aware of this or not. Unfortunately, given the ongoing conduct of DKRG and, in some cases, your own actions, it appears only a matter of time before the consequences of DKRG’s behavior naturally follow.
When that time comes, I will have long since moved beyond the point of concern.
Now that my TRC 3 case has been successfully submitted, and I have been assured by TRC 3 staff that it will not be interfered with by the so-called “Korean Rights” groups, I no longer have any need for the utter nastiness I have experienced with DKRG and its affiliates.
I can’t protect every Adoptee who may be affected by DKRG's behavior, and the behavior of the remaining *KRG groups. I’ve been right about too many developments in what is now a visibly fracturing birth family search landscape. I never set out to be a canary in the coal mine, but that’s the position I find myself in now.
I’ve paid the price for telling the truth about these people — but I’d do it again. Apparently, I’m the only one with the balls to warn others about the behavior of these individuals. The rest of you who know the truth about how DKRG behaves — but who have said nothing for years — have literal blood on your hands. Those who know about DKRG’s sins yet still continue to lead naive, unsuspecting Adoptees to their door are even worse. This applies to Adoptees as well as journalists.
For my part, I’m tired of thinking about and talking about these awful people, in order to warn others. At this point, Adoptees, you are on your own.
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As a final note, one of the things I regret most about DKRG’s and this European *KRG’s involvement in TRC 2 is how these groups fundamentally changed the nature of “private sharing” within the KSS Adoptee community.
The KSS Adoptee community kept my KSS K-Number research a secret for 3 YEARS — from 2020-2023. I only ever made it public once DKRG assigned the *KRG member false credit for my work, on January 1st, 2023.
The KSS Adoptee community will never again be able to share information amongst one another on our private groups, and expect it to remain private and away from DKRG’s eyes. There are too many KSS Adoptees who will directly share this information with DKRG, who will likely then attempt to take credit for it. As a result, I share far less than I normally would online. Experience has unfortunately taught me that I cannot trust members of my own community.
This is what saddens and angers me most. As KSS Adoptees, we once had a strong and supportive online community. That sense of trust has now been replaced by mistrust among members — one of the most damaging consequences of the unscrupulous and ruthless behavior of DKRG and the European *KRG toward the KSS Adoptee community.
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The “poor” ousted European *KRG must be asking itself, “Why were we treated this way by DKRG?”
Here’s a little parable which may help answer that question:
“A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's my character.”’
Source: Wikipedia