JTBC: “Police ‘Mistake’ Prevented Mother and Daughter From Reuniting After 36 Years…Private Investigator Finds Her in 6 Weeks Through a Database Search / Full Version.”
Paperslip Note:
Sadly this U.S. KWS (Korea Welfare Society) Adoptee’s case was bookended by police corruption: she was lost as a child in a public place, then almost immediately taken by police to an orphanage, and eventually adopted to the U.S. through KWS. She was never actually an orphan. Despite actually matching to her birth mother through the KNPA (Korean National Police Academy) DNA test two years ago, police egregiously FAILED to connect mother and daughter.
While a former police officer turned private investigator found her birth family very quickly — at the cost of $5,300 — the private investigator and others failed to act honorably in the Adoptee’s case. While the Adoptee is now in reunion, she could have been reunited two years ago for FREE had police not failed to connect her to her birth family as they should have.
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JTBC Exclusive Video:
Click to watch.
Turn on CC for English Closed Captions.
Thank you to the Adoptee in the video for sharing the YouTube video with us.
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JTBC News Exclusive Article:
“Police ‘Mistake’ Prevented Mother and Daughter From Reuniting After 36 Years…Private Investigator Finds Her in 6 Weeks Through a Database Search / Full Version”
Original Korean article published on September 30th, 2026.
Thank you to a Paperslip Contributor for the link.
ChatGPT English translation posted to Paperslip on September 30th, 2026.
Please see original Korean article for photos.
Some BOLDS and all blue highlighting ours.
[Exclusive] Police “Mistake” Prevented Mother and Daughter From Reuniting After 36 Years… Private Investigator Finds Her in 6 Weeks Through a Database Search / Full Version
Reporter: Kim Hye-ri
Reporter: Lim Ji-eun
Published: September 30, 2026, 10:03 PM
Updated: September 30, 2026, 10:04 PM
[Anchor]
“A child who became separated from her family after getting lost and was later adopted overseas had an opportunity to find her mother 36 years later through DNA matching.
But even after the DNA results showed a match, the two were unable to meet because of a mistake by the police. When asked about the matter, police said that the employee responsible had since left the job.
Kim Hye-ri reports.
[Reporter]
Park Areum was four years old when she got lost and ended up living in an orphanage. In 1989, she was adopted and taken to the United States.
She had spent her entire life searching for her family, but she never dreamed that her biological mother had also been looking for her for more than a decade.
In 2010, Park's mother registered her DNA with the Missing Children's Database (the Korean Police KNPA DNA test) and began searching for her daughter.
Park (the Adoptee) herself registered her DNA information through a consulate in the United States in January of last year.
Three months later, the National Forensic Service analyzed the DNA of the two women and determined that there was a “possibility of a parent-child relationship.”
However, the police failed to properly communicate the National Forensic Service's analysis results to either of them.
First, they sent Park, who was in the United States, an email in English telling her the exact opposite: “There is no matched family.”
As for her mother, police asked her to provide another DNA sample without telling her that they had found someone who might be her daughter.
Park Areum:
“I didn't find my family until this year. [Because my mother registered her DNA information], it was as if 16 years had been wasted. Those were years when I could have been with my younger siblings and found out who my mother was.”
A mother and daughter could have been reunited after 36 years through DNA analysis, but the opportunity was lost because of an employee's mistake.
Kim Ye-ji / People Power Party lawmaker:
“We need to closely connect the entire family-search system from the beginning. I believe we need to establish a system in which the government takes responsibility for the entire process of searching for families, after mutual verification between the relevant agencies.”
A National Police Agency official said that the employee who sent Park the English email had since left the organization.
The official explained, “We're practically unfamiliar with the genetic-testing aspect,” adding that “the translation may have been poor.”
Police said they explained the matter to the mother by phone, but the mother maintains that she was never given a specific explanation for what had happened.
[Anchor]
Although the mother-daughter reunion through DNA testing fell through, Park Areum eventually found her mother.
What is surprising is how simple the process was.
After a private investigator hired by Park filed a report with the police on her behalf, police searched the information and names contained in her adoption records and found her mother in just one day.
(Paperslip Note: According to the Adoptee, the private investigator did not act completely honorably in the Adoptee’s case).
Here is reporter Lim Ji-eun's report.
[Reporter]
After being told the exact opposite by police—that there was “no matching family”—Park Areum sought out a private investigator who had previously worked as a police officer in December of last year.
She paid approximately 7 million won to hire him, and found her mother just six weeks later.
When JTBC traced the process, it turned out that the method was surprisingly simple.
The private investigator filed a report about Park's case on her behalf at a police station near the university where he was a professor.
Park's adoption documents contained a record stating that she had gotten lost in Incheon as a child.
When police searched for people named “Park Areum” whose resident registrations had been canceled in Incheon around the same period, only one person came up.
When they checked that person's family registry, they found the mother's identifying information. Police then contacted her directly and confirmed that she was Park's mother.
It took the police just one day to locate the mother after the case was officially reported.
They did not conduct another DNA test, nor did they carry out a complicated investigation.
Park had spent money to hire a private investigator because she did not know that her mother could be found through basic database searches.
Park Areum:
“How could I possibly put into words how much they have damaged my life?”
However, police said they were unaware that the private investigator had received money from his client.
Official from Cheonan Dongnam Police Station:
“We had absolutely no idea about that. In any case, this was a missing-person matter, so it had nothing to do with me personally. It's not as though this is work that our police officers are paid money to do.”
Under current law, people can operate a business using the title “private investigator,” but they cannot exercise separate investigative powers. Some therefore argue that clearer standards are needed.”
Video reporting: Yoo Gyu-yeol, Lee Ju-won, Lee Wan-geun
Video editing: Lee Ji-hye
Video design: Kwak Se-mi, Kim Hyeon-ju, Oh Eun-sol, Song Min-ji
Reporter: Kim Hye-ri (kim.hyeri2@jtbc.co.kr)
Reporter: Lim Ji-eun (im.jieun1@jtbc.co.kr)