New evidence about S. Korea’s Travel Document System suggests “MB” Travel Certificates / “Passports” were likely used NOT ONLY for Korean Adoptees, BUT ALSO for SOME NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals.
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New evidence suggests that “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passports” may have been given NOT ONLY to ALL Korean Adoptees in certain years, BUT ALSO to certain categories of NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals within the same time frame.
Does “MB” stand for “Military Bride”?
Image used with permission. (Yellow highlights mine).
Note the MB 5 digit “Passport” number (partly redacted for privacy). The “Passport” holder is NOT an Adoptee. This Korean woman — a NON-Adoptee Korean National, who was the spouse / wife (note the “Mrs.”) of a U.S. citizen — immigrated from S. Korea to the US in 1968 on a Travel Certificate / “Passport” with an MB 5 digit number.
1968 was one of the years during which presumably ALL S. Korean Adoptees who traveled from S. Korea to their Western countries of adoption were receving MB Travel Certificate / “Passport” Numbers.
This is the FIRST evidence / example I have found of a NON-Adoptee S. Korean National traveling on a Travel Certificate / “Passport” with a number with an “MB” prefix. However, I still do NOT believe that ALL categories of NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals were receiving MB Travel Certificate / “Passport” Numbers, during the time period during which the S. Korean Government appears to have assigned ALL S. Korean Adoptees who were sent abroad to the West with MB Travel Certificate / “Passport” Numbers.
I believe that this woman was part of a particular CATEGORY of travelers from S. Korea during this time period. She was specifically the spouse of a U.S. Citizen — essentially a MILITARY BRIDE.
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For years, I have been researching S. Korea’s Travel Document System. Due to past plagiarism attempts on my KSS K-Number research, my research on S. Korea’s Travel Document System is no longer public. My wholly original research, which has never been conducted before, into both KSS K-Numbers and S. Korea’s Travel Document System is now officially COPYRIGHTED.
I had previously discovered and widely shared that ALL Korean Adoptees within a specific time frame had been receiving “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers. This was research that grew directly out of my investigation into my own and my likely twin’s separate adoption cases.
I had not previously been able to find ANY examples of “MB” numbers for NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals from ANY time period. However, recently, I discovered the Travel Certificate / “Passport” number for a NON-Adoptee S. Korean National who was the spouse of a U.S. citizen, and it is an “MB” 5 digit number (such as MB 12345). Her Travel Certificate / “Passport” was issued in the SAME time frame during which ALL Korean Adoptees — no matter their Western country of adoption — were receiving “MB” numbers. I should note that I have also found examples of the Travel Certificates / “Passports” of other NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals from the same time period, but NONE of them had “MB” numbers. This leads me to conclude that only certain CATEGORIES of S. Koreans who permanently left S. Korea were assigned “MB” numbers by the S. Korean Government. So far, the two categories I know of who received “MB” numbers within a specific time frame are:
1. ALL S. Korean Adoptees sent to ANY Western adoptive country (within a specific time period).
2. A woman who married a U.S. Citizen and immigrated to the U.S. (within a specific time period) — possibly being a representative of an entire category of NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals, for which I previously had no evidence: MILITARY BRIDES.
(There may be OTHER categories of NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals who were being assigned “MB” numbers within the same time period I identified which I either don’t know about, or examples of whose travel documents I have not yet found, but I have managed to rule out some categories of workers as having “MB” numbers in this time frame).
This leads me to guess that “MB” may possibly stand for “MILITARY BRIDE”. I had previously hypothesized that “MB” might stand for “Military Base”, since some early Korean Adoptees departed Korea from military bases. However, I now lean more toward “MB” standing for “Military Bride” — since, according to official statistics, there were thousands of them who immigrated to the US (and other Western countries) within the specific time period I have been studying. It’s important to note that there is absolutely ZERO OFFICAL REFERENCE to “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers on the entirety of the internet — apart from documents which are shared online by Adoptees, and apart from my own website. I was the first person to notice this “MB” number on the Travel Certificates / “Passports” of some Korean Adoptees, in 2020. This research remained public until around 2023 when, after a plagiarism attempt on my work, I took my research on “S. Korea’s Evolving Travel Document System” down. I later determined that ALL Korean Adoptees during a specific time period had “MB” numbers, and mapped almost the entirety of S. Korea’s Evolving Travel Document System — which is now no longer online, but which is still officially COPYRIGHTED.
It is important for me to share this recent finding in my long-term research into S. Korea’s Travel Document System, so that those who previously followed along when my research was public are not confused. Those Korean Adoptees who are familiar with my previous research — before I took it offline — may find this new evidence of interest.
Until recently, I was unable to find ANY examples of NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals (those who traveled from Korea to the US permanently, who were NOT Overseas Korean Adoptees) with Travel Certificates / “Passports” with “MB” style numbers, such as MB 1234, MB 12345, MB 123456, or MB 1234567. This led me to believe that perhaps during the specific years which I identified through my research when ALL Korean Adoptees were receiving “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers, that ONLY Korean Adoptees might be receiving these numbers. This hypothesis was difficult for me to prove or disprove since there are very few examples of the Travel Certificates / “Passports” of NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals online during the specific years in which I have shown that ALL Overseas Korean Adoptees were receiving “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers.
However, I have now been able to locate ONE example of a NON-Adoptee Korean National who ALSO has an “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” number — during the SAME time period in which ALL Overseas Korean Adoptees were receiving “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers. This S. Korean National’s “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” number falls sequentially in line with known “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers of Overseas Korean Adoptees. This particular individual was the S. Korean spouse (wife) of a U.S. Citizen. It’s likely she was some form of “Military Bride” — which “MB” possibly stands for. However, given that there is ZERO reference to what “MB” means online — in either English or Korean — this is not currently possible to verify. Prior attempts to contact the Passport office in Korea only resulted in the vague answer that “MB” numbers were assigned to Korean Adoptees and “other types of workers”. The Korean passport office did NOT know (or did not specify) what “MB” stood for.
I still do not believe that ALL NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals who traveled from Korea to the West on S. Korean Travel Certificates / “Passports” received MB numbers. I do however believe that ALL Korean Adoptees, and at least SOME CATEGORIES of NON-Adoptees Korean Nationals (such as the spouses — typically wives — of U.S. Citizens who immigrated to the U.S.) were receiving “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers within a specific time period.
However, this conclusion is based on just ONE known example of a NON-Adoptee S. Korean National with an “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” Number — and hundreds of other examples of known Korean Adoptees’ Travel Certificates / “Passports”.
Please note that I have previously found examples of the Travel Certificates / “Passports” of NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals — just none previously with “MB” numbers, until the example I found recently. I believe that “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers were given to SPECIFIC CATEGORIES of NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals during a specific time period, and NOT to ALL S. Korean Nationals traveling within the specific time frame which I have identified.
To give an example, below are *FAKE / FICTITIOUS “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” Numbers:
S. Korean Adoptee adopted to the US: MB 43654
NON-Adoptee S. Korean National traveling to the US: MB 44671
S. Korean Adoptee adopted to the US: MB 45987
Note that the sequentially ascending portion of these fictitious “MB” numbers are in line with what one would expect from a sequentially ascending series of numbers. This example mirrors the sequential position of the “MB” number for the Travel Certificate / “Passport” of the NON-Adoptee Korean National I have recently found, in relation to the “MB” numbers for the Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers of the Overseas Korean Adoptees before and after this NON-Adoptee Korean National sequentially.
This is evidence that NOT ONLY Korean Adoptees BUT ALSO (at least SOME categories of) non-Adoptee Korean Nationals were receiving “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers between the specific years I had identified as part of my research.
This makes sense given that the LAST “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” number of a Korean Adoptee for which I have a record, prior to S. Korea’s transitioning to an “R” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” number, is TOO HIGH for officially reported statistics of Korean Adoptees during the specific time frame in which “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers were being assigned by the S. Korean Government to ALL Korean Adoptees.
In other words, IF ONLY Overseas Korean Adoptees had been receiving “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers in the specific years I identified, then this would mean that FAR MORE Korean Adoptees were assigned “MB” Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers than there were known Korean Adoptees, according to officially reported Korean Adoption statistics. However, given this NEW evidence it seems likely that the S. Korean Government was ALSO conferring “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers to certain class/es of NON-Adoptee S. Korean Nationals — such as the spouses of U.S. Citizens who were immigrating to the U.S. — as well, during the same time period in which the S. Korean Government was assigning such “MB” style numbers to ALL Korean Adoptees. This new evidence is frankly reassuring, though more evidence is needed to make any final conclusions.
IF — as seems likely based on this new evidence — at least SOME categories of NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals who permanently departed Korea for the West ALSO received “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers, just like ALL Overseas Korean Adoptees in the specific time period I previously identified — then this makes far more sense of the incredibly high number of “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers which were conferred by the S. Korean Government in the specific time period I have identified, relative to the last known “MB” number of which I have a record for a Korean Adoptee.
Occam’s Razor dictates that it is more likely that S. Korea was simply assigning “MB” numbers to multiple categories of S. Koreans — including BUT NOT LIMITED TO Korean Adoptees — within the time frame I identified.
In other words — it seems most likely that the S. Korean Government was conferring “MB” style Travel Certificate / “Passport” numbers NOT ONLY to Korean Adoptees, BUT ALSO to at least SOME categories of NON-Adoptee Korean Nationals within the specific time frame I identified.
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