The Paper Trail of Tears.
Above — our AI generated image depicting the long journey ahead for those who engage with birth family search. Fortunately, there are resources to help.
We won't name the person, but it was very cool to hear the other day about the reunion of a KSS Adoptee who recently reunited with her birth family in Korea. This is one of the last KSS Adoptee reunions we will have played a role in prior to the July 2025 transfer of all former Korean Adoption Agency files to NCRC.
Birth family search is now a significantly more backlogged process now that all files have been moved to NCRC. All former Korean Adoption Agency files will move AGAIN to the Seongam Branch of the National Archives, sometime in the first half of 2026, though the exact timeline of this move is uncertain.
We are deeply saddened by the loss for KSS Adoptees specifically, considering that we had only figured out a path to obtain the formerly secret "Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary" from them in 2021. We had just 4 years to inform as many KSS Adoptees as we could about how to request and obtain this document. KSS Adoptees should, however, be careful to check if their “English Adoptive Child Study Summary” contains any birth parent information. In some cases, it may. If so, this can be used in the process of a “boots on the ground” birth family search in Korea.
While it is still possible — for now — to follow the paper trail by submitting requests to NCRC, the usefulness of traditional “boots on the ground” search in Korea largely depends on what information an Adoptee already has in their possession. From the beginning, we noted that once the files moved to NCRC, birth family searches would likely rely primarily on DNA testing due to the significant bottleneck there. And now, that prediction is proving true.
Adoptees with interest in birth family search should take ALL possible DNA tests, in addition to pursuing the paper trail. While certainly the paper trail can bear fruit for some, we call it the “paper trail of tears” for a reason.
Fortunately, the Korean Adoptee community is robust and highly active all over the Western world. We highly encourage you to connect with the community for mutual aid and support. You will definitely need it, should you decide to pursue a birth family search.
We wish you the best of luck in your journey!