Paperslip Co-Founder’s Ongoing Push for Recognition of Systemic Switching — Since 2018.

Posted to Paperslip on September 12th, 2025.

Download PDF:
The Rejected 2019 Proposal To Discuss Systemic Switching At IKAA 2019 — By Paperslip’s Co-Founder.

*Please note that I have redacted some sensitive information.

On March 26th, 2025, South Korea’s Second Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC 2) formally recognized switching as a human rights violation, and more or less used the definition of switching which I had personally codified since 2018 in its Interim Report.

The story of how switching came to be acknowledged as a human rights violation by TRC 2 is a long and complicated one, and at its heart is my personal investigation into my own switch case and the separate switch case of my deceased twin sister, whose file I only discovered by accident at my Korean Adoption Agency in 2019. This story involves the wholesale erasure of credit for my years long efforts by the Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), whose remaining leadership continues to shamelessly and ruthlessly take credit for not only my work, but the work of many others.

In addition to the years of aggravation caused by DKRG, securing permission to speak about switching at U.S. Korean Adoptee conferences has been a grueling, uphill battle. My 2019 proposal to discuss systemic switching was almost immediately rejected by IKAA (International Korean Adoptee Associations). Years later, in 2024, KAAN (Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network) also rejected my proposal to discuss the (then) upcoming FRONTLINE documentary “South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning,” systemic switching, and the impending transfer of all Korean Adoption Agency files to the Korean Government Agency NCRC (National Center for the Rights of the Child). It wasn’t until after the documentary aired — a major project for which my case was ground zero, and for which I received zero credit — that KAAN finally accepted my 2025 proposal to present. That presentation focused on my switch case and how it contributed both to the TRC 2 Investigation into Overseas Adoption and the development of the FRONTLINE documentary.

Ironically, in order to even be allowed to present at Korean Adoption conferences, I had to spend years reshaping the entire conversation around adoption from South Korea. While I would never claim credit for the decades of tireless work of countless Korean Adoptee activists worldwide, few people realize that my investigation into my and my twin’s separate switch cases became the catalyst—not only for the founding of Paperslip in 2020, but also for the 2024 FRONTLINE/AP documentary, South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning and related AP articles, the TRC 2 Investigation into Overseas Adoption of 2022-2025, and the TRC 2’s March 26th, 2025 recognition of switching as a human rights violation.

To trace the roots of this story, we have to go back to 2018.

In 2018, during my first trip to Korea as an adult, I discovered that I had been switched. In 2019, during my second visit to Korea, I submitted a proposal to the International Korean Adoptee Associations (IKAA) conference, aiming to speak publicly about the systemic nature of switching, which I had only just begun uncovering. By then, I had already connected with other switched Korean Adoptees—many of them in Denmark, one of the primary countries to which my Korean Adoption Agency, Korea Social Service (KSS), sent children between 1964 and 2012.

In the summer of 2018, shortly after relocating from the U.S. to Florence, Italy, to study art, I organized a meeting in Denmark with three Danish KSS Adoptees who had also discovered they were switched. Ironically, as the only American among them, I was the one who brought them together—they hadn’t previously known of one another's cases. My collaboration with them provided key insights that deepened my investigation into the systemic nature of switching.

Over time, I documented their stories—alongside more than a dozen other switched Adoptee cases—and submitted them informally to the head of South Korea’s Second Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on December 18th, 2020, through a contact who knew the head of the TRC. The TRC had only been reestablished eight days earlier, on December 10th, 2020, and at the time, was not planning to include Adoptee cases in its investigations. I thus became the first Korean Adoptee in history to submit any cases to the TRC. While these efforts did not trigger a formal investigation, they did lay the groundwork for the later official effort by the TRC to investigate Overseas Adoption. Perhaps not coincidentally, these efforts were witnessed by DKRG’s Boonyoung Han, at a time when DKRG had not even yet been formed.

Later, many of the switched Adoptees I had organized—including myself—formally submitted our cases to the TRC’s official Investigation into Overseas Adoption, which did not begin until December 9th, 2022. However, due to ongoing mistreatment and abuse by DKRG leaders Peter Moeller and Boonyoung Han, I chose to withdraw my TRC 2 case in March 2023. In hindsight, this was deeply unfortunate: my case was among the first 34 accepted by the TRC for investigation, and given the strength of the documentary evidence, which is rare for Adoptees, it likely would have resulted in a favorable judgment. It’s ironic as DKRG later struggled to collect enough useful evidence from Adoptees. Ultimately, 311 of the original 357 cases submitted to the TRC 2 were suspended, many for lack of evidence. Only 56 received judgments by TRC 2—and only those 56 Adoptees who received judgments are eligible to sue the Korean Government for damages. Thus DKRG not only cost me a chance at justice for myself and my deceased twin sister, but also the chance to sue for reparations.

+

Unfortunately, back in 2019, my proposal to make a presentation about switching at IKAA was quickly rejected by the Korean Adoptees leading the organization. IKAA—one of the largest and most influential Korean Adoptee networks in the world—is an incredible community, but its longstanding ties to financial sponsors in Korea have significantly shaped its programming and priorities, often sidelining and suppressing critical perspectives on adoption. IKAA holds a conference in Seoul every three years, but it wasn’t until 2023 that I was finally able to present—screening the SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) documentary about my case, which was released on December 24th, 2022. Even then, getting the screening approved was a struggle. IKAA initially proposed that attendees simply watch the documentary online, and it was only through the support of an Adoptee contact with closer ties to the organization that the film was ultimately screened at the conference.

It wouldn’t be until December 24th, 2022, that systemic switching in Korean Adoption was publicly acknowledged anywhere in the world—when the hour long documentary about my switch case aired on SBS in South Korea. Though individual switch cases had occasionally been reported over the years, this was the first time systemic switching had been addressed in Korean media—or any international media at all—especially in such a prominent outlet. SBS did a phenomenal job on the documentary, and it was a huge privilege to work with them. I am forever grateful for their dedication. However, to suit Korean tastes, the documentary presented a kind of Disneyfied version of my story, and many aspects of my twin’s switch case could not be discussed due to confidentiality.

In 2019, during the course of investigating my own switch case, I unknowingly uncovered what I would later realize (in 2020) was the switch file of my twin sister, who likely died at KSS in 1975. My investigation into my and my twin’s separate switch cases became the basis for my co-founding Paperslip in January 2020.

In August 2022, I was approached by Peter Moeller of the newly formed Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), which had only formed in April or May of that year—years after I first discovered systemic switching. Moeller asked me to help spread the word among U.S. Adoptees about the TRC’s upcoming investigation into Overseas Adoption. I agreed wholeheartedly. However, on December 7th, 2022—just days before the SBS documentary aired, and right as the TRC investigation into Overseas Adoption was formally launching—DKRG blocked me from the movement without explanation. To this day, they have never provided any explanation or apology. DKRG’s Peter Moeller and Boonyoung Han, the latter of whom had directly witnessed but not contributed to my research into switching and KSS for years, then went to the press, about switching, the systemic nature of which I had been researching for years. Egregiously, neither my work nor Paperslip has ever been mentioned by DKRG in the press, despite their purported commitment to “truth” and “Korean Adoptee Rights”. Unfortunately, I did not know enough about the personalities of these two individuals to understand that I never should have worked with them in the first place.

Boonyoung Han, Peter Moeller’s wife and fellow DKRG member, had long been an invited observer of my investigation into KSS practice and systemic switching. Yet, she and Moeller later attempted to co-opt credit for major portions of my work, disregarding not only my contributions but those of many others as well. Today, they egregiously falsely assert that they are the only two founders of DKRG, despite the fact that there were five other co-founders who have since been pushed out.

I’m sharing my original 2019 IKAA proposal here for the first time. It has never been published online—until now.

I believe this document not only sheds light on the early days of the TRC movement, but also affirms that switching would not have been recognized as a human rights violation in the TRC’s March 26th, 2025 Interim Report without the critical—yet unacknowledged—groundwork I have been laying not only into switching, but into KSS practices overall since 2018.