Trigger Warning: Child Deaths At the Heart of Paperslip.

Posted to Paperslip on January 30th, 2026.

You know, I am a pretty jovial person on the surface, and if you meet me, and you're a decent person, we are probably going to have a lot of laughs. I'm generally a funny, lighthearted person.

But for those who have found it amusing over the years to plagiarize Paperslip's content and my personal research, here is an AI representation I generated a few years ago to represent exactly how I was feeling when I first learned in 2020 that I had had a twin sister who likely died at KSS in 1975, and who was switched with someone else. My twin’s existence was literally buried in a filing cabinet for decades, and I was never meant to find her. It was only by miraculous chance that I did, in 2019 — but since I never knew I had a twin, for a year I thought she was me. I continued to believe this until a world renowned Dysmorphologist pointed out our facial differences on September 11th, 2020. He said that both he and another renowned Dysmorphologist had both independently concluded that the girl I had thought for a year was me, was NOT me. Stunned, I was desperate to find further evidence that I did indeed have a twin at KSS, which is why in 2020 I began to desperately collect over 500 KSS K-Numbers from KSS Adoptees from a forum for which I am an Admin. I thought wrongly there was a clue in the number of digits in a KSS K-number as to whether or not one had had an orphan sibling at KSS. While that hypothesis turned out to be false, it was during that research that I solved all of KSS' first digit K-Number codes, and realized that KSS was assigning such numbers nearly immediately at a child's intake - meaning that KSS was predesignating nearly immediately which Western Adoption Agency a child would be adopted through, in its ruthless decades long pipeline of adoption. 

I never thought that my KSS K-Number research - which was never intended to be made public - would be falsely credited by DKRG to someone else, who was (at the time) a DKRG supporter, who is not even himself a Korean Adoptee. I was mocked by self-interested others who had witnessed me doing the work for years for wanting to take credit for my own research, which grew out of my dead twin's switch case. It took me a year to get that situation to some degree "resolved", but its repercussions still haunt me. I am still being punished for wanting to take credit for my own work.

I literally felt in the time period in 2020 when I first realized that I might have had a twin who died at KSS as though I were scratching my eyes out. I grew up in a loving home with loving adoptive parents, and trust me, I am not a crazy person — but peeling back the layers of a secret this deep does things to you that you really do not want to know about. 

This took place during COVID, when I was unable to return to Korea immediately to once again visit KSS. I was trapped in the United States and had to endure an agonizing year-long wait before finally returning to Korea in 2021, to try to get more answers. In the lead up to my trip to Korea in 2021, from 2020-2021, I spent the entire time doing nothing but researching KSS. It was during this period that I first created Paperslip and conducted extensive, deep-dive research into the history and practice of KSS alongside Paperslip’s co-founder, whom shall by mutual agreement remain anonymous. It was also during this time that I found the birth family search posting of a birth father named Mr. Park, who was looking for his twin daughters, whom he and his wife had relinquished between 1973-1976. Knowing this was a long shot as a possibility for a birth father for me, I nevertheless contacted NCRC to try to obtain his contact information. I would not get a response from NCRC for nearly a year, until I was at last able to return to Korea to further investigate my and my twin’s cases. When I finally talked to NCRC in Korea, they told me they did not have Mr. Park’s contact information. But I would later discover from Mr. Park, after tracking him down on Jeju Island in Korea, that he had been in touch with NCRC for 3 years.

When I was finally able to return to Korea in 2021, I had to endure a 2 week quarantine in a Korean government designated hotel. I had reached out to AP (Associated Press) reporter Tong-hyung Kim in January 2021, and referred all of my research about systemic switching to him from 2021-2024. I also referred to him all of my contacts — Korean Adoptees who either had switch cases or other cases of deep falsification. We first met in Seoul during that trip in 2021 and this was when Tong-hyung accompanied me to KSS — this meeting was filmed by a Danish Korean Adoptee friend of mine and would have made incredibly valuable evidence for the TRC 2 investigation, had I not been shoved out of it by DKRG in 2022, since DKRG badly wanted credit for my research regarding KSS. I am the SOLE owner of this footage, since my Danish filmmaker friend generously gifted it to me. It was during the final leg of this 2021 trip that I located the Korean birth father whose post I had found online in 2020, Mr. Park. After we sadly turned out not to be a DNA match, with his permission, I administered a 23andMe test to both he and his son in Korea and processed them in the US, which later enabled me to reunite Mr. Park with his biological twin daughters, who had already taken the same DNA test. That journey resulted in an amazing documentary made by SBS in 2022, which became the first time that systemic switching was discussed in such a professional format in S. Korea, and probably in the world.

From 2021 to 2025, my research conducted through Paperslip — including the coining of the term “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary” to describe a secret document I discovered in the back of my KSS file in 2018— helped 45 KSS Adoptees with whom I was in contact successfully reunite with their Korean birth parents after assisting with the initial stages of their searches. I also coined the term “English Adoptive Child Study Summary” to reflect the difference between the document provided to adoptive parents (English ACSS), and the one that was hidden by KSS for decades (Korean ACSS). Between 2021-2025, prior to the file transfer to NCRC, I personally helped hundreds of KSS Adoptees request and obtain their formerly secret Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary from KSS. Unfortunately, now that all former Korean Adoption Agency files have moved to NCRC, it is no longer possible to request and obtain this document directly from KSS, whose former Post Adoption Services office is now permanently closed. NCRC is, as I predicted and warned Korean Adoptees about for 15 straight months, ridiculously bottlenecked with requests, given that they have only a handful of workers to handle their massive volume of work.

Because I relentlessly helped so many KSS Adoptees — including countless Danish KSS Adoptees — to successfully request and obtain their formerly secret “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary” from KSS between 2021-2025, a lot of these KSS documents ended up dominating the paper evidence of the March 2025 TRC 2 Interim Report. The only two Korean Adoption Agencies which adopted to Denmark were Holt and KSS, and while Holt is orders of magnitude larger than KSS, owing greatly to my years of work with KSS Adoptees, comparatively more KSS Adoptee documentary evidence found its way into TRC 2’s Interim Report, vs. that of Holt Adoptees. Despite being ruthlessly blocked from the TRC 2 movement by DKRG, I still provided substantial behind-the-scenes support by personally assisting hundreds of newly joined KSS Adoptees to the KSS forum, where I serve as an Admin — in the initial stages of their birth family searches during TRC 2’s investigation into Overseas Adoption (2022–2025). I also helped a Danish KSS Adoptee involved in a TRC 2 case secure coverage of her story with SBS in Korea. Despite DKRG’s being WELL aware of my work with KSS Adoptees through Paperslip, DKRG has NEVER ONCE mentioned Paperslip in their countless media opportunities. Sadly, doing so would have enabled significantly MORE KSS Adoptees to have requested and obtained their formerly secret “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary” documents — which now, in the lead up to TRC 3, are virtually impossible to obtain, due to the severe bottlenecking at NCRC — which I warned KSS Adoptees and other Adoptees about for 15 SOLID MONTHS. I was so committed to this task—which I completed, only to have to completely revise Paperslip following the NCRC file transfer—that I suffered severe burnout and an attendant loss of focus on my job.

The reason for DKRG’s continued failure to mention Paperslip is absurd — they want all of the media attention and credit for anything related to Korean Adoptee activism and advocacy. That has already cost, and will continue to cost, especially KSS Adoptees who were never aware of Paperslip dearly. It is a sad and brutal irony that, in the lead-up to TRC 3, DKRG and related *KRG groups are now scrambling to obtain documentary evidence from Adoptees — evidence that could have been significantly amplified during TRC 2 had they not ruthlessly blocked me from the movement to prevent me from receiving any credit. Ironically, the two avenues through which I most assisted KSS and U.S. Korean Adoptees — requesting and obtaining the formerly secret “Korean Adoptive Child Study Summary” for KSS Adoptees, and helping all U.S. Korean Adoptees file free FOIA requests — have since been so severely restricted as to be rendered practically impossible. But I also have little sympathy for the DKRG and some *KRG groups, which have blocked and ghosted the ONE person — me — who gave the most behind-the-scenes support to TRC 2. DKRG’s failures will be reflected in the limited ability of many Adoptees to obtain information now — information that could have been accessed far more easily during TRC 2 had DKRG amplified the voice of Paperslip instead of ruthlessly blocking it.

Unfortunately, ruthless ambition is not confined to so-called “Adoptee Rights” activists. I learned the hard way that journalists can be no better.

While AP published a long delayed story about my case in October 2024, I received ZERO credit in the related FRONTLINE/AP documentary, despite its heavy focus on systemic switching and the fact that most of the interview subjects for the documentary, related articles and interactive were individuals I referred to Tong-hyung Kim between 2021-2024. Indeed, the director Lora Moftah acknowledged privately that my “handprints were all over the documentary” and that “I was the driver (of its narrative)”. I was never under the impression that my years of informing Tong-hyung Kim about my research would result in him — the journalist — becoming the protagonist of the resulting documentary. That was bad enough, but the TOTAL absence of acknowledgment in the FRONTLINE / AP documentary — not even one line of “Special Thanks” in the credits — was deeply shocking and felt like a profound betrayal. The situation was made worse by the refusal of Tong-hyung and Lora Moftah to acknowledge the debt that was owed. I guess if the universe really wants to punch you, it's going to do so in triplicate.

You know, a lot of people really would have quit by now. The repercussions of the awful way in which I was treated by DKRG and by FRONTLINE / AP (in the end) would have put your average person 6 feet underground by now. 

But you know, I guess I am just stupid enough to keep fighting for myself, and for my deceased twin sister. 

Trust me, I am not in the state of shock and despair that I was in in 2020. But this road has been far from easy, and it has not been made any easier by those who have zero idea about and respect for what it has cost me personally to excavate the information that has since blossomed into Paperslip.

From the body of my dead twin sister has grown a tree. I will continue to honor it, even if others refuse to do so.