If you’re adopted, making the choice to search for and possibly connect with your birth family is one of the hardest decisions that you’ll ever make in your life. Depending on where you ended up, many of us grow up with so many questions — why me? are my parents back in Korea still alive? what are they doing? do I look like them? etc. — and we’re a bit afraid of what the answers to those questions might be if we are able to find them. And though it’s been a challenging experience for me personally, I know that I’m extremely lucky that I was able to reconnect with my birth family here in Korea.

Over 200,000+ children were adopted from Korea since the end of the Korean War with the majority of adoptions occurring in the 70’s and 80’s. This means that we’re at a time where a lot of us are possibly ready to look into our past and at the same time recognize the fact that if we wait too long that there might not be anything to find when we do come back.

The fact is, thousands of adoptees have went through the birth family search and weren’t able to get any closure. There are countless reasons why a birth family search is difficult or fails. Not only is there the language barrier, but often times the adoptee may not have the appropriate information or the adoption records may have been poorly kept at the time. Sometimes the biological parents have had their own circumstances in life change and refuse to meet. I’ve heard so many stories from friends over the years of extreme efforts that they’ve gone through to try to find answers, and it’s tough when you see the pain in their eyes when they’re recounting all of their efforts.

At GOA’L we believe in helping adoptees in their search for family or closure. Our program helps to facilitate adoptees to not only do a trip to exhaust the last possibilities by going to the last known addresses, information points, the police station where they were abandoned, talking to the local community center, local elder centers, the hospital they were born, orphanage they stayed between birth and adoption, distribute flyers, but also give them the final opportunity to do it in a calm environment with mentors and interpreters guiding them through the process, and with an appropriate amount of time an individual needs to process this difficult journey.

We’re looking to raise $40,000 USD in corporate sponsorship to help fund this important program for a year which will cover the costs for all staffing and travel expenses for adoptees where travel to Korea is financially burdensome. GOA’L is the only adoptee-led non-profit and NGO in Korea. If you are interested in learning more, please message me.

Thank you!