Kara Bos poses for photos after attending Seoul court trial (Reuters)
Seoul:
Decades after being sent for adoption to the United States, Kara Bos’ quest to find her biological parents in South Korea came closer on Friday when a Seoul court ruled that a South Korean was her biological father .
This decision is the first of its kind in South Korea, which Amnesty International once called the “longest and largest supplier of international adoptees”.
It paves the way for the possibility of officially registering thousands of others adopted as children of their biological parents, with implications for inheritance and citizenship laws.
Although laws vary widely from country to country, many jurisdictions provide more information to adopted children about their biological parents. Lawyers say South Korea’s policies remain relatively restrictive.
Bos, whose birth name is Kang Mee-sook, burst into tears as he left the courtroom. Taking off a medical mask, she said in Korean, “Mom. Can you recognize my face? Please come to me.”
Bos is one of more than 200,000 Korean children adopted abroad in the past 60 years, and his struggle to identify his parents highlights the challenges for many adoptees, said Reverend Do-hyun Kim, who runs KoRoot, a charity that works with adoptees.
“I think Kara’s journey, Kara’s fight, is significant because it reminds us that parents, society and the state itself have a public responsibility to clearly inform a child born in South Korean society from their roots, “he said.
The ruling officially registers Bos as the child of a man who, according to a DNA test ordered by the court earlier this year, is probably 99.9981% his biological father.
This designation could give right to the inheritance of Bos. The move could also lead to more adoptees with little to no records applying for South Korean citizenship, according to the Justice Ministry.
The man was only identified by his last name, without contact details, and Bos said the family wanted to remain anonymous.
Bos said that with the positive paternity test and the court ruling, the family had finally agreed to meet his father as early as next week.
LONG SEARCH FOR ANSWERS
In 1983, a two-year-old Bos was found abandoned in a market south of Seoul. Less than a year later, she was adopted by an American family.
Bos, who now lives in the Netherlands with her Dutch husband, knew from childhood that she had been adopted. His search for his biological parents did not begin until after the birth of his own daughter, who made it clear to Bos what it would mean to abandon a child at this age.
“At that time, I realized that there is a trauma involved in adoption, and it is much more complex than the story of the savior,” said Bos.
After several years of research in archives in South Korea, a rupture occurred in 2016 when a genealogy site compared her to a young South Korean, whose grandfather was the biological father of Bos.
Bos said she took the case to court after exhausting all other ways to try to speak to her and her family to find her mother.
“I even went to one of their houses and begged, literally, on my knees. And they called the police against me.”
Bos said she would not waive any inheritance rights, but her main goal was to speak to her father and possibly identify her mother.
“Without this legal aid, I would still be in the dark,” said Bos. “I still would have no options.”
(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
