As you can see above my family background information contains eight sentences. I’ll go over each sentence to show how a so called reputable agency creates an adoptable orphan.
1) Myung Sook’s mother is deceased.
Indeed, my mother died when I was six.
2) Sometime after her mother’s death, the child came to Seoul with her father, who left his hometown due to financial hardship.
Our hometown was Seoul. I was born in Seoul. I lived in my birthplace with my family until the spring of 1974. My mother died in 1972. My father and I moved to the countryside, Suwon, in 1974 because of financial hardship. My elder sister and her family still lived in Seoul near our former house. My brother still lived in Seoul at his workplace that was a few minutes away from our former house by walk. My second sister had left home to work as a maid in another part of Seoul.
3) For a while he worked as a labourer, but his income was very low.
My father lost his job in 1970 following a work accident that left one arm paralyzed. Since then he worked only one day for the landlord, one week as street vendor, and a day to sell cigarettes. I wouldn’t count these as a job. He didn’t work during the four to five months we lived in Suwon.
4) Then the father disappeared leaving Myung Sook in a boarding house.
5) After waiting in vain two or three days for the parent to return, the landlord transferred the child to the Lost Children’s Center; it was on 9/10/74.
6) She was in turn transferred to St. Paul’s Orphanage on 1/28/75.
The last time I saw my father was near the place where my second sister lived and worked as a maid. He wanted to get some money of her pay. He had told me he would wait for me while I would go meet her boss to tell him that if he didn’t want to pay my father would take my sister back. When I returned, my father was not at the place he was. I left the place thinking that he had abandoned me. I didn’t even wait a second for him to return.(It was not the first time I thought I was abandoned. I feared abandonment since my mother’s dead.) When I thought of going back to the place where my father was supposed to wait for me, I realized I was lost. So the one who disappeared was me, not my father. (While I was lost, my father was scolding my sister for my disappearance, and then they were searching for me.)
I ended up in a police station which transferred me to another police station, which in turn transferred me to a place for lost children. After a day or two the lost children’s center transferred me to a children’s shelter on 9/10/74.
A man (from St. Paul’s orphanage) came to take a few girls. The second time he came, he asked those who knew their address to raise hand. I raised mine. I told him what I had already told to an office worker of the orphanage, that I lived in Suwon, but I didn’t know my new address yet and I gave him my former address, and told him to bring me to my former address in Seoul, that my elder sister and brother were still living near that place, and that I even knew how to go back home by myself alone from there, etc. The man promised me he would search for my elder sister and would come back.
He came back a week later to bring us home. In fact he just transferred us to his orphanage, St. Paul’s orphanage, on 1/28/75. He put me up for adoption without searching for my elder sister and my father.
7) Myung Sook says she has neither brother nor sister.
I talked about my elder sister, brother and/or second sister at each place I went except at the second police station where I didn’t stay long enough to talk. I talked about my brother at the first police station, I told the policeman how I lost my father after visiting my second sister. I told the same thing at the lost children’s center. I gave my former address to the first orphanage worker and the second orphanage director and told them my elder sister and brother lived there. I often talked about my siblings to other kids in front of the nuns and the housemother while living at St. Paul’s orphanage.
8) She does not remember, either, where she lived before her coming to Seoul.
Read what I wrote for #3, 4, 5 and 6.
Remark: I found the correct dates 9/10/74 and 1/28/75 on the record of the first orphanage. I also found the former address and the name of my father.
Nothing like adoption……..to keep someone from ever truly coming home.