Korean adopted as baby searches for her biological parents

Photos of Lee Hyung-ja as a baby / Courtesy of Lee Hyung-Ja

By Jung Min-ho

One of the first photos Lee's adopting parents took after she arrived at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport in early 1974.

There are tears and heartbreaks in every adoption story. Nevertheless, some people manage successfully to build their lives in a new place with the love and support of a new family.

Unfortunately, it was not the case for Lee Hyung-ja, who was adopted by a Swedish couple in 1974 when she was only a year old.

“My whole life, I felt lost,” Lee, 46, whose Swedish name is Katarina Chi Lind, told The Korea Times. “I've felt different, not 'at home' in Sweden. Something was missing and I didn't know what it was. I searched and searched but never found what I was searching for.”

Part of her struggle came from an emotionally distant relationship with her adopting parents, who wanted her to grow as a normal Swede.

Lee found that missing piece of the puzzle in 2011 when she fell in love with a Korean man. It was her roots, she said. The man, who eventually became her husband, encouraged her to visit the country of her birth; so she did, for the first time since leaving.

“As soon as I saw the city of Seoul spread out under me through the airplane window I could actually feel how my heart became whole,” she said. “The missing part that had been gone my whole life was in place again. I felt a calm and a joy I can't describe with words ― and I knew I had finally come home. This is where I belong.”

That's when she started searching for her birth parents.

Adoption documents say Lee was found abandoned at Suncheon, in South Jeolla Province, on Nov. 9, 1972. At the time she was estimated to be about three months old, but it was uncertain because she was suffering from malnutrition.

Lee was later moved to a center for abandoned children at Gwangju and then to a home of a foster family in Seoul. A woman, then 55, and her son, 25, and daughter, 23, took care of her until she was adopted by a couple in Varnamo, southern Sweden, in early 1974.

Lee said the journey of finding her biological parents has been difficult. “I've started a birth search with almost no information at all … I don't have a name of my birth mother. The only thing I have is the name of the doctor who examined me a long time ago at the Red Cross Hospital. He's 85 years old now and of course he can't remember me,” she said.

Meanwhile, Korea Adoption Services, which has refused to reveal information about her foster family over privacy protection, has not been helpful.

“I have read articles about adoptees returning to Korea to search for their roots,” Lee said. “It has given me a little bit of hope that some of them found what they were searching for.”

“I have a small hope that maybe, just maybe, someone can recognize me … I know I'm looking for a needle in a haystack, but I have to do it.”