Ripped from families for not being ‘Korean enough,’ mixed-race adoptees seek truth and justice | Hankyoreh | Hankyoreh (KR) | 2026-05-31T00:00:00.000Z | ko | 01KT16PKT6VFVQWZDPPW4B3024 | Ripped from families for not being ‘Korean enough,’ mixed-race adoptees seek truth and justice | Article text: Cho Young-il, Meeky Woo Flippen, Simon Hokwerda, and Oh Jae-gyeong hold up photos of themselves taken around the time that they were sent abroad for adoption as children. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh) “Now that I'm 60, I know that life doesn't necessarily get better. I want to tell the child in the photo ‘Even if it's hard, things will get better if you endure,’ but I can’t. Because even if I find my mother and younger brother, I can never get back the 56 years I lost."This is how Simon Hokwerda, 60, a Korean adoptee to the Netherlands, answered when asked what he would say to his younger self.Separated from his mother and younger brother at age 4 and adopted by a Dutch family, he said that when he found out that his ex-girlfriend was pregnant, he couldn't handle it and abandoned her.“Because I’m a wounded person, I lived my life hurting others as well. My child will resent me,” he said. This shows how the trauma of overseas adoption is passed down from one generation to the next. Simon Hokwerda holds up a photo of himself when he was around 4 years old, taken around the time he was sent to the Netherlands for adoption. His mother worked at the club while raising Simon and his brother on her own. Simon learned when he visited his hometown of Paju, Gyeonggi Province, that her landlord sent him for adoption to the Netherlands in 1970 because his mother had failed to pay the rent and childcare fees on time. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh) Meeky Woo Flippen, 60, an adoptee to the US, is the head of the Korea branch of 325KAMRA, a nonprofit organization that helps Korean adoptees, veterans and individuals of Korean descent locate their biological families using DNA testing.Adopted by a couple in the US at age 14 after her biological mother died, Flippen said she also found it difficult to genuinely trust people.She said her marriage ended because she found it difficult to trust people, adding that making friends was also tough for fear of trusting people only for them to leave or getting close to those untrustworthy. Meeky Woo Flippen holds up a photo of herself from the age of around 14 at “St. Vincent’s Home for Amerasian Children.” Her older sister had been adopted abroad after an adoption worker told her she would be free of want there. When their mother learned that Meeky’s older sister was being abused by her adoptive family, she fell ill and died, leaving Meeky an orphan. The rampant sexual abuse of children at St. Vincent’s Home was something Meeky learned firsthand while living there until being sent to the US. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh) I caught up with Simon and Meeky, as well as fellow adoptees Cho Young-il and Oh Jae-gyeong, on May 8, which was Parents’ Day in Korea. All four of them are seeking the truth about their adoptions as mixed-race children, as well as justice for being taken from their families against their wishes, all because they were the children of Korean women and American servicemen. Though they were mere children at the time, all s | Src: Hankyoreh (KR)

DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.