For years, Aaron Grzegorczyk thought he knew his story. Born in 1988 in Anyang, in the northwest of South Korea, under the name Cho Yong-kee, abandoned by a single mother at the clinic the day after his birth, then adopted at 5 months old by an American-Polish couple from Michigan. His adoption papers spoke of his mother’s desire to offer him a “optimal future” by separating from him.
But in March 2025, everything changes. A friend forwarded him an article about the South Korean government’s recognition of decades of fraud in the international adoption system. Aaron Grzegorczyk discovers that thousands of children, like him, could have been sent abroad based on falsified documents, without the consent of their parents, or even after being wrongly declared dead to their biological families, reports the Washington Post.
An independent report, commissioned by the South Korean government, revealed the scale of the scandal: between 1964 and 1999, children were exported without control, sometimes under false identities, to meet international demand and generate profits. Adoption agencies, under pressure to fill quotas, allegedly ignored legal procedures and the basic rights of children and their families.
South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission studied 367 cases of children adopted from eleven different countries and concluded that widespread illegal practices existed. It is impossible to know how many of the more than 200,000 South Korean children adopted abroad since the end of the Korean War (1950-1953) are affected.
Between hope and resignation
For Aaron Grzegorczyk, this revelation triggers a deep questioning. Already, as a teenager, the announcement of his abandonment by his biological mother had caused his first “existential crisis”. He grew up in a white America where he did not find his place, experienced academic difficulties, behavioral problems, then a descent into precariousness and addictions. He rebuilt himself after the birth of his daughter, managing to find a form of peace.
But an examination of his own adoption papers raised doubts: no police report, no signed consent from a biological parent, no trace of the name or address of the clinic, several fields left empty and a family origin indicated as “Hanyang” – a generic term corresponding to Seoul, but which sows doubt because it is vague.
In April, there was a twist: the adoption agency announced to Aaron Grzegorczyk that it had found his biological mother, “happy to get back in touch”. He writes her a letter, tells her about his daughter, his family, his hopes. But since then, nothing. The agency explains to him that his file will be transferred in July to a new public body, the National Center for the Rights of the Child, responsible for centralizing research and archives. His biological mother did not respond to telephone calls.
Aaron Grzegorczyk, resigned, tries to keep a cool head. “I never expected to hear anything from anyonehe summarizes, lucidly. Maybe my papers aren’t made up. Maybe they are 100% true. At least I would understand.” Like him, thousands of South Korean adoptees are today demanding the truth about their origins, faced with an opaque system and incomplete files. Finding their history is not a simple administrative act, it is the key to reclaiming an identity that may have been stolen from them from birth.
