Abandoned at Birth in Korea: One Woman’s Adoption Story
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, at only hours old, Jackie Darby was abandoned in a garbage dump in Seoul, Korea, where rats were already biting her tiny body when a missionary nurse rescued her. Adopted by an American family, Jackie grew up surrounded by love, but struggled with profound questions about rejection, identity, and her own self-worth.
Through faith and family, she' come to see her story very differently. Jackie shares the story of her remarkable journey from abandonment to purpose, and how God transformed the story she once carried in shame into one she now uses to encourage others. Be sure to check out her childrens book on adoption, Whose Am I?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:13.9 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star |
| 0:20.2 | and the American people. |
| 0:22.5 | Joining us now is Jackie Darby sharing her personal adoption story. |
| 0:35.8 | The story begins in Seoul, Korea. |
| 0:39.8 | I was a newborn, abandoned baby, left to die in the garbage dump, |
| 0:46.1 | to the point that rats were eating on my naked little body. |
| 0:52.3 | A missionary nurse found me. |
| 0:56.0 | She scooped me up and took me to a local orphanage. |
| 1:01.0 | The orphanage was run by, I call them missionaries. |
| 1:04.8 | I don't know if they called themselves missionaries, |
| 1:07.0 | but they were Americans who had missionaries in Korea. |
| 1:11.4 | This was post-Korean War days and took in babies like myself, babies and children. |
| 1:18.1 | So that's how my life began. |
| 1:22.2 | But in the meantime, the Lord was working in a different way in the lives of my parents. |
| 1:30.0 | They seen a newspaper regarding all these post-war babies and children who needed homes. |
| 1:37.8 | And the Lord really began working in their hearts to adopt. |
| 1:43.3 | But my parents already had five biological kids of their own. |
| 1:49.2 | So it's not like they couldn't have children. They just wanted to expand their family and help these |
| 1:55.9 | children. So they began the adoption process. Back then, it was snail nail, nail, and began the whole process of writing letters. And they were assigned their first baby. But soon after they were assigned a baby, she passed away. And so they went through this process two more times. They were assigned two more babies, and both babies died right before they were supposed to get them. |
| 2:24.5 | So they felt like, you know what, maybe that's the Lord's sign just to forget it. |
... |
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