Was he given up for adoption? Or was he taken?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Over the weekend, South Korea announced it would end private adoptions in the country. This comes after an investigation found human rights abuses by international adoption agencies. Some babies had been taken without their birth parents’ knowledge or consent. Records were falsified. Identities were swapped. Babies were stolen.
Host Elahe Izadi speaks with Seoul-based reporter Kelly Kasulis Cho about how adoption fraud occurred for decades in South Korea. We also hear from a man who is now on a quest to find his biological family.
Today’s show was produced by Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval. It was edited by Maggie Penman and mixed by Rennie Svirnovskiy with help from Sam Bair. Thanks to Bart Schaneman.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Aaron Gregorchek thought he knew his origin story. |
| 0:06.0 | He was born in South Korea in 1988, and then his mother gave him up for adoption. |
| 0:12.0 | The original story that I read on my paperwork, that I was abandoned by a 19-year-old, |
| 0:16.7 | you know, mother, teenage mother, teenage pregnancy, just abandoned me at the hospital, |
| 0:22.2 | from the floor to take care of me. |
| 0:24.4 | And that's the story I had accepted. |
| 0:30.6 | But in March, something happened that changed everything he thought he knew about himself. |
| 0:39.9 | A South Korean investigative commission report revealed that the country had been complicit in a decades-long crime. |
| 0:43.0 | Charity organizations had falsified records, stolen children, and given them up for adoption |
| 0:50.0 | overseas, all for profit. |
| 0:53.6 | This was all over the news. |
| 0:55.7 | The story of three South Korean Australians whose lives were rocked by one of the biggest |
| 0:59.7 | adoption scandals in history. |
| 1:01.3 | Many adoptees are now working together to uncover what really happened in their past. |
| 1:07.2 | My friend Amanda sent me one of the news articles, and I was reading it, and I was, like, I, just like, jaw open. |
| 1:15.6 | I had absolutely no idea about any of this. |
| 1:18.9 | Aaron thought maybe he wasn't abandoned by his birth mother after all. |
| 1:24.0 | Maybe he had been stolen from her. |
| 1:30.3 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. |
| 1:34.3 | I'm Elahe Izadi. |
| 1:35.3 | It's Monday, July 21st. |
| 1:38.3 | The South Korean government announced this weekend that it was ending private adoptions for good. A newly restructured |
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