Kim Donghyung
Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The earliest photograph of Joo-Rei Mathieson herself was taken when she was about 4 years old. Her head was shaved and her eyes drooped. She just arrived at the worst place South Korea could possibly be sent to.
This black-and-white photo is from a November 1982 Brothers Home admissions document, which describes Mathieson as a lost street kid who was taken away by the police. It noted that she was “capable of labor” — which survivors told The Associated Press was chilling for government-funded homeless shelters, which routinely keep children alive.
She did not speak for days after entering Brothers, the now-destroyed facility in the southern port city of Busan, where thousands of children and adults — most of whom were taken from the streets — were enslaved and enslaved, the documents said. Often killed, raped and beaten in the 1970s and 1980s.
“She was very scared and traumatized,” Mathieson said of herself, as she imagined in an interview with The Associated Press how the girl in the photo, named Hwang Joo Rei, was feeling because of the Jurye- where Brothers used to be. dong district standing.
Mathison is one of the lucky ones. In August 1983, she and 21 other young children from the fraternity were transferred to an orphanage in another part of the city.
With the brothers’ sprawling compound overcrowded, her escape may have been possible.
Mathieson then entered an international adoption system that separated thousands of South Korean children from their families as part of a lucrative business under the military junta that ruled South Korea from the 1960s to the late 1980s.
She was given an approximate date of birth and other arbitrary details to fit into a haphazard immigration process aimed at sending more children abroad as quickly as possible. Mattison then flew to meet her Canadian adoptive parents in November 1984, becoming part of a child export spree that created the world’s largest overseas adoption.
Mathieson said she spent most of her adult life in “a tunnel vision moving forward,” never questioning her past and her life as a Canadian while traveling the world before settling in Hong Kong to work in the hospitality industry .
But in recent months, her Korean past has “jumped back” to her as she begins to feel like she’s “on a mission” to find her roots and find her Korean parents (if they’re still alive).
Concerned about privacy, she used her name from her adoption papers in a 2019 Associated Press report that broke the news that her brother was in the adoption business.
However, Mathieson is now willing to speak publicly for the first time to improve her chances of finding relatives in South Korea, including possible sibling Lee Chang-geun.
The name appeared on the adoption papers of another Korean adoptee, who was sent to a family in Belgium in 1986 with his younger brother. Last October, after a commercial DNA test, Matheson connected with him — increasingly used by South Korean adoptees seeking reunification — and found they were likely siblings.
Mathieson said that despite not knowing her real name, date of birth or hometown, it was “exciting” to discover a blood relative and have a tangible connection to her biological roots.
“I don’t think anyone else on earth other than an adopted person understands what it’s like to live without their origins. It’s something normal people take for granted,” Matheson said in a Zoom interview. The word “normal” is in quotation marks. “It’s so exciting to see someone who looks like me.”
The discovery also raised troubling questions about the circumstances of her adoption and that of her newly discovered relatives, who did not respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.
His documents show that he and his younger brother were adopted from an orphanage in Anyang, near the capital Seoul, about 190 miles from Busan. The boys were found abandoned in August 1982, and they had another brother, Li Changgen, at another orphanage in Anyang, months before Matheson arrived at the fraternity, the report said.
There was no mention of whether Li was adopted. Mathieson wants Lee to stay in Korea and she can find him now. She was eager to know about her Korean parents and how they were separated from their children.
Neither Mathieson’s adoption papers nor that of the Belgian brothers describe any meaningful efforts to find their family of origin, despite their years in the orphanage system.
Mathieson said she was full of questions: Did her parents leave her with relatives in Busan while they were busy looking for their missing son? Was she kidnapped by the police like other inmates at Brothers Prison?
“Instead, a lot of adoptions come from new parents who have to give up as soon as the child is born,” Matheson said. “Having a family give up, voluntarily give up three 4- to 6-year-olds? It just didn’t add up for me. I know (that) true story is so deep.”
Through documents obtained from officials, lawmakers or through freedom of information requests, the Associated Press found direct evidence that 19 children were adopted by Brothers between 1979 and 1986, and indirect evidence that at least 51 others were adopted.
Memories of Mathieson before she left South Korea — watching children play in the nearly empty outdoor pool, the towering black iron gates, the flowers in the garden courtyard as she was rushed out to take pictures — told The Associated Press for the first time Previously, these memories were vague and mild, she said she was at Brothers in 2016.
She now links those memories with her brother’s photos showing children playing in the low water of a concrete pit behind the massive fence gates that held thousands of people – including the homeless and disabled, And random pedestrians snatched from the street—the facility’s 1987 horrors before prosecutors came to light.
The Brotherhood is the largest facility in the country, and military leaders have ordered a radical roundup to clear the country’s streets.
Adoption is another way to eliminate socially undesirables, including children from unwed mothers or poor families, and reduce the number of mouths to feed.
About 200,000 Korean children have been adopted by Western families over the past 60 years, including 7,924 in 1984, the year Matheson was adopted. The root causes are often untraceable because most children are classified as abandoned, even if they know relatives, making them vulnerable to adoption.
Mathieson plans to take her case to Seoul’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has interviewed hundreds of sibling survivors or their families, but so far has no adopters. Although still determined to obtain information about her biological parents, Matheson treasured fragments of her past that emerged as she continued her search.
“It’s great to get more photos,” Matheson said of a recent photo sent by her adoption agency, the Korea Welfare Bureau. “I will cherish them well.”
