Kara Bos was adopted from Korea to the US when she was 2 years old. Now, 36 years later, she has filed a paternity suit in Korea to be legally recognized by her Korean father. 

As many adoptees have done, Kara used DNA testing to locate Korean family members. Following up on results which connected her to a cousin and nephew, Kara traveled to Seoul and took DNA tests there. Those results identified an 85 year old Gangnam man with 99.9% probability of being her father. Kara apparently has two half-sisters in Korea, and they have have refused to connect directly with the man she believes to be her Korean father. 

On May 29, 2020, a court hearing in Seoul is scheduled to take place in order to enter Kara in the father’s family registry. The Korean family registry is an important and historical part of Korean culture, as it officially identifies family members and thus can affect citizenship, inheritance, and more.

Among the reasons Kara wants to meet her Korean father is to learn why she was abandoned, and to have information about her mother. “He is my only link to finding out who my mother is, as my adoption documents list only ‘abandoned.'”

Kara says that adoptees “need to know who our parents are, where we come from, and why we were abandoned, and the Korean government doesn’t do anything to help us with that. We want truth. We want answers to our past.” 

“I want my story told so that Korea understand the excruciating pain and rejection an adoptee has to go through even as an adult on their return to find out their birth story.”

Read the Manila Bulletin article here: “Korean-American adoptee files landmark paternity suit against her biological father in South Korea.”

The Korean adoptee community has been especially active in promoting DNA testing. Here is one source for information and tests.