Kyung Eun Davidson’s earliest memories are of missing her birth mother. Born in 1983 in South Korea, she grew up in Oregon after being adopted by a couple in the U.S. in 1986. Ever since she was 3, Davidson would constantly daydream about her birth mother throughout her childhood.



“I remember wishing every night she would come back,” the 33-year-old, who currently lives in Everett, Washington, told The Korea Herald.



“I’ve never remembered a time that I did not miss her and want to be with her. My adoptive mother told me that when I was 4 years old I was crying because I could not remember what my mother’s face looked like anymore.”



About 30 years after she left Korea, Davidson was surprised to learn earlier this month that she had finally located her birth mother.



On Aug. 3, on a whim, she transferred her DNA information to a free third-party website called GEDmatch where DNA information collected from Korean birth families is shared by a group of Korean adoptees.



She had obtained her DNA information two years ago and kept it in a different database. “By the next morning I saw that I had a very close match and within 48 hours I was talking to my mother on KakaoTalk,” she said.



Davidson was adopted by her adoptive parents in the U.S. at the age of 3 and grew up in Oregon. (Kyung Eun Davidson)



Davidson is the first Korean adoptee to have found her birth mother through the DNA matching service provided by 325Kamra, a nonprofit group comprised mainly of mixed-race Korean adoptees in the U.S.



The testing was launched earlier this year to help Korean adoptees learn more about their heritage as well as to help those with positive DNA matches to potentially reunite.



In April, the organization brought 300 DNA kits to Korea, one of which was given to Davidson’s birth mother. After just about three months since her mother’s DNA was collected and uploaded on GEDmatch, they were able to find each other.



“It’s been an amazing, crazy and wonderful experience,” she said.



“The fact that Kyung Eun didn’t have to do anything other than provide her sample, as did her mom, shows how effective our methodology is,” said Bella L. Siegel-Dalton, a representative of 325Kamra.



“Had Kyung Eun transferred her results to GEDmatch sooner, she would’ve known sooner. Her mother’s DNA was sitting in the database waiting for her. Right now there are over 100 (birth) families’ DNA samples also waiting.”





The game changer



South Korea remains one of the largest sources of overseas adoptees in the world, having sent about 200,000 children abroad over the past six decades.



Ever since the nation’s adoption law was revised in 2012, guaranteeing an adoptee’s right to request his or her birth records, those asking for their personal files to find their birth families have increased dramatically. While 258 adoptees asked to see their information in 2012, 1,324 did so last year.

However, only 14.7 percent of some 4,790 adoptees who requested their files between 2012 and 2015 were able to reunite with their families, according to data released by Rep. Lee Jong-kul of the Minjoo Party of Korea.



One of the biggest reasons behind this is the mass forgery of documents in the 1970s and ’80s in Korea -- children’s identities were falsified before they were sent overseas for adoption.



Many adoptees acquire their birth records only to find out information in them is incorrect. A lot of them are also told lies or turned away when they ask for information at adoption agencies, although the Korean law currently guarantees their right to access their files.



For adoptees born in the ’50s and ’60s whose birth parents have reached old age, their time is running out.



Since 2012, the South Korean government has been offering assistance to adoptees in their search for their birth family. But Siegel-Dalton from 325Kamra said the service has been extremely ineffective. “The program is understaffed and relies on paperwork and files that are often incorrect,” she told The Korea Herald.



“DNA is the only foolproof way of ensuring a true match. Even if the birth parents are deceased, a close family member can test and reunite the adoptees with their birth family, such as cousins, uncles and grandparents.”



Davidson in fact stayed in Korea from 2005-2007 to find her birth mother.



But when she visited her adoption agency, Holt, the staff said they couldn't give her information about her mother without her birth father’s consent.



Davidson did reunite with her birth father, who gave her up for adoption when she was 3, but after their first meeting in 2007 he soon disappeared without telling her anything about her mother’s whereabouts.



Devastated, Davidson returned to the U.S. that year, feeling like there was nothing left for her in Korea.



“I grew up wondering what was so wrong with me that my own parents didn’t want me. It felt like confirmation that there was something about me that was unlovable,” she said, when asked about how she felt about her father walking away. “It wasn’t just my father I lost, but also any hope of finding my mother,” she said.



Earlier this month Davidson realized once again that Holt had lied to her about how she was given up for adoption.



In 2006, the agency had told Davidson by email that her birth mother had made a “huge scene at her father’s workplace and then abandoned her on his door step.”



But in 2007 her father told her a different account. This month, Davidson learned her birth mother never agreed to put her up for adoption.



“My mother told me she did not know I had been given up for adoption until eight years ago,” she said.



‘I would’ve never let her go’



Lee Eun-soo (not her real name), Davidson’s birth mother, thought for more than 20 years that her daughter was being raised by her father or his family. She raised Davidson alone for the first three years of her daughter’s life, and decided to have her raised by her father whom she thought was more financially capable of supporting her.



“I breastfed her until she was 3,” she told The Korea Herald. “She was all I had. It was just me and her in our little room.”



Every year, she would call him on Davidson’s birthday to ask him to wish her “Happy Birthday.”



“He would always say something like, ‘Don’t worry, she’s doing fine,’” Lee said. “I would’ve never let her go if I knew he was going to put her up for adoption. I never gave him my consent.”



It was in 2008 that Lee found out her daughter was never registered in the father’s family registry. When she asked for an explanation and demanded to see her daughter, Davidson’s father confessed that he had given her up for adoption in the ’80s.



Shocked, Lee visited Holt that year, but the agency did not tell her that Davidson had lived in Korea from 2005-2007, and that she had visited the agency to search for her too.



Kyung Eun Davidson, the first Korean adoptee to have found her birth mother through the DNA matching service provided by 325Kamra. (Kyung Eun Davidson)