PAJU — Dozens of Korean adoptees from North America and Europe gathered at Omma Poom Park in Paju, South Korea, in 2025 to fasten ceramic nametags onto a cobblestone wall in hopes their birth mothers might find them. More than 900 ceramic nametags were suspended on a mesh-covered cobblestone wall, each carrying an adoptee’s name, birth year, and birthplace.
Omma Poom Park, located on the site of a former U.S. military base in Paju, opened in June 2025 after a yearslong campaign by Paju-based photographer Lee Yong-nam and the adoptee support group Me & Korea. The hand-painted ceramic nametags use colors to indicate the decade of adoption: red and sky blue represent the 1970s and 1980s, when foreign adoptions from South Korea peaked. White-colored nametags honor adoptees who died without reuniting with their birth families.
Foreign adoptions from South Korea began after the 1950–1953 Korean War, initially involving mixed-race children born to Korean women and American soldiers. Adoptions surged in the 1970s, shifting to fully Korean children typically born to unwed or impoverished mothers. More than 6,600 children were sent abroad annually during the 1980s, a period when Seoul’s military dictatorship promoted overseas adoptions as part of population control efforts. Many adoptees were falsely labeled as abandoned orphans, and authorities largely ignored rampant fraud in child procurement from hospitals and orphanages.
Angela Lee-Pack, adopted to Canada in 1971 at age 2, wrote to her birth mother: “I think about you every day and only wish the best for you. I hope one day I will be able to know who I am.” Nicole Rieth, adopted to Michigan at 4 months old in January 1989, said: “There are so many tiles that hang, and yet that is merely a small fraction of us that exist.” She added: “As far as connecting with my birth mother, it’s not about gleaning specific information from her or even necessarily seeking a relationship. I’ve just always wanted to know who I looked like, because I’ve never had that before.”
Rieth began searching for her biological family in 2024, but letters sent to her birth mother’s last known address went unanswered. She is now pursuing another search through the National Center for the Rights of the Child. “I kind of don’t want to allow myself to hope because the whole journey has been a roller coaster of hoping, finding something out, and diving down into hopelessness, getting a glimmer of a maybe. And yet I want to exhaust every effort so that there are no regrets,” she said.
An anonymous note left among the tags read: “You are not alone. You have a mother and a father. I’m so sorry and I love you.” Lee Yong-nam, 72, said his interest in adoption issues grew from searching for a Black-Korean childhood friend likely adopted to America. “Adoptions continued unchecked and now the pain is surfacing,” he said.