Korean adoptees from North America and Europe gathered at Omma Poom Park in Paju, South Korea, to place hand-painted ceramic nametags on a memorial wall, each bearing their name, birth year, and birthplace in colors marking the decade of adoption. The park, opened in 2025 on a former U.S. military base, includes a museum with profiles of adoptees seeking birth families. Individuals such as Nicole Rieth and Angela Lee-Pack shared personal stories of their search for biological roots, often met with silence or denial. The news piece explores the historical context of foreign adoptions from South Korea since the Korean War, the peak years in the 1970s and 1980s, and the lasting emotional impact on adoptees who continue to seek answers about their origins.
Dozens of Korean adoptees from North America and Europe gathered at Omma Poom Park in Paju , South Korea , on May 20, 2026, to fasten ceramic nametags onto a mesh-covered cobblestone wall.
Each hand-painted nametag displays the adoptee's name, birth year, and birthplace, with colors denoting the decade of adoption-red for the 1970s and sky blue for the 1980s when foreign adoptions peaked. White tags honor adoptees who died without reunions. A laminated note among them, left by anonymous parents, searches for a child named Bora.
The park, meaning mother's embrace, sits near the North Korean border on a former U.S. military base and opened in June 2025 after a campaign by photographer Lee Yong-nam and the adoptee support group Me & Korea. A converted army building on a hill serves as a museum storing about 1,000 profile pages with photos, birthdates, and messages to birth mothers.
Nicole Rieth, adopted to Michigan at four months old in 1989, expressed that the visible tags represent only a fraction of Korean adoptees. She said her motivation is not necessarily to seek a relationship but to know who she resembles, as she has never had that connection. Rieth began searching for her birth mother after becoming a mother herself, sending letters through her adoption agency that went unanswered.
Angela Lee-Pack, a Korean adoptee from Canada, described enduring severe abuse in her adoptive home, including being locked in a closet without food, and later being left at age 15. She visited South Korea twice, distributing flyers with her photos in Seoul and Jeonju. A lead in 2019 suggested a connection to a late uncle, but the potential birth mother denied having given up a child and refused contact, leaving Lee-Pack devastated.
She stated she constantly wonders about her birth mother's identity and appearance. The history of foreign adoptions from South Korea began after the 1950-53 Korean War with mixed-race children of Korean women and American soldiers, who faced stigmatization. Adoptions surged in the 1970s, focusing on fully Korean children born to unwed mothers or poor families. Thousands were sent annually to the West through the mid-2000s, peaking at over 6,600 per year in the 1980s under Seoul's then-military dictatorship.
The Wall of Names at Omma Poom Park thus stands as both a memorial and a poignant reminder of ongoing searches for identity and biological roots among Korean adoptees
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