2025-07-22
25 分钟Aaron Gregorchuk thought he knew his origin story.
He was born in South Korea in 1988, and then his mother gave him up for adoption.
The original story that I read on my paperwork, that I was abandoned by a 19-year-old mother,
teenage mother, teenage pregnancy, just abandoned me at the hospital,
couldn't afford to take care of me.
And that's the story I had accepted.
But in March, something happened that changed everything he thought he knew about himself.
A South Korean investigative commission report revealed that the country had been complicit in a decades-long crime.
Charity organizations had falsified records, stolen children,
and given them up for adoption overseas, all for profit.
This was all over the news.
The story of three South Korean Australians whose lives were rocked by one of the biggest adoption scandals in history.
Many adoptees are now working together to uncover what really happened in their past.
My friend Amanda sent me one of the news articles and I was reading it and I was like jaw open.
I had absolutely no idea about any of this.
Aaron thought Maybe he wasn't abandoned by his birth mother after all.
Maybe he had been stolen from her.
From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports.
I'm Elahe Izzadi.
It's Monday, July 21st.