Seoul: For over 70 years, South Korea has sent more children overseas for adoption than any other country in the world. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, an estimated 170,000 children -- some unofficially say closer to 200,000 -- have been adopted abroad.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the Korean documentary film "K-Number" takes its name from the identification numbers assigned to these children, written on their adoption records like serial tags on lost identities. At the heart of the documentary is Mioka Miller, one of many adoptees on a seemingly endless journey to find her birth family in South Korea.
Found on the streets in the early 1970s at the estimated age of eight, Mioka Miller was adopted to the United States and has spent decades trying to piece together her past. Mioka cannot remember her Korean name and has returned to South Korea multiple times in search of her birth mother -- only to encounter forged documents and redacted records at every turn.
The film also follows another adoptee, Kaylin Bower, who successfully reconnects with her birth mother and visits Korea to see her again. Despite the reunion, her birth mother repeatedly tells her, "Let's not see each other again." Kaylin, who does not speak Korean, relies on an interpreter whose voice trembles as she translates: "It seems this will be your last meeting." The camera lingers on Kaylin as tears silently well up in her eyes.
What makes "K-Number" compelling is how it transforms individual stories of identity loss and emotional fracture by overseas adoptees into a larger, systemic critique of the international adoption industry. The film explores the structural failures -- and active wrongdoing -- that made such adoptions possible.