Hairdresser mom recognizes daughter just by feeling her hair — 44 years after she was stolen

Han Tae-soon last saw her daughter, Kyung-ha, in May 1975 at their home in Seoul when Han asked her daughter if she wanted to come along to the market. "She told me, 'No, I’m going to play with my friends.' When I came back, she was gone," Han recalled. What she didn't know was that it would take 44 years for Han to see her daughter again. When they met in 2019 at the airport in Seoul, Kyung-ha was living in the United States under the name Laurie Bender. She had grown up believing she was an orphan, unaware of the life she was taken from.

Their reunion, first reported by the BBC, came after Han connected with a group called 325 Kamra, which reunites overseas adoptees with birth families through DNA matching. The pairing was confirmed with Laurie, a nurse in California, who flew to South Korea after several emotional calls. As they embraced at the airport, Han ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair. "I’ve been a hairdresser for 30 years, I can quickly tell if it’s my daughter just by feeling her hair. I had mistakenly thought I found her before, so I had to touch and feel the hair to confirm it," she said. The first thing she said was, "I’m so sorry."

Kyung-ha was only six years old when a stranger approached her near her home, claiming to know her mother, and telling her that she "didn’t need" her anymore. The woman took her to a train station and abandoned her, from where the police later picked her up, and she was sent to an orphanage before being adopted abroad. Records were falsified to show she had no living family. Her experience is one of many cited in a truth and reconciliation commission report that exposed systemic issues in South Korea’s overseas adoption program. Between the 1950s and early 2000s, an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 Korean children were adopted internationally, mostly by families in the United States and Europe, as per the BBC.

"I spent 44 years ruining my body and mind searching for [my daughter]. But in all that time, has anyone ever apologized to me? No one. Not once," Han said. She and her husband had tried everything, including filing police reports, visiting orphanages, handing out flyers, and even appearing on television to appeal for help. Han once believed she had found her daughter and took the woman into her home, but it turned out to be another dead end. Now 71, Han is still trying to reconnect with her daughter in more ways than one. They live in different countries, and language is a barrier, so Han practices daily, writing simple phrases like "I’m so sorry" and "confused" over and over in a notebook.

"Even though I have found my daughter, it doesn’t feel like I’ve truly found her. All I know is where she is, but what good is that, if we can’t even communicate?" she said. Living on two opposite sides of the world, with her daughter having forgotten her mother tongue, Han realizes that there's no salvaging this relationship after nearly five decades. The South Korean government has acknowledged the emotional toll on families but stopped short of accepting full responsibility. Meanwhile, adoption practices in the country have been shifting. International adoptions have declined sharply, from more than 8,800 children in 1985 to just 79 in 2023, but for Han, the damage has already been done. "My entire life has been ruined. No amount of money will ever make up for what I’ve lost," she said.