Rows of cardboard boxes at the back of the aircraft on our 1982 Seoul to Seattle flight, each with a baby going to a new home, first made us aware of the Korean international adoption business. Arissa Oh examines how it began and why it has continued, even if children from other countries now attract more attention.

The 1950–1953 Korean War broke up families. Adoption was not unknown in Korea but was a family matter. If there was no male heir, a family might adopt from another branch of the family. This excluded girls, while a widespread belief that it would be difficult to incorporate an outsider into a family added to the problem. Most orphans ended up in poorly equipped and often badly run institutions. A new problem, as in Germany and Japan, was mixed race ‘GI babies’. Koreans prided themselves on their racial homogeneity and looked askance at such children. President Syngman Rhee's government searched for a solution. Publicly this was done out of compassion. Behind the scenes, a harder attitude prevailed. There was no wish to spend money even on Korean children, never mind those not regarded as Korean, and since children derived their status from fathers, the GI babies were a US responsibility. Many Americans were willing to accept this. Stories about orphans in Armed Forces’ newspapers were taken up by the domestic press. Some GIs informally adopted their half-Korean offspring or persuaded family members to do so, using special acts of Congress until a Refugees Relief Act was passed in 1953. Few of the normal adoption procedures were followed, which worried professionals. But the Korean government had found an answer to its problem and established a Child Placement Service in 1954. This was not to send Korean children abroad but to enable GI babies to be returned to the land of their fathers. American Christian communities took up the cause, which appealed to their sense of family values and responsibility.

It was Christians who turned the slow trickle of GI babies into a flood, and one in particular. This was Harry Holt, a lumberman from Oregon, of strong evangelical beliefs. By the mid-1950s, he and his wife Bertha had six children but, moved by the stories from Korea, they adopted eight GI babies via a special bill. They went to Korea as missionaries and realized that there were more orphans than just GI babies.