Sophie was adopted from South Korea to Germany as a baby. She had a happy childhood, yet one question haunted her: Why was I given away? In her early twenties, she traveled to Korea, determined to finally find answers. She pored over files, visited a hospital, and was surprisingly moved by a photograph in a police station. Suddenly, her biological family seemed within reach. The story explores themes of belonging, transnational adoptions after the Korean War, and the question of whether international adoptions should even be legal. Sophie recounts her search for her origins, identity, and family. Can she truly find her biological family? Authors: Linh Tran and Sarah Zaheer Director: Oliver Martin Producers: Peter Avar and Ulli Hieber Editor: Kim Neubauer If you enjoyed this episode of Deep Doku, you might also like this episode: “Searching for Father in Mozambique – Sandra's Dad Was a Contract Worker in East Germany” https://1.ard.de/vatersuche_mosambik 

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Research Assistant Intercountry Adoption

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06-07-2026

With your eye for detail and strong interest in academic research and human rights themes, you will support our client at the Faculty of Law with research into the aftermath of intercountry adoption, assist in organizing an international academic conference, and maintain a scholarly networking website. Additionally, you will conduct and process various interviews regarding this subject.

Working hours can be flexibly scheduled in consultation with the client, depending on your availability, between 8 and 16 hours per week. It is possible to work remotely and at times that suit you. Ideally, you can start in July, and the appointment runs until the end of this year, with the possibility of extension.

The hourly wage for this position is between €18.56 and €19.07. Additionally, you will receive a holiday allowance of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.

If you are interested, please apply via the button below. For more information or questions, you can contact Didier Tripels via bureau@interum.umholding.nl or by phone at 043 388 2688.

How did Sofia Nordgren’s childhood experiences shape her search for biological family and adoption truth?

Sofia Nordgren is an international speaker, author, moderator, transformation coach, entrepreneur, and advocate for adoptee rights, identity, family reunification, and social justice, with more than 30 years of professional experience in health, wellbeing, leadership, coaching, and personal development.

With a professional background in nursing, coaching, leadership, and personal development, she has spent more than three decades supporting people facing trauma, grief, stress-related conditions, mental health challenges, identity issues, major life transitions, and personal growth. Her experience spans primary healthcare, mental health services, occupational health, elder care, health promotion, education, leadership, and coaching. She is trained as an ICC-certified coach and NLP Practitioner and has pursued continued professional development in areas including ACT, trauma, resilience, communication, attachment, belonging, identity, and psychological wellbeing.

Nordgren is the founder and CEO of Lifestyle+ in Sweden. Through speaking, coaching, writing, facilitation, moderation, and education, she supports individuals and organizations in navigating change, adversity, identity challenges, leadership development, wellbeing, and personal transformation.

Jonah Bevin shares allegations of abuse, neglect as judge orders former Kentucky governor’s arrest for failing to provide court records

KENTUCKY, Ky. (WKYT) - For the first time, Jonah Bevin is sharing his side of the story in an ongoing child support case against his adoptive father, former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, as a judge issued an arrest order for the former governor.

The judge issued the arrest order after Matt Bevin failed to provide the court all requested records in the case. The order gives all peace officers in the commonwealth the authority to arrest Bevin. After his arrest, he will have to serve 60 days in jail and pay a $500 fine.

In an interview with WKYT, Jonah spoke about what it was like living with the Bevins and shared his thoughts on the legal fight currently going on.

"Don't let go of my hand, Mom." These were the words of a daughter afraid of getting lost in a huge crowd. Eventually, these words marked the instant Shivani Schulz's entire life just changed. Around 20 years ago, Shivani was a little girl navigating the chaos of a busy New Delhi railway station, clinging tightly to her mother while keeping an eye on her younger brother. Within moments, her mother vanished into the crowd and never came back. Today, the young woman is a wife and a mother whose adoption story has moved millions of people across the internet. But beneath all that is a childhood built on trauma and years spent not knowing what comes next. 

“I don't remember what my birth mother looks like”

When people look at Shivani's life today, it can be difficult to picture the pain that quietly shaped who she became. “My earliest memories were not happy ones,” she says. She describes growing up in a household full of fear. She had an abusive father and a mother who was terrified but doing everything she could to protect her children. In a separate video posted on Instagram, Shivani opened up about how her memory of her birth mother has faded with time. “I don't remember what she looks like. I don't remember her name. We were so young that all I remember is how I felt around her, which was her fear.” “The only memories I have are of my birth dad physically beating her, yelling at her, and then her letting go of my hand,” she says.

The day childhood ended for her…

When Shivani and her little brother lost their mother at the railway station, everything changed in an instant. What followed next was something no child is ever supposed to face alone. While other children her age were worrying about playgrounds and homework, Shivani suddenly found herself carrying a far heavier weight. “I became my little brother's protector. His survival became more important than my own fear.” Eventually, a policeman found the siblings and took them to an orphanage

PAJU, South Korea (AP) — Dozens of Korean adoptees from North America and Europe recently gathered to leave their names on a wall at a former U.S. military base, hoping that, after decades, a birth mother might still be looking for them.

Misted in rain, they fastened ceramic nametags onto mesh that covered a cobblestone wall at Omma Poom Park — meaning “mother’s embrace” — in Paju, South Korea.

More than 900 tags, suspended like unmailed letters, formed a quiet monument to years of mass child-parent separations that has created what’s likely the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees.

“There are so many tiles that hang, and yet that is merely a small fraction of us that exist,” said Nicole Rieth, adopted to Michigan when she was 4 months old, in January 1989.

Eight South Korean-born adoptees are suing Denmark for its role in their illegal adoptions decades ago, demanding the state admit responsibility for covering up their origins.

Sofie Randel was three years old when she arrived in Denmark with her younger brother in 1977, during a period of authoritarian rule in South Korea.

A lively, talkative little girl, she spoke fluent Korean at the time, and her adoptive father recorded her on a cassette that then sat gathering dust for years.

In 2023, Randel gave the recording to a journalist who would follow her in her quest to discover her origins.

Intercountry adoption has not only caused suffering, these adoptive parents believe.

The cabinet wants to stop intercountry adoption due to abuses. Martin and Rosanne van Dam, awaiting their fourth adopted child from South Africa, hope it does not come to that. 'Most adoptees look back on their childhood with fondness.'

Jeroen den Blijker
Healthcare editor

Published on June 3, 2026, 11:45

Martin and Rosanne van Dam have followed it all closely. How the political establishment, after much commotion, decided to phase out intercountry adoption, and even wants to stop this adoption permanently on January 1, 2030.

To some extent, they also understand that reaction, following the scathing conclusions of the Joustra Commission. In 2021, the commission established structural abuses in international adoption practices. Child trafficking, fraud, and deception were the rule rather than the exception during the period 1967–1998, according to the commission.

But do they agree with that adoption freeze? No. “This policy is far too black and white,” says Martin van Dam, sitting at the dining table in their home in Veenendaal. “As if intercountry adoption has only caused suffering.”


The door is open for another child.
 

Martin (43), black curly hair, yellow shirt, is the owner of a communications consultancy. Next to him sits his wife Rosanne (45), dark blonde, serious expression. She is still busy with her lunch ('Sorry, I didn't have time earlier'), is trained as a doctor and owner of a midwifery practice. Together they previously adopted three children from South Africa: Shawn (16), Josiah (13) and Hannah (7).

And they have decided to adopt another child. Or, as Rosanne puts it: “The door is open for another child who might need us.” She phrases it this way for a reason, she explains. “For us, adoption is not about us or about expanding our family, but about what is best for the child in question.” In total, there are currently about four hundred adoption procedures still ongoing, the cabinet recently reported. These must be completed before 2030.

Martin: “Actually, that is how we arrived at adoption back then as well. From the thought that there is a child in our hearts and in our home who needs a family to grow up in. Of course, it all started with an unfulfilled desire to have children, which is legitimate, I think. But then we started exploring all possibilities, including foster care. Ultimately, we ended up with adoption.”

Rosanne: “Fundamentally, adoption is of course not a good option for a child, we also add. Because in an ideal world, children would simply grow up with their biological parents. But unfortunately, the world is not ideal.”


Is adoption still a good idea?
 

Their file for the fourth child is now in South Africa. Rosanne: “We already have approval in principle for adoption. No, we haven't received a phone call yet: so there is no match yet. Of course, it is entirely up to South Africa to take further steps in that regard. Our primary duty is to be as transparent as possible regarding investigations by Child Protective Services and the Central Authority, all in order to achieve the best possible match.” The Central Authority for International Child Affairs monitors compliance with the adoption law.

But is international adoption actually a good idea, after all the suffering unearthed by the Joustra report? After all those stories of recent years about adoptees who are victims of adoption abuses, who struggle with questions about their identity, partly because their biological family can often no longer be traced?

Martin and Rosanne van Dam have naturally thought and discussed this a great deal. And, says Martin: “Then I find it regrettable how much, after 'Joustra', the spotlight has fallen on people who have primarily had bad experiences due to their adoption. I mean: that mistakes were made is evident. That suffering deserves recognition, and we also say: help these people. And do it better than the government is doing now. Help them with the restoration of their identity, with roots trips or DNA testing – which, unfortunately, is not happening now.”

“On the other hand: research by Statistics Netherlands also shows that 70 percent of adopted people actually look back on their childhood with pleasure. You just rarely hear those voices in the media.” Rosanne adds: “Because good news is simply no news.”


Positive stories
 

They are well acquainted with those positive adoption stories themselves. After all, until a year ago, Martin was chairman of the Adoption Association of the Reformed Denomination, an association for adoptive parents that also has a section for adopted children and young adults. He also served on the advisory board of Inea, the expertise center that supports internationally adopted individuals. Inea was founded in response to the Joustra report.

Martin: “I have also had tough conversations with opponents of adoption. And yet, we usually managed to reach a mutual understanding. Listening to each other, knowing what each other’s intentions were and are, and acknowledging where the pain lies is important. Then you come to the realization that adoption truly has two stories, stories that can coexist.”

Rosanne: “Coincidentally, yesterday in my practice I spoke to a client who is adopted and who is completely done with her biological family; they are such a disappointment to her. She says: 'I have my family here, my work, my partner: I am completely happy here.'” But, she summarizes: “As far as we are concerned, it is most important that the pain is acknowledged on the one hand. And on the other hand, that we also keep our eyes open to the need that exists.”


World after 'Joustra'
 

In a Q&A with Prism, author Paige Towers discusses a 2008 case of familicide in Iowa that involved the murders of four adopted children from Korea

Paige Towers’ new book, “What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption,” traces the Evangelical origin story of the Holt Adoption Program that facilitated the adoption of hundreds of thousands of Korean children, including Ethan, Seth, Eleanor, and Mira, by Steven Sueppel and his wife Sheryl. In 2008, Sueppel murdered his wife and children in Iowa before dying by suicide. 

I came to the Sueppel’s story with more than curiosity over a true-crime story. 

I’m a Korean American adoptee who organizes at the intersection of reproductive justice and adoption. And my adoptive father—like Sueppel—abused me in our idyllic suburban house while he was seen as a successful, upstanding husband and father. In both cases, no one thought to intervene.

In mainstream adoption narratives, children are first made into objects of pity and charity to warrant our initial family separation, and then we are expected to prove the inherent goodness of the system that displaced us. In the case of Ethan, Seth, Eleanor, and Mira, even in death they are folded back into a story told by someone else that centers the perspective of the adult who abused them: Sueppel’s unraveling, his financial crimes, his religious delusions, and ultimately, his violence. But Sueppel is not an exception. 

Mixed-race adoptees have petitioned the state truth commission for an investigation into the government’s role in perpetuating pureblood racial politics through coercive adoption policies

Cho Young-il, Meeky Woo Flippen, Simon Hokwerda, and Oh Jae-gyeong hold up photos of themselves taken around the time that they were sent abroad for adoption as children. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh)

“Now that I'm 60, I know that life doesn't necessarily get better. I want to tell the child in the photo ‘Even if it's hard, things will get better if you endure,’ but I can’t. Because even if I find my mother and younger brother, I can never get back the 56 years I lost."