In a quiet cafe nestled in Seoul’s vibrant Itaewon district, 56-year-old Ahn Andersen carefully unwraps a set of preserved documents—the only tangible links to a past he’s been chasing for decades.

She was sent to two orphanages and a foster home within 26 months of her birth before being adopted by her Danish parents. However, she remains skeptical of the documents that record her origins, even questioning the authenticity of her Korean name, Ahn Mi-sun.

“I have visited the Holt Children’s Services office six times and emailed the National Center for Children’s Rights (NCRC) over the years to see the records on my birth parents, but they will come up with different reasons to hide from me this thing. Or they just won’t respond,” she tells Asia This Week.

Andersen, who is currently living in Seoul until her visa expires next year, is not alone in her struggle. She is a member of the Danish Korean Rights Group, which consists of more than 800 fellow adoptees from South Korea. In 2022, they presented their adoption cases to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate agencies like Holt for potential corruption and malpractice, including cases where children were forcibly separated from their mothers.