AKA Dan on YouTube
Documentary
This original documentary series follows adoptee musician Dan’s incredible journey to Korea to find not only his biological family but also himself. A story of identity, family, and love, the documentary also features many special guest appearances.
Approved for Adoption on Amazon
Documentary
This remarkable animated documentary traces the unconventional upbringing of the filmmaker Jung Henin, one of thousands of Korean children adopted by Western families after the end of the Korean War. It is the story of a boy stranded between two cultures. Animated vignettes – some humorous and some poetic – track Jung from the day he first meet his new blond siblings, through elementary school, and into his teenage years, when his emerging sense of identity begins to create fissures at home and ignite the latent biases of his adoptive parents. The filmmaker tells his story using his own animation intercut with snippets of super-8 family footage and archival film. The result is an animated memoir like no other: clear-eyed and unflinching, humorous, and above all, inspiring in the capacity of the human hear
Blue Bayou on Max
Movie
A moving and timely story of a uniquely American family fighting for their future, this drama follows a Korean adoptee from the Louisiana bayou who suddenly faces deportation–and the loss of his family–from the only country he has ever called home. Starring Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander, Mark O’Brien, Linh-Dan Pham, and Emory Cohen. Written and directed by Justin Chon.
Broker on Amazon Plus
Movie
The film follows two brokers who sell orphaned infants, circumventing the bureaucracy of legal adoption, to affluent couples who can’t have children of their own. After an infant’s mother surprises the duo by returning to ensure her child finds a good home, the three embark on a journey to find the right couple, building an unlikely family of their own.
Forget Me Not on Vimeo
Documentary
What makes a mother give away her baby? This is the big question in Sun Hee Engelstoft’s poignant heartbreaker of a film about three Korean women who have become pregnant outside of marriage and are now hiding from the outside world until they give birth. They live in a shelter for unwed mothers on a South Korean island, where beautiful landscapes are in sharp contrast to the fierce dilemma that women go through: should they keep their children or give them up for adoption?
Sun Hee Engelstoft has been given unique access to this particular shelter run by the strong-willed Mrs. Im, who fights for the girls’ independence but is up against a social structure and family tradition that leaves women in an impossible situation. Engelstoft’s sensitive portrait brings us close to a forbidden world and through her own experience as a Korean adoptee, she gives a deeply personal and extraordinary insight into a culture in which women can’t choose their own fate.
Found in Korea on Vimeo
Documentary
Abandoned and left in the streets as a newborn baby, KAD (Nam) returns home to find the world she lost as a baby. In search of her birth parents, she attempts to retrace her journey from birth to being adopted by a family in America, but old records and 35 years of economic growth have transformed the Korea of her infancy into a country where information held on paper is a thing of the past, leaving her with no trail to follow.
Desperate for more information, Nam travels south to the island where she was born in hopes of discovering unknown files and people who might remember her story. Along the way she interviews social workers, Koreans and other adoptees, and discovers why over 200,000 children have been sent away from Korea for international adoption.
Geographies of Kinship
Documentary
In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and recover the personal histories that were lost when they were adopted. Raised in foreign families, each sets out on a journey to reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew. Along the way there are discoveries and dead ends, as well as mysteries that will never be unraveled.
Ultimately what emerges is a deepened sense of self and belonging, as well as a sense of purpose, as Geographies of Kinship’s four protagonists question the policies and practices that led South Korea to become the largest “sending country” in the world—with 200,000 children adopted out to North America, Europe and Australia. Emboldened by their own experiences and what they have learned, these courageous characters become advocates for birth family and adoptee rights, support for single mothers, and historical reckoning.
Going Home on YouTube
Documentary
A Jewish raised Korean adoptee from Manhattan undertakes a profound journey in hopes of discovering his birth family in Seoul.
In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee on New Day Films
Documentary
Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the US in 1966. Told to keep her true identity a secret from her new American family, this eight-year-old girl quickly forgot she was ever anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee is the search to find the answers.
Return to Seoul on Amazon
Movie
RETURN TO SEOUL is the compelling and unpredictable film from director Davy Chou (Diamond Island). Freddie (explosive newcomer Park Ji-min) has returned South Korea for the first time since her adoption and move to France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country where she knows very little, including the language, to learn about where she was born.
Side By Side Project on sidebysideproject.com
Documentaries
7 countries, 6 languages, 16 cities, 100 stories.
An international journey through the personal memories and experiences of abandonment, relinquishment, orphanages, aging out, and inter-country adoption from South Korea.
South Korea’s Cruel Adoption Industry on YouTube
Documentary
Adopted to France at the age of 11, Kim believed that she was abandoned by her parents. It wasn’t until she stumbled upon her adoption papers earlier this year that she began to doubt what she had believed all her life. She remembers her parents clearly, but the name on her adoption papers is none other than “Nameless”. As the only Asian in a small French village, Kim grew up sexually abused by both her parents, and she began to track down the adoption agency that placed her, and we joined on her lonely, long journey.
Korean Adoptee Resource Hub 