Korean War babies still searching for G.I. fathers

WASHINGTON — In 1959, six years after the Korean War armistice, Estelle Cooke-Sampson came to the United States as a 6-year-old mixed-race adoptee.

She was one of tens of thousands of mixed-race babies who came to the U.S. after the war, given up by Korean mothers and the soldiers who fathered them.

Now, as the 62nd Korean War Armistice Day is celebrated Monday, Cooke-Sampson, a D.C. resident, is one of many Korean war babies still searching for answers about their parentage.

Cooke-Sampson, a radiologist at Howard University Hospital, 63, is working with a California-based organization called Me & Korea that has launched a new effort looking to help reunite Korean War babies with their American G.I. fathers. Tens of thousands of mixed-race Korean babies were sent to the U.S. for adoption after the war, though it is not clear how many of them had American fathers. Mixed-race babies were ostracized in Korea and faced a range of hardships in their homeland.

The group has not yet reunited any Korean War adoptees with their birth fathers, and Mary Hiatt, a member of the board of directors at Me & Korea, said they are still trying to build resources to help with DNA testing and other services.

Cooke-Sampson, who wants to find her birth father, took a trip to Korea in January with Minyoung Kim, executive director and founder of Me & Korea, to discover more about her past.

Like most Korean adoptees, Cooke-Sampson had only limited pieces of information to work with. She knew only that she did not endure harsh winters and therefore must be from South Korea. Cooke-Sampson does not even have a birth certificate.

Cooke-Sampson said her adoptive father, Joseph Henry Cooke, passed away more than 30 years ago and therefore could not help her in the search for her answers. And her mother, Mary E. Cooke, although still alive, does not have an interest in Korean culture.

Her information and resources were limited during her trip, but her memories at one orphanage she inhabited in Korea came back strongly.

"At one of the orphanages, I actually found a picture of myself. So I knew I had been there," Cooke-Sampson said. "And the landscape was just what I had envisioned, the wall I knew, how many feet the gate was from the front door," she added.

Cooke-Sampson said that her next step is to do a DNA test to help find the identity of her biological father, who she assumes is either an Ethiopian or American soldier based on her skin color, but she is concerned about the age of Korean War veterans.

"I would love to, but considering that person probably would be perhaps in their late 80s or even 90s, they might not even remember me," Cooke-Sampson said.

In their effort to now help Korean adoptees find their birth fathers, Hiatt said the organization is asking Korean War veterans who fathered a child in Korea to submit their DNA to a biological tracking ancestry service called 23andMe. Hiatt said that there are 672 members in a Facebook group for Korean adoptees who submitted their DNA to 23andMe, but she believes more adoptees have submitted their DNA.

Thomas Park Clement, president/CEO/Founder of Mectra Labs Inc., and a Korean adoptee, is providing $1 million for free DNA test kits that American Korean adoptees and war veterans can submit to 23andMe.

"I think it's super important because it's a daunting task for an adoptee, especially for an overseas adoptee to try to locate birth parents or other siblings and this is a surefire, scientific, straightforward way to do it," Clement said.

While Me & Korea has not yet reunited any adoptees with their American G.I. fathers, Vietnamese adoptees have found success in doing so.

Tia McConnell, a Vietnamese adoptee currently living in Denver, Colo., used DNA testing to discover that her American G.I. father was John O'Neal Rucker, the last soldier to be killed in action in Vietnam before the cease-fire. His family has embraced her, but she warned that some fathers may not want to reunite with their children.

"You can't just walk into somebody's life and say 'Oh, I'm here,' so there's that thought process and then there's the emotional preparedness that the adoptee has to have," McConnell said.

Despite the obstacles, Hiatt maintains the importance of the reunification process. "I think everybody wants to know where they came from. And I think as adoptees we don't have that," said Hiatt. "Our beginning started on paper, we have nothing before that."

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