So yesterday, the t.v. station sent me a still from the documentary.

This is the photo of me, Suh Yung Sook, on my log book entry, next to the photo of Kim Sook Ja.  Both of us were recorded as coming from the same city, on the same day, and ATYPICALLY we were both entered on the same document.  Holt Korea says we couldn’t possibly be sisters, because we have different family names – however, the document says our names were made up.

Holt Korea produced this photo of the other girl at our meeting in Seoul, presumably to prove to me that she was not my twin, because it says on that document we are the same age.  (which I always thought had pretty low odds anyway)  But instead of discouraging me, it made me think there was an even greater possibility we could be siblings.  What do you think?

My daughter thinks there might also a resemblance between both of us and my son…

According to the birthdates Holt gave us, I am six months OLDER than Kim Sook Ja, so they say we “couldn’t possibly” be sisters, even though on the earliest document from Wonju, it says we are the same age.  Upon closer inspection, my age appears to have been re-written/traced over/changed. It is CLEAR from these photos that I “couldn’t possibly” be older than Kim Sook Ja!  What is OBVIOUS, though, is that my birth date was grossly off target (probably a full year off), which is a ludicrous degree: a degree that would only be lost on some adopting parent ordering a child sight un-seen.

Holt has repeatedly tried to explain away the Wonju document and stood behind the log book entries’ data as written, even as it becomes revealed that the data has such serious and obvious discrepencies.

Holt tried NOT to help me search for Kim Sook Ja and only acquiesed under pressure from me about going public.

Holt, who says they found her and called her, says she has not replied and is therefore uninterested in finding out whether or not we are siblings. 

Did Holt tell her about the discrepancies between the Wonju document and the log book entries? I bet they didn’t.

Did Holt pass along any information about me or that I merely wanted to know the truth? NO.  And they wouldn’t even let me send her a brief note explaining.

On a cold March day in 1966, two little girls began a journey which
would change their lives forever.  That day was the day they were transferred to an orphanage to begin their life as orphans, to be adopted and sent away to foreign lands with foreign people.

You and I were together that day.  You and I were together the next four
days and possibly the next nine months.  Were we together prior to that
day?  Only meeting can rule out the remote possibility of relations
undocumented.

You are the only living person I know who has anything to do with my
past and I would at the very least like to contact you, however you feel
comfortable.  We are sisters in solidarity, and I would be interested in
hearing how you’ve fared in life.

Fondest regards,

Leanne Leith

Because they define any self representation by me as CONTACT, even though I still don’t know her name or where she is.  They merely told her some adoptee thought she was their sister, and left it to her to decide, even though they failed to provide her with the full story.

They say this is to protect the other adoptee.

I say it is to protect themselves from being exposed as breaking up a sibling goup.

And you know what?  After moving to Korea, I can tell you that all Asians do not look alike, and that if unrelated and the sharing of abandonment date, place, and documents were really as random as they say, one would expect the two children pictured above to look radically diffferent.

At this point, I of course don’t want to meet her if she doesn’t want to.  But I would like to prove conclusively that we are or are not related, just so I know what’s true and not true about this chapter in my life.  We can meet in a DNA testing lab – that’s all I need from her at this point.  Of course I would be interested in hearing how she fared, but just the truth is enough.  And Holt should have provided her with all the information they had, so she could have made an INFORMED decision about receiving contact from me.

Wouldn’t anybody in my circumstance want the truth?  Does the way Holt has dealt with my case resemble the actions of people who purport to CARE ABOUT FAMILIES?

How many other Korean adoptees were split up for ease of sale and they are none the wiser?  Holt says they have nothing to hide.  But even if they  don’t, I believe their actions speak louder than their words, and they are afraid that if I find Kim Sook Ja and we are sisters, then it will expose them as an organization that SEPARATES families in order to create new ones.