Ju-rye Hwang spent most of her life believing she was an orphan, her South Korean parents long dead. Adopted to North America at around six years old, she accepted this as her history until a journalist’s phone call revealed a devastating truth. “He told me that I was not an orphan,” Hwang recalled. “And it was most certain that I was illegally adopted for profit.” The call connected her to the notorious Brothers Home institution, a place of unimaginable suffering, and began the painful process of uncovering a childhood that was stolen from her.
A Brutal ‘Beautification’ Campaign
Hwang’s story is rooted in South Korea’s rapid industrialisation during the 1970s and 80s. Under the authoritarian rule of President Chun Doo-hwan, the government launched a brutal campaign to “cleanse” its cities of so-called “vagrants.” Ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, authorities sought to project an image of prosperity by forcibly removing the homeless, poor, and marginalised from the streets.
This policy was driven by a perverse police incentive system. Officers earned more performance points for apprehending a “vagrant” than a petty criminal, leading to widespread abductions. “The police abducted innocent people off the streets, shoe shiners, gum sellers, people waiting at bus stops, even kids just playing outside,” former National Assembly member Moon Jeong-su explained. These individuals were then sent to state-subsidised facilities like the Brothers Home.
The Horrors of Brothers Home
Located in the port city of Busan, Brothers Home was one of many “welfare” institutions that became sites of mass detention and abuse. Founded in 1975 by Park In-geun, the facility received government funding based on its inmate population, creating a motive to incarcerate as many people as possible. Between 1976 and 1987, an estimated 38,000 people were detained there, with 657 officially recorded deaths.
Inside the compound’s high walls, children were forced into factory labour, while adults performed gruelling work at construction sites. Investigations later revealed that Park and his board embezzled millions of dollars in wages that should have been paid to the inmates. The home also became a key supplier for the country’s lucrative international adoption trade, with children like Hwang disappearing overnight.
Reclaiming a Stolen Past
Hwang’s intake form from Brothers Home, dated November 1982, shows a photo of a small, scared girl with a shaved head. The document, stamped with an ID number, notes she was found in the Jurye-dong neighbourhood and describes her as “healthy, capable of labour work.” She was just four years old. “I 100 percent believe that I was kidnapped,” Hwang said, pointing out that her name, Ju-rye, was given to her by the home’s director, named after the area where she was supposedly found.
For years, fragmented memories of a large iron gate and an underground pool haunted her. In 2022, she saw images of the Brothers Home online that matched her visions perfectly. “It was overwhelming to know that I was not imagining my memories,” she said. Hwang was held at the facility for nine months before being sent to an orphanage and marked as a “good candidate” for adoption.
In 2021, a DNA test connected her with a younger brother who had also been adopted, but to Belgium. She soon learned she had a second brother, also sent to Belgium. Their files state they were abandoned months before Hwang was taken, leading her to believe her parents may have been searching for their missing sons when she too was taken.
A National Reckoning
In 2022, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission officially declared that serious human rights violations occurred at Brothers Home, including forced labour, sexual violence, and illegal confinement. The commission confirmed the government knew of the abuses but systematically concealed them. It also found that the institution collaborated with childcare centres to facilitate illegal overseas adoptions, often falsifying records to make children appear to be orphans.
Following the report, the South Korean government has begun to acknowledge its role. It recently withdrew appeals against liability, expediting compensation for some victims. President Lee Jae Myung also issued a historic apology for the country’s past adoption practices, calling it a “shameful chapter” in the nation’s history.
Now living in Sydney, Australia, Hwang continues to fight for justice. She learned that relatives of the late Brothers Home director also live in the city. While the director’s son has apologised, others in the family have dismissed the abuses. For Hwang, the fight is deeply personal. “My identity, my immediate family, my extended family, everything was erased,” she stated. “No one has the right to do that.”
