To this date, hardly any former YangJu Baby Home orphan has been reunited with the biological family. To break this deadlock, we unite our efforts to reconnect with our roots through The YangJu Family Tree.
Every adoption begins with a loss - a family loses a child, and the child loses access to kinship, identity, and culture. Information about Korean adoptees’ origins and heritage is often concealed in archives, unknown, or lost.
Our aim is to connect, collect, and organize the origin stories of adoptees from the YangJu Baby Home. With the archive we can facilitate community building, share scientific research, and foster contributions to international networks and connections, helping adoptees to access and become a part of the local Korean history in Dongducheon and YangJu region.
COLLECT
수집하다
Photos, stories and testimonials
CONNECT
연결하다
Adoptees, families and homeland
ORGANIZE
정리하다
Data, network and research
See the orphans from the YangJu Baby Home in the 1960s and 1980s.
Purpose
From a small orphanage YangJu Baby Home 양주 고아원 in Dongducheon 동두천, almost no adoptees have ever been reunited with their first families. Why? The answers lie buried in fragmented records, forgotten histories, and unanswered questions. To break this silence, we are coming together to reclaim our stories and reconnect with our roots through The YangJu Adoptee Archive — a growing global initiative built by and for Korean adoptees.
Background
From 1963 to 1981, YangJu Baby Home operated in Dongducehon, near the Korean DMZ – during a time marked by poverty, militarization, and rising overseas adoptions. Initially establshed by Yangju County, the orphanage later came under private management of Aeshin and maintained close ties to the nearby U.S. military base, Camp Casey. Many children from the home were sent abroad for adoption. Their stories form a vital, yet often overlooked, part of Dongducheon’s complex history.
Explore rare and unique photos from the Yangju Baby Home.
YangJu Adoptee Archive News
OKA Gathering 2026
YangJu Archive participates in the OKA Gathering 2
28 March, 2026
In Memoriam
On May 19, 2022, Maddie Hoffman, a YangJu adoptee
28 October, 2025
Research trip to Korea 2025
Our Activist YangJu Archive Project on a Work and
29 April, 2025
Do you have any information to share?
We’re interested in all information related to the YangJu Baby Home, orphans & adoptees who stayed at this orphanage, photos (digital & prints), articles, former employees and related organizations.
Do you recognize anyone in the photos?
Your contribution can add valuable information to understand where we come from. We would be grateful if you shared it with us.