DNA Matched, But Police Ruined a Chance for a Mother and Daughter to Reunite After 36 Years

1. Overview

In 2025, DNA analysis by the National Forensic Service indicated a possible parent-child relationship between Park A-reum, who had been adopted to the United States in 1989, and the mother who had been searching for her. Despite this, police told Park the opposite—that there were no matching family members—delaying their reunion.

Park eventually found her mother after paying 7 million won to hire a private investigator who had formerly served as a police officer. The investigator’s action was simply to file a report with a police station on Park’s behalf, and the police found her mother in just one day. The case came to light through exclusive reports by the Hankook Ilbo and JTBC in September 2026, prompting widespread outrage over the fact that a search for family that should have been handled by the state had instead depended on an individual’s money and luck. It spread across online communities with the summary, “The police officer who falsely emailed the mother and daughter saying there was no match has already quit.”

2. A Child Who Went Missing

In 1988, Park A-reum got separated from her father while they were out in Incheon. According to JTBC, she was four years old at the time. Park was sent to an orphanage and adopted to the United States the following year, in 1989. The Hankook Ilbo reported that, ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the government brought many children off the streets and into protective facilities as part of a campaign to crack down on “vagrants.”

Her mother never forgot her daughter. In 2010, she registered her DNA in the missing children DNA database and continued waiting for her. Park, for her part, spent her life searching for her family, but did not know that her mother had been looking for her for more than a decade.

3. Conflicting Notifications

Park applied to find her birth family through the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Boston and submitted her DNA. Under the family-search process, the National Center for the Rights of the Child sends samples to the National Forensic Service to compare them with DNA records in the missing children and guardians database. In April 2025, the National Forensic Service informed the National Center that “a guardian whose parent-child relationship with Ms. Park cannot be ruled out was found” and the Center asked the Incheon Michuhol Police Station to conduct additional testing on the guardian. The door to a reunion had opened.

But the result was not properly conveyed. On April 6, 2025, the National Police Agency emailed Park in English, telling her that no DNA matching a family relationship had been found. It asked her mother to provide another DNA sample, but did not tell her that someone who might be her daughter had been found. As a result, despite being so close to one another, the two were left to return to their separate periods of waiting. Park said that her mother had “wasted 16 years” after registering her DNA, and that she had lost “the time when I could have been with my siblings and gotten to know my mother.”

4. A Private Investigator and “Just One Day”

After repeatedly hearing from other overseas adoptees that it was difficult to find family by relying on official procedures alone, Park paid about 7 million won to hire a private investigator who had formerly served as a police officer in December 2025. Six weeks later, she received word that he had found her mother.

When JTBC traced the process, the method turned out to be surprisingly simple. The investigator filed a report on Park’s case with Cheonan Dongnam Police Station, near the university where he was a professor. Park’s adoption documents recorded that she had gone missing in Incheon as a child. When police searched among people whose resident registrations had been canceled in Incheon around the same period for someone named “Park A-reum,” they found only one person. Her family register provided her mother’s identifying information, and police contacted her directly to confirm the mother-daughter relationship. It took just one day from the filing of the report to finding her mother. No new DNA comparison was done, nor was there any complex investigation. This suggests that Park had to pay to enlist a private investigator to find family members who could have been located through a basic search. Cheonan Dongnam Police Station said it had no idea that the investigator had charged his client.

5. Police Explanation

The National Police Agency said that the employee who sent Park the email in English had already left the force. It explained that the employee in charge at the time may have used a translation tool because they were not fluent in English, and that the specific reason could not be confirmed because the employee had left and no records remained. The agency added, “We are practically laypeople when it comes to genetic testing,” and said, “The translation was probably poor.” It also said that the mother had been given an explanation over the phone, but the mother said she had never been told the specific reason.

Kim Ye-ji, a member of the National Assembly’s Public Administration and Security Committee, said, “It is a serious problem that the state system failed to function properly, ultimately forcing them to rely on private help,” and stressed that the police, the National Center for the Rights of the Child, and the National Forensic Service needed to coordinate responsibly and ensure the public system worked. The Hankook Ilbo noted that, given the police’s explanation that no records remained, it was difficult to rule out the possibility that there were other cases similar to Park’s.

6. Chuseok Together After 37 Years

Park came to Korea in September 2026 and spent Chuseok with her mother for the first time. Her mother hugged her tightly, tearfully saying, “Thank you for finding me,” and prepared a table full of food for her daughter. Park said, “I cried when I thought about how many precious, ordinary moments like this I had missed in my life.” She also pleaded, “Finding family should not depend on an individual’s financial means and luck, rather than the government.”

7. Authenticity Debate

The basic outline of the case has been confirmed by materials submitted to the National Assembly and reporting by the two news outlets. The remaining question is whether the police notification that there was “no match” was a “false email,” as some have called it, or a mistake.

7.1. The View That It Was Deliberate Suppression

The phrase “false email” that spread through online communities has some basis. The National Forensic Service clearly reported a possible parent-child relationship, and the National Center requested additional testing, yet the daughter received the opposite conclusion while the mother received only a request to resubmit a sample that omitted the key information. The fact that both women received misleading notifications at the same time is difficult to explain as a simple translation error alone. Furthermore, the explanation that the employee had left and no records remained makes it impossible to establish accountability. Can 16 years of waiting really be explained by a speculative claim that “the translation was probably poor”?

7.2. The View That It Was a Mistake

On the other hand, no evidence has been presented that the police deliberately lied. There is no apparent motive for the police to obstruct a mother-daughter reunion, and the explanation that an employee unfamiliar with handling English-language emails and interpreting DNA results made a mistake, compounded by poor coordination between agencies, is consistent with the police’s account. In fact, another police station found the mother in one day after receiving the investigator’s report on Park’s behalf. This suggests that the problem was not with the police as a whole, but with a break in one stage of the information-transfer process. Regardless, the failure of the public process is unchanged, and the absence of records that could establish the cause is the case’s greatest unresolved gap.

8. Trivia

• According to the Hankook Ilbo, more than 2,000 overseas adoptees seek help from the National Center each year to find their roots. Yet of the 3,374 requests to disclose adoption information in 2024, only 259 cases (about 7.7%) resulted in family reunions.
• A representative of an adoption-support organization said, “There are many cases of people suffering financial and emotional harm after hiring private investigators to find their families.” Some have also argued that standards are needed, since people can operate businesses under the title of “private investigator” under current law but have no investigative powers.
• In the title that spread through online communities, “Hire a private investigator, and it takes just one day,” the “one day” refers not to the duration of the investigator’s assignment, but to how long the police station took to find Park’s mother after receiving the investigator’s report. Six weeks passed between hiring the investigator and receiving the news.