Korean Police Missing Persons DNA Test Updates.

Shared by a KSS Adoptee (who attended the recent OKA event in Korea) on May 23rd, 2024:

(For more info on DNA Testing, please see DNA Testing)

“Yesterday, I went to the Korean National Police Agency and met with a policeman who has responsibility for the DNA Testing System for Overseas Adoptees. One of his priorities is to standardize and streamline the DNA collection process.

Since there have been various questions raised about our DNA, we thought we would share what we learned.

  1. Our DNA is stored in the Missing Persons DNA database. Korean birth parents and siblings can submit their DNA to match to our DNA.

  2. Recent changes have been made that allow siblings to donate as well as for our DNA information to remain in their database. In other words, our DNA is not removed after ten years (as was the case previously).

  3. Because there have been some questions raised about DNA submitted in the past, I asked the police officer to confirm that my DNA, which I submittted in 2016, was still in the system; he confirmed that it was.

  4. You will only be contacted if there is a DNA match; the police will not contact you if there is no match.

  5. The police agency was curious why so many overseas adoptees come to Korea to submit their DNA vs going to the embassies or consulates in their home countries. We disabused him of the notion that we were coming to Korea only to provide our DNA.

We provided some suggestions to him:

A. Enable any adoptee (even those with birth parent names in their files) to submit their DNA and not just those that were classified "abandoned" in their files.

B. Allow us to use existing documents that show we are adoptees vs. having us fill out yet another form to "prove" that we are adoptees.

C. Encourage Koreans to submit their DNA. The police officer mentioned that this was discussed with NCRC and that they were planning on doing advertising to promote DNA submissions. (We might want to hold them accountable for that).”

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For more info on DNA Testing, please see: DNA Testing