内容摘要：The family of seven couldn’t find anything nearby to replace their house reduced to ashes in the 2018

The family of seven couldn’t find anything nearby to replace their house reduced to ashes in the 2018

The flag of South Korea is displayed at the Overseas Korean Adoptees Gathering in Seoul, South Korea, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)Korean adoptees have organized, and now they help those coming along behind them. Non-profit groups conduct DNA testing. Sympathetic residents, police officers and city workers of the towns where they once lived often try to assist them. Sometimes adoption agencies are able to track down birth families.

Nearly four decades after her adoption to the U.S., Nicole Motta in May sat across the table from a 70-year-old man her adoption agency had identified as her birth father. She typed “thanks for meeting me today” into a translation program on her phone to show him. A social worker placed hair samples into plastic bags for DNA testing.But the moment they hugged, Motta, adopted to the United States in 1985, didn’t need the results — she knew she’d come from this man.Adoptee Nicole Motta, left, and her birth father, Jang Dae-chang, wipe tears after an emotional reunion at the Eastern Social Welfare Society in Seoul, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Adoptee Nicole Motta, left, and her birth father, Jang Dae-chang, wipe tears after an emotional reunion at the Eastern Social Welfare Society in Seoul, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)Motta’s adoption documents say her father was away for work for long stretches and his wife struggled to raise three children alone. He told her she was gone when he came back from one trip, and claimed his brother gave her away. He hasn’t spoken to the brother since, he said, and never knew she was adopted abroad.

Motta’s adoption file leaves it unclear whether the brother had a role in her adoption. It says she was under the care of unspecified neighbors before being sent to an orphanage that referred her to an adoption agency, which sent her abroad in 1985.

She studied his face. She wondered if she looks like her siblings or her mother, who has since died.The foot-tapping grooves that weaved throughout this debut continue with “It Ain’t Easy,” “Funeral,” and

But the Atlanta-area native continues to find his bullseye with ballads.Teddy Swims poses for a portrait on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Gary Gerard Hamilton)

Teddy Swims poses for a portrait on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Gary Gerard Hamilton)“Are you even real / Or did I make you up? / How could someone like you / wanna give me love?” begins the