Inspired by Documentary, Korean Adoptee Takes a DNA Test… and Also Finds a Full Sister
When Jee Won Ha, a Korean adoptee raised in Belgium, saw The Missing Piece — our 2019 documentary about a pair of Korean adoptee sisters reunited thanks to MyHeritage DNA — she felt overwhelmed. Jee Won happens to live across the street from the daughter of Kim Haelen, one of the sisters from the film, and Jee Won knew she had to speak to her.
Abandoned separately in the same train station in Daegu, South Korea, Kim and her sister Christine Pennell were raised worlds apart and completely unaware of each other’s existence. They found each other through a MyHeritage DNA match, and were reunited at the same train station where they were abandoned many years before. The two developed a profound bond, and Christine even moved to South Korea and opened a bakery there as a result of her newfound connection to the country of her birth. You can read more about their story and the film here.
So when Jee Won heard Kim’s story, she wondered if there was a possibility her own could develop in a similar way. She was also adopted from Korea at a young age, and unfortunately, her childhood was not a happy one.
Jee Won as a little girl
She was first adopted by a Korean family, but when her adoptive parents were divorced, she was given to a Belgian family that engaged in some questionable practices, adopting 7 Cambodian children with falsified documents. “I had a difficult childhood, and I suffered abuse from my adoptive family,” she says.
Jee Won decided to purchase a DNA kit… but when it arrived, she couldn’t work up the courage to take it. It was only when her Cambodian brother decided to take a test too that she finally took the plunge.
“I’ve always wondered, do I look like my mom? Do I look like my father? Is this sense of humor that I have from my mother’s side, father’s side, or is it something that is nurtured?” says Jee Won. “When I look at my kids, I see that they have my nose and my ears, you can compare… but I had nothing to compare with. Also, I had no idea about genetic diseases that I would want to know. So when I did a test, I didn’t expect anything.”
But when the results came back, they were earth-shattering: just like Kim, she matched with a full sister living in the United States.
“I started crying immediately, because it’s such an overwhelming feeling,” says Jee Won. “It’s happy, and scared, and sadness, and wow, and what the ****, all at the same time.”
A DNA Quest success 6 years in the making
Darragh Hannan was born in South Korea and adopted by a family from the American Midwest at 8 weeks of age. Her adoptive parents struggled to conceive, and after 6 years of trying, they decided to adopt. To their surprise, shortly after Darragh joined the family, her adoptive mother became pregnant. Darragh grew up with a sister very close in age, “more or less twins.” As she grew older, she began to wonder about her origins.
In 2018, Darragh heard about MyHeritage’s DNA Quest, our pro bono project to reunite adoptees with their biological families through free genetic testing. She applied, and we sent her a free DNA kit.
“I took the test because I was thinking maybe I would be able to find family,” says Darragh. “There had been stories coming out of people meeting biological family from taking these tests, and I thought, oh, well, maybe this could be my chance to find something.”
But her initial results were disappointing. “I was like, okay, so I’m guessing they don’t have a huge East Asian database at that point,” she says.
Fast forward 6 years.
“I opened my inbox one morning, and there it was: ‘Hey, I think we’re sisters,’” Darragh recalls. The shock was immediate. “I had kind of forgotten I signed up for this service because it was like 6 years ago.”
A whirlwind of emotions
Both women were thrilled by the discovery, but it also stirred up a whirlwind of emotions and questions. “The confusion and all the questions that suddenly pop up are a big part of the journey,” explains Jee Won. “It’s impossible to ignore that this discovery raises difficult questions of who I am and why I was abandoned.”
Their shared history became a point of both connection and confusion. Darragh’s adoption papers suggested their mother was a young student forced to drop out of school — and she claimed that it was her first pregnancy, even though Jee Won had been born 14 months earlier. Jee Won’s records were more fragmented, and growing up, she knew little about her biological family. “Why did she deny my birth?” Jee Won wonders. “I don’t understand it. I want to find her today to ask her these questions, to know if she loved us at all and why she abandoned us.” Despite this, Jee Won expresses a mix of emotions towards their mother. “There is no good reason in the world to do such a thing,” she admits. “I don’t blame her, but I do get mad at her.”
“I am happy that I found Darragh — I feel physically connected to her, she completes me,” Jee Won says. “It’s the balance between black and white — I’m glad I found her, but sometimes I want to cry because it overwhelms the dark side of my life.”
“We’ve seen reunions happen on TV, and we hear stories of reunions and how happy they are,” Darragh says. “We always see that part, but we never see the confusion and the questioning and all of the big feelings that happen after the big moment. What comes next?”
‘She was there, and she was real’
The sisters found out last month when they flew to Korea to meet each other for the first time.
You can watch the incredible moment in this video:
“On the flight over, I kept thinking, what is it going to be like when I meet her? What am I going to do?” Darragh shared later. “Then, coming out and seeing her through the doors, any ideas that I had just left my mind and I just ran to her.”
“When she came running in, I forgot everything and just ran to her, and was feeling it all at the same time,” says Jee Won.
“We hugged and cried and I don’t even remember what I was thinking,” says Darragh. “I just could feel her, and she was there, and she was real.”
Jee Won (left) and Darragh hug at the airport
“We are definitely related,” Darragh adds. “We share so many things on just a genetic level that you can’t even explain.”
“She’s the same as me,” says Jee Won. “We say the same stupid things at the same time, and make the same stupid faces.” She describes their bond as indescribable: “I’d compare it to loving my children,” she says. “It’s unconditional, it’s deep in my heart and core.”
The sisters take a selfie together
‘I would like to tell her that we’re fine’
The sisters plan to meet with the Darragh’s adoption agency and take another DNA test with the local police in effort to continue the search for their biological parents together.
“We’re going to try to do whatever is in our possibilities to reach out to [our birth mother],” says Jee Won. “So she knows that we are looking for her, that we would like to meet her, and would like to tell her that we’re fine.”
She says that as a mom herself, she never stops worrying about her children, so she’s sure their mother never stopped thinking about the sisters. And she hopes that the decision to place them both for adoption was a choice that she made because she knew it would be best for them. “I would like to tell her that that’s okay,” she says. “That’s okay. I maybe might not understand it, but I accept it.”
In between getting to know each other and searching for clues about their birth parents, the sisters also stopped by Christine’s bakery to say hello to the other sister whose story inspired Jee Won to take a DNA test.
The sisters with Christine (center), whose story was documented in our 2019 documentary The Missing Piece
‘Opening the door to a more meaningful life’
Jee Won shares that as a result of her difficult upbringing, she suffered from severe depression in her 30s — and she sees this trip to Korea as part of her healing journey. “For me, coming to Korea is like closing one chapter, where the biggest question was who am I, what do I want in life… but opening the door to find a more meaningful life with as many questions as before, but with grounded answers. Now I know where my roots are, now I know who I am.”
Jee Won encourages other adoptees to take a DNA test as well and search for their families: “If you have questions about who you are and what you want and adopted life, just go for it,” she says. “You can ask and wonder as much as you want, but it will never give you the answers if you don’t start searching for it.”
“My advice to other adoptees out there is to make sure you have a community of people who support you,” says Darragh. “If it’s a community of other adoptees, they’ll understand what you’re going through. Every adoptee has their own unique story, but when they bring them all together, it can really help sort of normalize your own personal experience.”
“I can’t wait to visit her in Belgium, I can’t wait ‘til she visits me in America, and how we make each other a part of our lives is going to be part of the journey of whatever comes next,” says Darragh.
“The bond between us is special,” says Jee Won. “It’s a reminder of a shared life that we missed, of the lost time, but also hope for a better future.”
Jee Won and Darragh’s story demonstrates how taking a DNA test may change not only your life but the lives of others around you: it was the DNA test that brought Kim and Christine together, and the sharing of their story, that eventually led to this reunion. (This is far from the first time we’ve seen this kind of snowball effect — see for example the stories of Fernando Hermansson Carabali and Jimmy Lippert Thyden!) It also shows that even if you don’t get the results you were hoping for when you first take a DNA test, give it time: there is still a chance you’ll find what you’re looking for, even if it takes another few months or years.
Many thanks to Jee Won and Darragh for sharing these vulnerable and poignant moments with us, and to Kim and Christine for continuing to demonstrate how powerfully DNA testing can change lives.
If you’ve also made a life-changing discovery with MyHeritage, we’d love to hear about it. Please share it with us via this form or email us at stories@myheritage.com.
