{
  "id": 12533809,
  "title": "Emmy Award-winning documentarian explores hidden stories of Korean adoptees",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/07/emmy-award-winning-documentarian-explores-hidden-stories-of-korean-12533809",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-10-07T03:32:04.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Korea Times",
    "slug": "the-korea-times-koreatimes",
    "url": "https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/globalcommunity/20261007/emmy-award-winning-documentarian-explores-hidden-stories-of-korean-adoptees"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Documentarian Deann Borshay Liem delved into the obscured narratives of Korean adoptees throughout her career. Born in Korea in 1966 and adopted by an American family, Liem only learned in the early 1980s that her birth mother and siblings were still alive. She realized that her identity had been mistakenly swapped with another child, and that her adoption records had been tampered with. This revelation found its way into her work as a filmmaker, as she sought to uncover both her own past and the wider history of Korea's overseas adoptions. In her first film, \"First Person Plural\" (2000), Liem documented her quest to reconnect with her Korean family and ultimately find closure. In 2010, she released \"In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee,\" which traced the story of the girl whose identity had been substituted for her. Liem explained that these personal documentaries were not only intimate explorations of her adoption experience but also a way to rediscover her true history and identity.",
  "summary": "Deann Borshay Liem spent much of her childhood believing she was an orphan. Adopted from Korea to the United States in 1966, Liem discovered in the early 1980s that her birth mother and siblings were alive. She also learned that her identity had been switched with another child during the adoption process and that her adoption documents had been falsified. That discovery found its way into Liem's…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The Korea Times",
        "title": "Emmy Award-winning documentarian explores hidden stories of Korean adoptees",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/07/emmy-award-winning-documentarian-explores-hidden-stories-of-korean",
        "published": "2026-10-07T03:12:03.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}