Episode
Adoption, Colonialism, and the Korean War
- Podcast
- Explaining History
- Published
- May 28, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2075
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- http://explaininghistory.org
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/explaining-history-7091240/episodes/adoption-colonialism-and-the-korean-war/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/explaining-history-7091240/adoption-colonialism-and-the-korean-war.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
*The history that this podcast episode explores involves harm and neglect to children and some listeners may find the details disclosed distressing. In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Paige Towers to discuss her new book, What They Stole – a deeply researched exploration of intercountry adoption from Korea to the United States, rooted in a family tragedy that shook her Iowa hometown. The book begins with a shocking event: in 2008, a local bank vice president murdered his wife and children before taking his own life. For Paige, this was a window into a much larger and darker history – the story of Korean intercountry adoption, which began in the aftermath of the Korean War and continued for decades with little oversight or accountability. We trace the origins of modern intercountry adoption to the mass displacement of children during and after World War II. In Italy, Greece, and Germany, orphans filled the streets, and American GIs and missionaries began taking children home – often through informal, unregulated channels. By the time the Korean War ended, a full‑blown adoption industry had emerged, driven by a combination of military humanitarianism, Christian missionary zeal, and Cold War anti‑communism. Paige focuses on Harry and Bertha Holt, an evangelical couple who became the face of Korean adoption. The Holts started by seeking out the multiracial children of American GIs – children whose “whitened” appearance struck a chord with US audiences. But when those children proved scarce, they simply turned to Korean children, fulfilling a waiting list of 10,000 American families. The Holts pioneered “baby lifts” – chartering old military cargo planes, removing the seats, and packing up to 100 infants on unpressurised, freezing, turbulent…