Aug. 21: The Korean-American Educational Commission is holding its eighth Fulbright Forum for the 2008-09 program year with a lecture by Misty Ann Edgecomb titled “Searching for Wartime Seoul and the Birth of International Adoption.”

During the Korean War in the early 1950s, tens of thousands of Korean children were orphaned or separated from their families.

Among them were children of Korean women and unknown American soldiers. Without Korean fathers, some of these children did not appear in family records and therefore did not exist in Korean society, legally speaking.

But one American soldier painstakingly - and secretly, for it was against the U.S. Army’s official policies - strived to adopt an abandoned Korean boy.

Thanks to the soldier, the boy was one of just four international adoptions recognized by the American government in 1953.

This historic adoption and others down the road paved the way for thousands of American families to adopt children from overseas.

Edgecomb is a journalist from Maine and is currently a Fulbright Junior Researcher in Seoul.

The Fulbright Forum event, which is free and open to all, will be held in the sixth floor conference room of the KAEC Building in the Mapo District, northwest Seoul, at 7 p.m.

RSVP deadline is Tuesday, Aug. 18.

Gongdeok Station, line No. 5, exit 1

Call (02) 3275-4004 or visit www.fulbright.or.kr.