"When I came back, she was gone."

Ms Han would not see her daughter again for more than four decades. When they reunited, Kyung-ha was almost unrecognisable as a middle-aged American woman named Laurie Bender. Kyung-ha had been kidnapped near her home, brought to an orphanage, then sent illegally to the US to be raised by another family, alleges Ms Han, who is now suing the South Korean government for failing to prevent her daughter's adoption. She is among the hundreds of people who have come forward in recent years with damning allegations of fraud, illegal adoptions, kidnapping and human trafficking in South Korea's controversial overseas adoption programme. No other country has sent as many children abroad for adoption, and for so long, as South Korea. Since the programme began in the 1950s, about 170,000 to 200,000 children have been adopted overseas - most of them in the West.

In March, a landmark inquiry found that successive governments had committed human rights violations with their lack of oversight, allowing private agencies to "mass export" children for profit on an industrial scale. Experts say the findings could open the door to more lawsuits against the government. Ms Han's is set to go to court next month.

It is one of two landmark cases. Ms Han is the first biological parent of an overseas adoptee seeking damages from the government, while in 2019, a man who was adopted in the US was the first adoptee to sue. A government spokesman told the BBC that it "deeply sympathises with the emotional pain of individuals and families who could not find each other for a long time".

It added that it considered Ms Han's case with "deep regret" and that it would take "necessary actions" based on the outcome of the trial. Ms Han, 71, told the BBC she is determined the government takes responsibility. "I spent 44 years ruining my body and mind searching for [my daughter]. But in all that time, has anyone ever apologised to me? No one. Not once." For decades, she and her husband visited police stations and orphanages, put up flyers, and went on television appealing for information. Ms Han said she spent all day pounding the streets looking for her daughter "till all 10 of my toenails fell out". Over the years she thought she came close. In 1990, after one of her TV appeals, Ms Han met a woman who she believed could be Kyung-ha, and even took her in to live with her family for a while. But the woman eventually confessed she was not her daughter. A breakthrough finally happened in 2019 when Ms Han signed up with 325 Kamra, a group that connects overseas Korean adoptees with their birth parents by matching their DNA. They soon reported a match - Laurie Bender, a nurse in California. After several phone calls, she flew over to Seoul to meet Ms Han, where the two had a tearful reunion at the airport. (BBC)