In the early 1950s, more than 100,000 children were orphaned by the Korean War, but neither of the two sides, North and South, had the resources to care for them.
Orphans of South Korea were sent to the United States and Western Europe for adoption. Meanwhile, North Korea distributed its orphans across Eastern Europe to the formerly communist countries, such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, through “commissioned education.”