Mioka, a Korean adoptee found on the streets in the early 1970s, returns to Korea as an adult searching for her birth parents. She is repeatedly met with institutional barriers, her adoption records manipulated or erased. Director Jo Seyoung, alongside the adoptee support group 'Banet,' follows Mioka’s journey, exposing the irresponsibility and structural concealment hidden behind the state-issued 'K-Numbers.' The film makes a solemn case that adoption is not just a personal story but a historical issue involving state intervention—an ethical responsibility society must collectively bear.

K-Number follows Mioka, a Korean adoptee sent to the United States in the 1970s, on her determined search for her birth family. Across repeated trips to Korea, her urgent inquiries are thwarted by manipulated or falsified records. Director Jo Seyoung frames the investigation like a detective story, mapping a modern Korean history marked by silence and shame. By the end of her search, we confront the specters of a premodern patriarchy that haunt the women exported abroad during South Korea’s breakneck industrialization—a state-sanctioned practice that, the film argues, is scarcely different from human trafficking. K-Number thus becomes a film about an adoptee’s fate of facing repeated refusals and denials, and about exposing the state’s bare, violent machinery. As a road movie chasing the truth, it ends in the gray zone where censored, forged documents collide with fading memories. Here lies the film’s deeper power: a raw awareness of voices in conflict, of questions that never find their answers, and of a history that refuses to align.

K-Number follows the journey of overseas adoptees searching for their roots, shedding light on the often unseen facets of Korean society. Whether their journey ends in success or failure, their story challenges us to see adoption not as "their" issue, but as one that belongs to all of "us."

• Producer김덕중 KIM Dukjoong
• Screenplay 남순아 NAM Soonah
• Cinematography 조영천 CHO Youngcun
• Edit 이연정 LEE Younjung
• Production Design 109 Whitenight 우에타 지로 Jiro UETA
• Music 김지연 KIM Jiyoun
• Cast 미오카 밀러 Mioka MILLER 케일린 바우어 Kaylin BOWER 선희 엥겔스토프 Sunhee ENGELSTOFT 메리 쉬라프만 Mary SCHLAFMAN"

knumber2024@gmail.com

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