Her greatest fear, dormant for decades, came rushing back in an instant: Had she adopted and raised a kidnapped child? Peg Reif's daughter, adopted from South Korea in the 1980s, had sent her a link to a documentary detailing how the system that made their family was rife with fraud: documents falsified, babies switched, children snatched off the street and sent abroad. Reif wept. She was among more than 120 who contacted the AP this fall, after a series of stories and a documentary made with Frontline exposed how Korea created a baby pipeline, designed to ship children abroad to meet Western demand. "I can't stand the thought that somebody lost their child," Reif said. "I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know how to make it right. I don't know if I can."
- Reif's story: Forty years ago, as she struggled with infertility, Reif and her husband adopted two Korean children who weren't biological siblings, but both had strangely similar stories in their files: Their young unmarried mothers worked in factories with fathers who disappeared after they got pregnant.