A number of recent news items are focusing on Korean-born adoptees and their reconnections with birth country and family.

Some stories have been put on film, like this one reported on in Stars and Stripes about an adoptee's search that led to his birth father.

Former Army Staff Sgt. Aaron Bates was adopted by an American family who eventually adopted three other South Korean children and supported their son in his search and reconciliation.

Unfortunately, the birth father is in prison, on death row for the murder of two women, but the circumstance might have something to do with the fact that this reunion story became a movie.

“Korea looks at adoption as not a very good thing,” Bates said. “If you’re not in the bloodline, you’re not family. I want this to show the people of Korea that adoption does work.”

The film is titled, "My Father". You can read more about it and where fact and fiction part and mingle here.

Of course, not every reunion gets it's own movie, but that doesn't take anything away from the experience for people like Adam Kohlhass.

An adult adoptee, he's now spending his junior year of college at Yonsei University in Seoul City, South Korea after connecting with his birth country in a ten-day Lions Club-sponsored program last year.

“It had a big impact on me, and I really wanted to go back,” Kohlhaas said. “It was really hard to put myself in the mentality that I came from this other place – this other world – where everything is different.”

There's an interesting letter to the editor in the Korea Times about Korean adoption law.

It appears to make a case for instituting a law that would allow Korean children to become available for international adoption no more than six months after relinquishment, saying, " ... there might be a large number of pending problems in front of our leaders, but for the sake of a pitiful generation growing as orphans due to the apathy of the established generation ... ".

The UN has apparently recently concluded its 39th session of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and has included in it's recommendations information that Korea still discriminates against women.

Suggesting that abolishment of the "hoju", the patriarchal family registry, is happening too slowing and calling the fact a "prime example of gender discrimination in Korea", the UN also recommends that marital rape should be punishable even without victim complaints and says that violence against women is under-reported, under-prosecuted and there are too few convictions.

There are also concerns about trafficking, exploitation and prostitution, especially adolescent girls sexual relationships with older men for money.

The report said women in Korea seem to be underrepresented in politics, especially in decision-making bodies. The committee called for a rise in the representation of women in elected and appointed bodies in all areas of public life, including academia and the private sector.

Furthermore, the committee asked the government to take measures against the persistence of patriarchal attitudes and deep-rooted stereotypes regarding the roles and responsibilities of women and men.

To that end, the committee called for a revision of the Civil Act to raise the minimum legal age of marriage for girls to 18, from 16, to enhance gender equality.

And The 7th Disabled Peoples International World Assembly has been held in Goyang, with more than 2,500 people from 71 countries attending and discussing for the first time the UN's adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in December 2006.

A 'declaration of rights' for all disabled people in the world was announced.

Korea has around four million disabled.