by JAMES S. KIM | @james_s_kim
editor@charactermedia.com
Army veteran Allen Thomas had spent over 40 years unsuccessfully searching for the whereabouts of his twin children he left behind in South Korea. But since taking to Facebook just a week ago with the assistance of his daughter, the story of his search has since gone viral. It’s been shared over a million times, while the public group has swelled to over 30,000 members.
Thomas told NBC News that he would understand if his children refused to see him. “I just need to know they’re OK and tell them I love them,” he said. “These are my kids, and I’ve never stopped loving them.”
“I want to share our family health history with them, because some of it is serious,” he added. “I want them to know that I have never stopped trying to get them.”
Thomas was 18 years old when he joined the Army in the mid-1960s. When he was shipped out to South Korea the next year, he met a woman who soon became pregnant with twins. James and Sandia (who also went by Jamie and Sandra) were born on Sept. 10, 1967, and Thomas married their mother a few months later.
Allen Thomas and his wife celebrating the first birthdays for their twin children.
Although the initial plan was to have the entire family eventually move to the States, the marriage “disintegrated,” according to Thomas’s daughter, Charlene Roberts. Thomas stayed in Asia following his Korea tour to be close to the children, and he took a 30-day leave in January 1971 while he was stationed in Vietnam to visit them in Korea.
It turned out to be the last time he saw James and Sandia in person. Thomas’s wife did not want to follow him back to the U.S. or allow the children to leave. “He even considered going AWOL to take his kids,” Roberts said.
Allen Thomas in uniform.
Thomas sent letters and money to his family in Korea when he returned to the U.S., but his wife cut off all communication with him. He obtained a default divorce, and he remarried in 1973.
In 1974, Thomas received a final offer from the twins’ mother, who said she would relinquish the children to his custody. But Thomas and his wife couldn’t come up with the money to immediately bring them over, and he found out that the children had been adopted by another American family in 1976, right after he had left the U.S. Army. According to Korean law, his permission was not needed, and the mother would not give the address of the children.
Since then, Thomas continued to search for his kids, checking with American adoption agencies and registering with Korean American groups where the twins might be members. Thomas and Roberts expanded the search to Facebook when he moved in with his daughter recently. Roberts and fellow admins have posted daily updates on the search, and you can see the latest developments on the Facebook page.
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Featured image via Facebook
