Mary Bowers, a Korean adoptee to the United States, smiles during an interview with The Korea Times at the newspaper's office in Seoul, July 12. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Mary Bowers, a Korean adoptee to the United States, recently competed in the Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York, representing Korea.

This was her ninth participation in the July 4 annual competition and the second time representing her native country, following the restoration of her Korean citizenship last year.

Bowers, whose Korean name is Jung Nayoung, describes herself as a "messy eater" since childhood, with a non-stop appetite that led her to pursue a career as a competitive eater over the past decade. Her impressive feats include eating up to 80 chicken wings in 10 minutes, 65 gyoza dumplings in the same timeframe, and 14 donuts in just eight minutes.

In the latest hot dog eating contest, she ranked in the top 10 in the women's competition by finishing seven and a quarter hot dogs in 10 minutes.

"I do wish that I had performed better, although obviously I had other priorities happening in my life, so I know that I was definitely not at peak performance," Bowers said in a recent interview with The Korea Times, noting that her best record is 12 and a half hot dogs.

Mary Bowers holds the Korean national flag during the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York, July 4 (local time). Courtesy of Mary Bowers

The Korean-born adoptee, who was raised in Colorado since she was adopted by an American family in 1982, has had a lot on her plate recently.

In 2020, she embarked on a journey to find her biological family, which prompted her to move to Seoul that year.

When asked what led her to pursue efforts to find her biological roots, Bowers replied, "I thought I was an orphan up until about four years ago. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I had extra time on my hands due to social distancing regulations, so I started looking into some old records and started finding some interesting conflicts."

However, her quest to find answers has been riddled with misinformation and alleged fabrication of adoption documents.

Her adoption, arranged through the Seoul-based Eastern Welfare Society, took place when she was probably one or two years old. In the adoption papers, she was listed under three different Korean surnames —Jung, Chung and Baik.

In November 2019, Bowers came across a media report revealing the alleged role of Brothers Home in Korea's intercountry adoption of children from the 1960s to the 1980s. Brothers Home, which is now shut down, was a notorious state-run welfare facility in Busan accused of kidnapping and mistreating hundreds of children and disabled individuals during that time.

The report alleged that the facility played a significant role in the adoption procedures, acting as a "supply chain" for private adoption agencies in the process of sending babies abroad.

"It just happened to be toward the end of the article (on Brothers Home), I recognized familiar names who signed off my adoption documents. Initially, I thought I was imagining things, so I had to go back and check my documents," Bowers said.

"But unfortunately, I was not."

Mary Bowers at the age of 6 months / Courtesy of Mary Bowers

She then looked further into the history of Korea's military dictatorship in the 1960s and 1980s, which largely influenced the surge of intercountry adoptions during that time.

In December 2022, Bowers filed her case with Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, joining nearly 400 other Korean adoptees from 11 countries including Denmark, Norway, the U.S., and Australia.

These adoptees claimed that their adoptions were marred by falsified documents that laundered the status of children through local adoption agencies, and speculated the government's involvement in the widespread accusations of malpractice.

The commission plans to release preliminary results by year-end for the initial 100 cases filed, with the remainder expected in May 2025.

"We're seeing similar patterns of children being declared as orphans when they still had living parents, and adoptees being sent under false identities. Some of them are old enough to remember all this. You see these very similar patterns, which is why we submitted these claims together," Bowers said.

Sibling reunion

In the summer of 2023, Bowers underwent seven DNA tests across both national and commercial databases in hopes of finding her biological family.

About a year later, those DNA samples led to an unexpected reunion with her younger brother, Chase Malmgren, whom she had never known. The 19-year-old, whose Korean name is Baik In-soo but was listed as In-ho on some documents, was also adopted by an American family at a young age.

Malmgren had also been desperately looking for his biological roots, Bowers said, as he submitted his DNA samples to Korean agencies in 2018.

The DNA tests showed a 100 percent match, confirming Bowers and Malmgren's biological sibling relationship.

Mary Bowers and her younger brother Chase Malmgren pose at Legoland, California, June 5. Courtesy of Mary Bowers

However, the joy of their reunion was tempered by growing speculation that their adoption documents had been forged.

Eastern Welfare Society confirmed that Bowers' parents were a married couple, while Holt International, which arranged Malmgren's adoption, claimed that his mother did not even know who his father was.

"But Chase and I have a 100 percent DNA match, which means we have the same mother and same father. Now we know by our existence that those things are false. Then the question becomes, what else did the agency lie to us about?" Bowers said.

Now, together with her brother, Bowers will continue their search for their birth parents and strive to uncover the truth behind the murky adoption process they experienced.

"Every country has its good and bad aspects. Even after all of this, I believe that the majority of Korean people are good. I've received so much help and support from Koreans, even strangers. So I think that a few bad people or difficult truths don't outweigh all of the good things that I have here," Bowers said.