Olympic star in tearful reunion with Korean dad

Toby Dawson hugging his biological father.

By Jon Herskovitz
Wed Feb 28, 9:32 AM ET



SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. Olympic medalist Toby Dawson hugged his weeping Korean father on Wednesday when the two met for the first since he went missing 25 years ago as a toddler in a busy street market in South Korea.

Dawson, 28, became an overnight sensation in South Korea, the land of his birth, when he won the bronze in men's freestyle skiing moguls at the Turin Winter Olympics last year.

After his Olympic glory, pictures of him beaming with joy in Italy graced the front pages of local papers along with a shot of him as a sad, small boy wearing a tattered shirt at an orphanage waiting for his someone to claim him.

"I've been waiting for you for a long time," Dawson told his Korean father when they met in front of reporters.

"My life until now has been very confused," Dawson told reporters during a news conference with his father.

His biological father, Kim Jae-soo, a bus driver in the southern city of Pusan, apologized for losing his son in the market. Dawson spent several months in an orphanage before a Colorado couple, both ski instructors, adopted him.

After the Olympics, many South Koreans claimed to be Dawson's biological father. Recent DNA testing confirmed Kim as a parent.

"I'm so sorry. I went to so many orphanages looking for you," Kim said.

Dawson's biological mother divorced his father. She has been located but did not come to the reunion, local media reported Dawson's lawyer as saying.

Many children sent to orphanages come from broken homes or are born of unwed mothers, who often face scorn in South Korea for having a child out of wedlock, adoption agency officials have said.

Dawson said part of the reason he made his reunion with his father public is because he wanted to change perceptions in the country about adoption.

"I would like to change the negativity," he said, adding there were difficulties in growing up with white parents and being one of the few Asians in his Colorado town.

"I realized I was adopted every time I looked in the mirror -- or every time you go to the grocery store when people look at your parents and then look at you differently," he told a small group of foreign reporters before meeting his father.

Dawson said skiing helped him come out of his shell.

He would like to see more South Koreans adopt abandoned Korean children because of the difficulties those children can face growing up overseas.

"They are very fortunate and it is wonderful that they were given another opportunity like that. At the same time, there is a lot of confusion and a lot of heartache about who they are."