Koream Journal, News Report, Posted: Oct 09, 2012

The tragic story of homeless twin sisters in Washington, D.C. has been met with anguished reactions from the Korean American community.

Korean broadcasting station SBS recently aired a one-hour documentary about the Korean American twin sisters living on the streets of our nation’s capital.

Mi-kyung and Mi-young, both 32, were only 6 years old in 1987 when their father Soon-hong Min sent them to an orphanage in South Korea. The twins’ mother passed away only three years after giving birth. Min, who struggled to make ends meet, decided to drop off his daughters at a local orphanage, where they were later adopted by American parents.

On their way to the orphanage, Min told his daughters that they will be staying with their aunt until he comes back to take them back home.

The twins were soon taken to the United States to meet their new family. However, they were often harassed by their adoptive parents, who they described in an interview last year with the Korea Daily as being heavily abusive. They said at the time that the abuse was severe, so much so that both were convinced a mysterious stranger kidnapped them to separate their biological family.

After being evicted from their home in Nevada due to non-payment in 2001, the twins moved to Washington, D.C., and began living in homeless shelters. They subsisted on food provided by local Korean American business owners who sympathized with seeing them on the streets of D.C. during the city’s harsh winters.

Read more here.