You remember the brass band at the Presbyterian Leprosarium just outside Taegu. You remember there was snow on the ground and more than half the musicians stood barefoot as you went by. These were the untouchables. A little leper boy with his face half-gone held the music for those who played on the battered old brass trumpets and trombones, and as you drew near, you recognized the hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. You remember the eyes of those in your party. They were tough people, long hardened to misery because they had to be: generals, admirals, statesmen. The tears ran down their cheeks. They did not bother to brush them away. But the kids did not cry, for we were Americans and Americans to them meant hope for the future. 1

With these nine sentences, Rusk captured several of the main elements in the story of how Americans came to adopt more than 4,000 orphaned Korean children between 1955 and 1961. 2 There is the pathos: the vivid, moving details of poverty and hardship that characterized American media portrayals of Korea, both during and after the Korean War (1950-53). There is the military: the men who would father and leave behind hundreds of mixed-race" GI babies." 3 There is Christianity: the common faith that united the two nations and that prompted countless Americans-GIs, missionaries, ordinary churchgoers-to generously