Group is Looking for Former USFK Veterans to Donate Their DNA

After reading this article I was surprised to learn that these companies that use your DNA to trace your ancestry release this information to outside groups for their own initiatives:

At 68, retired Army Capt. Walter Rettberg thought he was done having children. Then he decided to trace his family tree with a DNA-testing kit and found Matthew.

Matthew Suh was a baby in South Korea when he was adopted nearly 40 years ago by an American couple. He grew up longing to find his biological mother but never thought about searching for his father because it seemed an impossible task.

All he knew was that his father had been an American soldier serving in South Korea.

Enter 325 Kamra, a U.S. nonprofit that’s building a DNA database to help South Korean adoptees find their birth parents, including U.S. military veterans.

In many cases, troops rotating through the country didn’t know the women they had sex with became pregnant, so the group is offering free DNA kits to all vets and their descendants.

“So many of them have been stationed here for a long time,” said Maria Savage, director of the group’s South Korea operation that launched this year. “So if they remember any encounters that they had then that’s enough for us.”

The DNA will help even if the vets didn’t father children, because it might lead to another relative who did, she said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.