2026-06-25 –, Room 204 PC Desk (Seats 30)
The Korean War (1950–1953) created one of the most visible child refugee crises of the Cold War, leaving an estimated over 100,000 children orphaned or separated from their families. This panel examines the lived experiences, geopolitical significance, and long-term legacies of Korean War orphans through transnational and interdisciplinary lenses. Panelists explore how state actors, humanitarian and other organizations mobilized wartime child welfare as a site of ideological contest, shaping global perceptions of the conflict while influencing policies on international adoption, child sponsorship, and refugee aid. Using archival records, oral histories, and cultural texts, the papers trace how North and South Korean orphans navigated institutional environments—from domestic shelters to Asian, American and European care and adoptive homes - while negotiating identities formed in the shadow of militarization and displacement. Together, the presentations highlight how the figure of the orphan became central to postwar nation-building narratives, humanitarian politics, and the evolving global care economy. By situating Korean War orphans within histories of socialist and capitalist societies, forced migration, and humanitarianism, the panel aims to reconsider the war’s enduring social consequences and the children whose lives reshaped international practices of care.
KOREAN WAR ORPHANS IN MONGOLIA
During the Korean War (1950–1953), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea confronted massive social dislocation and the urgent need to care for war orphans. As part of a broader strategy of postwar reconstruction and socialist nation-building, North Korea dispatched several thousand of these children to allied socialist countries—including China, Mongolia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia —for education, care, and ideological training. The Mongolian People’s Republic emerged as one of the earliest and most significant foreign hosts of North Korean war orphans, offering humanitarian support that carried long-term political and cultural implications.
This paper examines the little-studied history of 197 North Korean children lived in Ulaanbaatar between 1952 and 1959, situating their experience within the broader context of socialist internationalism and Cold War geopolitics. Drawing on archival materials, orphans’ letters, photographic records, and oral histories, the study explores how these children were integrated into Mongolian schools, the ideological purposes behind their education, and the ways their presence shaped Mongolian–North Korean relations. The paper argues that the “war orphan program” as well “donation campaign for North Koreans” functioned simultaneously as humanitarian aid, a tool of socialist solidarity, and an opposition to American imperialism. By illuminating relevant documents and voices of their Mongolian caretakers, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of transnational socialist networks, their members and the human dimensions of Cold War diplomacy in East Asia.
I am an oral historian and a head of the Sociology Department of the Institute of Philosophy, the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS). I obtained a BA at the Moscow Institute of Economics and Statistics, a MA in Population Studies at Peking University, and a PhD in Sociology at University of Essex.
Prior to MAS, I worked as an associate professor for the Mongolian National University. Since 1990s I had actively enrolled in teacher trainings, and participated in the social science curriculum development. I was a fellow at several universities including Cambridge, Harvard and UCLA. My research and articles were published in Germany, Philippines, Russia, Japan, USA and Taiwan. The latest publications are “Korean School in Mongolia: 1952-1959” (2024) and “Social Research Methodology” (second edition, 2025) .