CNN
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Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in March 2022. It was updated and republished in March 2025 to mark the launch of CNN’s Chance Encounters podcast
Linsay DeBates was adopted from South Korea by an American family when she was six months old. She didn’t return to the country of her birth for almost two decades.
“I struggled a lot with identity and cultural identity,” says Linsay, now 45, of her time growing up in the American Midwest in the 1990s.
In her late teens, Linsay received a letter from her adoption agency: Her birth family was interested in making contact; did she want to connect with them?
Linsay figured hearing from her birth parents might provide her with some answers to the questions she’d agonized over for years. She agreed to contact. Soon, she was writing letters back and forth to South Korea.
A few months later, an opportunity arose for Linsay to travel to Seoul along with a group of South Korean adoptees from across the world, on a government-sponsored trip. She jumped at the chance.
It was 2000, and Linsay was 19. Her adopted parents wanted to come with her, but Linsay wouldn’t let them. Returning to South Korea felt like something she had to do alone.
While Linsay enjoyed meeting the other adoptees on what she calls a “crash course into the country” – she also felt isolated, confused and lonely.
“I always had this fantasy of going back to Korea, and I would instantly think I’d be at home, I would belong,” she tells CNN Travel. “And as soon as I stepped off that plane in the year 2000, everyone was looking at me – just like they look at me here.”
When the two-week tour came to an end, Linsay met her birth parents for the first time. She’d been under the understanding that they lived in Seoul. In fact, they lived some two hours south, in the city of Daejeon.
“They put my suitcases in their car, put me in their car and we drove two hours down, where I spent 10 days with them, immersed in this new family,” says Linsay.
Linsay didn’t speak Korean and her family didn’t speak much English. There was a lot of emotional trauma to unpack and no real means by which to do it.
“I was very lost,” says Linsay.
Fast friends
Needing time alone to process, Linsay started traveling by train to the Seoul suburb of Itaewon, known for its international community.
“I could go there and just kind of feel comfortable,” says Linsay.
One evening, walking past Itaewon’s bars and restaurants, she heard some American voices echoing down the street.
Linsay looked up, searching for the source of the sound, and spotted a group of young American guys.
“They’re just talking about what bar they’re going to next,” recalls Linsay. “It was so awesome for me to hear people just chattering in English.”
Without thinking twice, Linsay bounded up to the group.
“So what bar are we going to?” she said, smiling.
Chance Encounters
“After that night we were instantly like best friends.”
Read Linsay & Doug’s story on CNN.com
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They were a group of American military personnel, stationed in South Korea. A bit taken aback by Linsay boldness, the men nevertheless welcomed her into the fold. Most of them started flirting with Linsay almost instantly.
But one of the group, twentysomething Doug Gist, recognized Linsay was in a vulnerable space, and needed friendship above anything else.
“I could understand why she was very, very elated to be able to talk to somebody,” Doug tells CNN Travel.
“Immediately, Doug kind of swooped in on me, in a very different way than the other guys were,” recalls Linsay.
“Doug kind of had this big brother presence about him and let him everyone know, ‘Hey, she’s with me.’”
When the group ducked into a nearby bar, Doug sat next to Linsay. As she told him her story, expanding on the complicated family dynamics and identity questions she was dealing with, the other men soon fell away, leaving Linsay and Doug chatting into the night.
“We just hung out,” Doug recalls. “Actually, we hung out all night.”
The bars started to close and Doug walked Linsay back to the motel she’d booked for the night.
When he saw the place she was staying, Doug said he wasn’t comfortable leaving her there.
“It was a very seedy, very icky motel,” recalls Linsay. “He said, ‘You’re not staying here alone. I will sleep on the floor, but you are not staying here alone.’”
Doug set up a makeshift bed on Linsay’s floor, but neither slept much. They were too busy chatting.
“We just talked and talked all night, about growing up in Minnesota, about my family, about his family,” says Linsay.
“Nothing ever happened between us,” says Doug. “But after that night, we were instantly like best friends. It seemed like we were just together and buddies from here on out.”
An important conversation
At some point over the course of that evening, Linsay and Doug swapped contact details. Neither of them really remembers who instigated it. But they do know that when Linsay went back home to the US, she kept in touch with her Doug from afar.
In the year 2000, there were no video calls. Social media wasn’t really a thing. But Linsay and Doug sent email other long emails and their friendship remained integral to their lives, even with the thousands of miles separating them.
This was a friendshop that ran deep, based in mutual support, the ability to laugh together – and at each other – and talk about everything and anything.
Two years later, in 2002, Linsay returned to South Korea, now aged 21, hoping to spend more time with her birth family. In the intervening years, Linsay had thought a lot about that first visit and she wanted to dive in deeper, learn more about her roots and explore her relationship with her birth parents.
Linsay knew that, emotionally, this journey might be even harder than the first. She’d need a friend by her side. So when she landed, she immediately picked up the phone and called Doug.
Doug, who was born in Long Island in New York and grew up in Virginia, had been based in South Korea on and off for several years before he met Linsay.
He’d been in the military since graduating high school. A skilled linguist, he spoke several languages, including Korean.
So when Linsay invited Doug to come down to Daejeon and meet her family, Linsay was also hoping he could help her communicate with her family. Doug happily agreed this arragement.
“At the time I was always looking for ways to improve my Korean,” he says.
Plus, he wanted to be there for his friend Linsay.
Linsay’s birth family welcomed Doug with open arms.
“He did all the right things; he brought everyone gifts, spoke so eloquently in Korean, and they just took to him right away and loved him,” says Linsay.
And then, with Doug’s linguistic help, as well as his emotional support, Linsay sat down to tackle some of the tough topics that had haunted her for a life time.
“I started asking my mom really hard questions,” she recalls.
This included Linsay asking why she’d been put up for adoption in the first place.
It was an emotional, intense conversation, and Linsay was incredibly grateful to have her friend Doug as an ally.
“Doug was just so sensitive; he was so kind,” she says.
Of course, for Doug, this wasn’t exactly an easy situation to navigate.
“It was really awkward,” he says, chuckling. “But it was really interesting to meet her family and that, I think, solidified our friendship more, our bond and everything.”
And when Linsay flew home to Minnesota, she did so knowing she’d connected with her birth family, properly, for the first time. The discussion hadn’t been easy, but she’d appreciated the opportunity to be honest with her birth parents. It had been cathartic. And Linsay also knew she’d found, in Doug, a friendship she’d value for life.
Her two trips to South Korea hadn’t offered all the answers she’d been searching for. But Linsay says the experience of returning to her birth country did help her find some inner peace.
“Things came full circle for me,” she says. “Not when I went to Korea, but when I came back home to America, and I realized, this is my home. This is who I am. I’m not Korean American. I’m not American. I am a Korean adoptee. The experience really solidified that – and having the other adoptees there really created this sense of community that I hadn’t felt before.”
Staying in touch
Over the years that followed, Doug and Linsay stayed close, via emails and the occasional meet-up in South Korea and the US.
When Doug got married in Hawaii in the mid-2000s, he invited Linsay along. When she hesistated – she was in graduate school at the time and wasn’t sure she could afford the trip – Doug said he’d pay for Linsay’s hotel if she booked the plane ticket.
It was important, Doug says, to have her there by his side. Linsay was touched.
“Then he introduced me to every single one of his family as his best friend Linsay, and it was so sweet,” she recalls.
The friends also met up in California on several occassions, where Linsay moved following graduate school.
“Every time that I go back (to the US) I make sure to stop by and hang out with her,” says Doug.
On one occasion, Linsay arrived in South Korea for a return visit, only to realize they’d been a mix-up over who was picking her up at the airport: she thought her birth parents were collecting her; they thought she’d made other arrangements.
Doug stepped in right away, getting her a cab and inviting her to stay with him.
This started a tradition: whenever Linsay went to South Korea, she stayed with Doug.
For the two friends, it doesn’t matter how much time passes between their meet-ups. They always enjoy catching up.
“It’s such a familiar feeling with Doug and I. And it’s always been that way. I feel like I could walk down the street and run into him, and I’d just be like, ‘Hey, good to see you here.’ He’s just been such a strong presence in my life,” says Linsay.
“Every time we get together it’s an adventure,” says Doug.
Years passed. Doug split from his first wife, and later remarried and became a father. When his daughter was born, Doug and his wife unanimously chose Linsay as the godmother. The decision, says Doug, was a “no brainer.”
“It means a lot that she is able to be here, and if anything ever happens, God forbid, to me or my family, she, I’m sure, would be there for her,” says Doug. “It means the world to me.”
Linsay is close to Doug’s wife too. She’ll never forget meeting her the first time and being instantly enveloped in a hug.
“She was never jealous, she was never insecure about Doug and I’s relationship,” says Linsay. “She was just so glad that Doug had me as a friend and just welcomed me into their family.”
The last time the two friends met up was two years ago, in 2023, in Hawaii. Doug and his family now live in Germany. Linsay is going to visit them all in April 2025 and counting down the days.
“We’re all so excited,” she says.
25 years of friendship
Today, Linsay is a clinical social worker and living back in Minnesota. She has built up a good relationship with her birth family over the years, regularly connecting with her twenty-something niece via social media.
Her adopted father has passed away, and while her adopted mother has yet to meet Doug in person, the two have video called on several occassions. Her parents were always grateful for how Doug supported Linsay in Seoul.
Linsay says she’s come to terms with some of the struggles she felt as a teenager.
“I don’t have a lot of complaints these days. It’s really nice,” she says, adding that Doug played a huge role in her coming to terms with herself and her place in the world.
“I am extremely grateful that it was Doug that I ran into that night in Itaewon,” she reflects.
“What I tried to do with Linsay was show her that she mattered, especially when she didn’t think she did,” says Doug.
This year, Linsay and Doug celebrate 25 years of friendship.
“I really appreciate that, and I think that’s an amazing concept,” says Doug. “Linsay is always just there, and I know she’s always going to be there.”
“He is just such an amazing guy,” says Linsay. “He’s always going to provide comfort, he’s always going to provide support.”
Doug always makes her smile too: “We laugh, we just laugh, nonstop,” she says.
“She’s a special person – exciting, she’s eccentric, she’s eclectic, all of that. She’s just a fun person to be around,” says Doug.
“Every time we get together, it’s just fun. It doesn’t matter where it is. This continent, this country or that country. If we’re together we’re having fun.