"From Tiny Tot to Big Boss"

How Thomas beat the streets and now running his own multi-million
dollar medical device company that is changing the world.

By Holly Choon Hyang Bachman


In June 1950, during a period of heightened "Cold War" tension, fighting broke out between North and South Korea. Fighting raged across the entire length of the two Koreas for three years leaving both North and South Korea devastated (The Unforgotten War: Dust of the Streets, Clement, 1998).

Although Thomas was only one or two years old and living with his Korean birth mother at the time, he can still remember the Korean War just as if it happened yesterday—which ultimately led him to his destiny in America. Thomas described the day he will never forget when the "earth shattering, body-blasting, bone crushing, sound-deafening BOOOOM!!!" took place. All he could hear were the sounds of people crying with sirens going off in the midst of lights flashing all over.

To escape the war torn part of the city he was living in, an American military man along with his mother swooped him up and carried him up to his grandmother's more peaceful place in the mountains.

Thomas believes this American military man could have been his biological father since his physical characteristics resembled much of a child who was half-and-half— half Korean and half American. Thomas not only dealt with the hardship of war at such a young age, knowing that he was a mixed bi-racial child was even worse. Being mixed in Korea was considered a disgrace to the Korean people. It was then one day, his assumed biological father just disappeared and he was never to be seen again. Thomas believes, since he was in the military, he either was killed or was transferred to a new area.

When Thomas was around four or five years old, his mother brought him to the corner of the street one day and told him to start walking forward and not to look back. Then his mother just walked away in the complete opposite direction. Thomas doesn't know exactly how long he was homeless and wandering the streets, but he believes he was living in the streets for about a year.

                                                             
With the debut of our Member Spotlight program, we interviewed Thomas Park Clement so he could share more of his experience of being adopted from Korea, how adoption has impacted his life and how he has become the success he is today.

Member Spotlights will be featured on a bi-monthly basis and will highlight adoptees from all over. We hope that Thomas's story amongst many more will truly inspire you and will help you and others find the voice to share your own stories of achievement and success!  In addition, we hope that through our Member Spotlight program, we will also be able to identify role models within our own community, so that we can better set an example for the next generation of adoptees to come.

If you or you know someone who we should member spotlight, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Again, we hope by sharing these special stories of how adoption has touched people's lives, will not only encourage others, but provide more education and awareness of adoption within the greater community.