It’s not entirely clear where Steve Morrison was born. His memories, like those of any adult recalling early childhood, are a hodgepodge of impressions and images; for him, it’s the smell of steamed crab, and sometimes, the taste. But nothing links Morrison to his birth because before the age of 5, his parents abandoned him and his younger brother, leaving them to roam the streets of South Korea’s Kangwon Province in search of food and coins.

“Fortunately, we found something every day,” says Morrison, who was then named Choi Suk Choon. “And once in a while, a lady who sold steamed crab would feed us.”

Eventually, the crab peddler offered more. “But she only had room for one boy, so she decided to take in my younger brother,” Morrison recalls. “The last time I saw him, I looked at him with real envy. And then I was left on the street by myself.”

In 1962, when Morrison was 6, he landed in an orphanage near Seoul that housed roughly 700 homeless youth. The Il San orphanage was built and run by Harry Holt, an American farmer who launched a post-Korean War adoption movement that placed thousands of Korean children in homes overseas.

Morrison lived at the orphanage until he was 13, when a Caucasian Baptist couple in Salt Lake City adopted him. That year, South Korean restrictions would have rendered him ineligible for overseas placement once he turned 14. If it weren’t for his timely adoption, it is likely he would have remained an orphan, with few opportunities for an education or social advancement.

Now 52, Morrison has a shock of black hair, crinkly eyes and exudes a quiet confidence as he reflects on the unique, surprising journey that led him to Norwalk, Calif., where he lives with his wife Jody, three daughters and an adopted son from Korea.

“When I left Korea, I wasn’t scared,” he says. “More than the fear and apprehension, there’s the thrill that something new is waiting for you.”

He met his father, John Morrison, at the airport, carrying only a set of playing cards and his journal, which he continued to write in every night before bed. Morrison still has it, though, he adds wryly, “It’s no Diary of Anne Frank.”

In many ways, Morrison’s journal could give testimony to the virtues of international adoption — how fate, hard work and the right people worked to transform a young orphan into a professional engineer with a rewarding life surrounded by family. Which is why he was alarmed when, in 1996, the South Korean government revised its adoption law — which still stands today — to decrease international adoption by 3 to 5 percent annually, with the long-term goal of phasing out the system by 2015.

For nearly half a century, South Korea was the leading supplier of foreign-born adoptees for developed nations, sending an estimated 160,000 children to the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia, according to the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs. In the last 30 years, due to political pressure, grassroots campaigns and media coverage that branded South Korea as a “baby-exporting nation,” efforts have been made to reduce the number of children sent overseas.