Korean-Born Half-Sisters Reunite While Working at Same US Hospital

Holly Hoyle O’Brien was adopted by an American couple in 1978 when she was 9 years old.

Their birth mother died when O’Brien was young, and at the age of five she ended up in an orphanage in her native Pusan after her alcoholic father died.

They were surprised to find they had a lot in common: Both were adopted from Korean orphanages to American families in the 1970s with paperwork that said they were “abandoned”.

Similarly, Hughes was adopted by an American family in 1976 – and grew up in New York State, a few 300 miles away from her sister.

After 40 years, two Korean sisters working at the same hospital are reunited. Two months later Hughes, 44, was hired and assigned to the same floor. But the woman left Hughes’ half sister, Pok-nam Shin, known as Holly Hoyle O’Brien, who was two years older, in the care of the father.

Miss O’Brien said: “One of the patients told me there was another nurse named Meagan who was from Korea”.

Reflected social and behavioral scientist Nancy Segal as to how the orphaned sisters managed to reunite on a planet of 7 billion people: ‘I do think that genetically based similarities, are the social glue that draws and maintains these relationships.’

O’Brien wrote on Facebook after the story began circulating, “I really want to thank you all for your wonderful words of support”. But despite the orphanage holding no records of a biological sister, she knew something was missing. “I knew she was out there somewhere”. She immediately shot her newly #confirmed sister a text.

They struck up a friendship and ordered DNA kits due to their many coincidences.

Miss O’Brien said: “I said we’ve got to do the DNA test, it’s the only way we’ll get the truth out of the whole thing”. “I have a sister”.

Speaking after the test result, she added: ‘I’m like, this can’t be.

Ms O’Brien added: “I have this very strong belief that God must be… like, whatever I’ve done, I must’ve done something good in my life”.

When Hughes finally heard the news, she told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune: ‘I was in shock, I was numb.