The Drop Box by Brian Tetsuro Ivie

On the surface, The Drop Box is straightforward: a touching documentary about an aging pastor in South Korea who dedicates his life to rescuing babies abandoned on the streets of Seoul. Yet it brings up far deeper questions about the meaning of life, and what it means to live.

Rather than giving his child up for adoption, as many parents in South Korea do, Pastor Lee chose to sell his home and spend the first 14 years of his son’s life full-time in a hospital.

Pastor Lee Jong-rak’s journey began when his infant son was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder, leaving him in a virtually vegetative state. Rather than giving his child up for adoption, as many parents in South Korea do, Pastor Lee chose to sell his home and spend the first 14 years of his son’s life full-time in a hospital. He now cares for his son and dozens of other children in his home church with the help of his wife.

South Korea is in crisis. Hundreds of infants are being abandoned every year by parents who have nowhere else to turn. Most of these parents are minors with few emotional and financial support systems. These teenagers are often pressured into giving up their children by their families, who don’t have the financial means to handle yet another mouth to feed.

In the past, parents would wrap their babies tightly in blankets, then deposit them at the doorsteps of their neighbors or strangers. During cold months, many of these babies froze to death before they were ever found.

Pastor Lee, driven by his own son’s diagnosis, realized first-hand that his country needed better resources for these young, terrified parents. He built his own baby drop box in his home.

The box works just like your local library’s book drop-off zone.

Credit: Gabi Menashe

The box works just like your local library’s book drop-off zone. Parents open the box’s hatch, set the baby inside, then close the door. A loud doorbell rings when the drop box is opened, and Pastor Lee springs into action. The moment he hears the bell, he rescues the baby inside, first cradling it, then saying a prayer for it, then feeding it. Since they receive about one baby every night, the pastor gets little sleep.

Most of the children that come to Pastor Lee have severe disabilities. The pastor and his wife have personally taken in dozens of children that were left on their doorstep, raising them as their own. The church has more drop offs than they can handle though, so many of the babies that are abandoned receive only a few days or weeks of care from the pastor before being sent to adoptive services.

The pastor speaks frankly about his critics. He reveals that he wasn’t sure about raising his own son at first, since he didn’t feel that his son’s life was one worth living. All his son could do, day and night, was lie on his bed, never speaking. What the pastor says he discovered was that his son’s life had a greater purpose, which was the drop box. If Pastor Lee had not decided to raise his son, he never would have dedicated his life to saving other children, and his drop box likely would not have existed.

The decision to give up a child is a difficult one, and it’s also one that the pastor says he doesn’t blame parents for making. Unlike some other staunchly religious men, the pastor realizes that everyone’s life has a different circumstance, and that many women simply don’t have the necessary resources to make a different decision when they get pregnant.

Credit: Emmanuel Dyan

In a country where abortion is illegal, and doctors can face prison time for giving women safe abortions, thousands of women are forced into having children, even if they can’t afford them. Their child’s care is left to the kindness of strangers, as hundreds of children are abandoned every year in the city of Seoul alone. The less fortunate women are seriously injured or killed when they perform DIY abortions at home. Until these laws change, Pastor Lee and his drop box are a necessary part of keeping parents and children safe.

Pastor Lee gives women the only other option they have, allowing not only these children to have a shot at a better life, but allowing their mothers and fathers to live the lives they want to lead. In this sense, the pastor is saving more than one young life when he opens his drop box each night.