BY JESSICA BERNSTEIN-WAX, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[an earlier version of this story was published by the Associated Press in February 2007, and ran in dozens of news outlets around the world, including the International Herald Tribune]

Milagros Vacas Arlandis had three biological children of her own and a demanding job as a medical doctor, but something was missing.

For 10 years, she and her husband, Jose Antonio Revilla, had wanted to adopt a child, but long waits and complicated legal maneuverings made adopting within their native Spain virtually impossible.

"My husband and I always wanted to provide a home for a child who didn't have a family," Vacas Arlandis said. "We tried to adopt in Spain, but after waiting for years and hearing nothing, we decided to take a different route."

So in 2002 the couple attended an informational meeting and initiated the paperwork to bring a little girl from China to their home in the northern city of Santander.

As once-homogenous Spain digests a newly diverse population, enriched by an influx of some 4 million immigrants over the last decade, it also has one of the world's highest per capita international adoption rates in the world. More than half the adopted children come from China.

BY MATT RUSLING, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[to lead story, "Re-educating North Koreans in South Korea"]

North Korea's state of impoverishment has spawned a steadily increasing influx of refugees into South Korea, from about ten a year in the early '90s to 1,894 in 2004 (and a 45.7 percent increase from 2003), according to the Korean Ministry of Unification, a government agency that promotes peace between the two Koreas. Currently, the ministry puts the number of North Koreans living in South Korea at 6,000. Estimates of the number in China vary widely from 60,000 to 200,000. The number slogging their way out of North Korea is unknown, but activists say what was once a trickle has in recent years become a flood. In spite of the numbers, the road to Seoul has not gotten any easier.

Tim Peters, who is head of Helping Hands Korea, an organization that helps North Koreans in crisis, and a Christian activist who has testified on the refugee issue before Congress, said sources tell him the number of North Koreans in China could be as high as 400,000. "Sometimes repatriations (from China back to North Korea) can be 400 a week."

Accordingly, the Chinese have also expanded by two-fold a holding facility by the border to house more than 800 people, he said.