She was allegedly found abandoned in Seoul on February 12, 1976, and placed temporarily in Maria's House, a local institution.

[4] In 1978, Mia Farrow and her then husband, André Previn, adopted Soon-Yi and took her to the United States.

[6] Farrow asked her friends Rose and William Styron to have U.S. Representative Michael Harrington sponsor a private bill to enable the girl's adoption to the United States.

This bill, HR 1552, was passed as Private Law 95-37 on May 15, 1978, paving Soon-Yi's way to immigrate to the United States.

[7][8] Just after the adoption, Farrow wrote to Nancy Sinatra about Soon-Yi, "Now she speaks English and is learning to read, write, play piano, dance ballet & ride a horse".

[12] After a summer as a sales associate at Bergdorf Goodman, she began her freshman year as a commuter student at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, in September 1991.

[10][15] During her teens, Previn made an uncredited appearance in Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), which starred Farrow.

She appeared as an extra in Paul Mazursky's 1991 film Scenes from a Mall,[10] which starred Allen.

Allen, then 56, told Farrow that he had taken the photos the day before, approximately two weeks after he and Previn first had sex.

[25] Previn was surprised by his declaration: "I only knew that he loved me when he gave the press conference and said it publicly.