South Korea’s government has just admitted to decades of adoption fraud
South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a government agency, has determined that the government was complicit in fraud and abuse in foreign adoptions during the 1970s and 1980s.
“After reviewing government and adoption records and interviewing adoptees, birth families, public officials and adoption workers, the commission assessed that South Korean officials saw foreign adoptions as a cheaper alternative to building a social welfare system for needy children,” a report from the Associated Press (AP) stated.
With little to no government oversight, adoption agencies were able to engage in nefarious and illegal practices such as:
bypassing consent from biological parents,
falsely labeling children as orphans,
changing children’s identities.
“The military governments implemented special laws aimed at promoting foreign adoptions, removing judicial oversight and granting vast powers to private agencies, which bypassed proper child relinquishment practices while shipping thousands of children to the West every year,” the AP’s report stated. “Western nations ignored these problems and sometimes pressured South Korea to keep the kids coming as they focused on satisfying their huge domestic demands for babies.”
The woman pictured here on the left is Yooree Kim. At age 11, she was adopted by a couple in France, without her biological parents’ consent. She is now calling on the Korean government to encourage broader DNA testing so that adoptees can be reunited with their biological families, and she wants South Korea to end foreign adoptions.
Note: not all adoptions were the result of foul play but this report highlights the many that were and those who profited from them. The children who were illegally stolen from their birth parents? This was human trafficking.
Click here to read the full report from AP (by Kim Tong-Hyung).
