Multiple violations were unearthed by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation into the adoption of South Korean children by foreigners.
An investigation by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has concluded that the country’s government-endorsed foreign adoption programme violated the fundamental human rights of adoptees guaranteed under the constitution and international conventions.
The commission’s findings were published on Wednesday following a nearly three-year investigation into complaints filed by 367 of some 140,000 South Korean children who were adopted to six European countries, including Denmark – which called on South Korea to investigate the adoptions back in 2022 – the United States and Australia.
The commission found that local adoption agencies colluded with foreign agencies to mass export South Korean children to meet a monthly quota set by foreign demand. Among a plethora of violations, many children were procured for adoption through questionable or outright unscrupulous means.
The report reveals that South Korean agencies were granted extensive authority over children, including full guardianship rights and the ability to consent to foreign adoptions, which led to a lack of oversight and ultimately resulted in large-scale intercountry adoption of children whose identities and family backgrounds were lost, falsified or fabricated.
“Throughout this process, numerous legal and policy shortcomings emerged, leading to serious violations of the rights of adoptees, their biological parents – particularly birth mothers – and others involved,” the commission’s chairperson, Park Sun-young, told a news conference on Tuesday.
“These violations should never have occurred,” Park said.
“While many adoptees were fortunate to grow up in loving families, others suffered great hardship and trauma due to flawed adoption processes. Even today, many continue to face challenges,” she said.
Following the devastating 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea became one of the poorest countries in the world and, for economic reasons, “intercountry adoption was actively encouraged as a solution”, Park explained.
“This ‘active’ approach, combined with Korea’s notorious ‘hurry hurry’ culture, resulted in poorly developed legal frameworks and rushed administrative procedures,” she said.
Park highlighted how some foreign adoptive parents were found to be unfit to raise children by authorities in foreign countries, which resulted in years of legal procedures in overseas courts to have them removed as parents of an adopted child. Other serious violations unearthed by the report included adopted children being given false identities.
“If a child in the adoption process passed away or was reclaimed by their biological family, agencies would substitute another child’s identity to expedite the adoption, severely violating adoptees’ rights to their true identities,” the report states.
Based on its findings, the commission recommended that the government issue an official apology, arrange remedies for those who were affected, and demanded that the government ratify The Hague’s Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.
South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, which handles adoption issues, did not immediately comment on the report and the government has never acknowledged direct responsibility for issues surrounding past foreign adoptions.
Some adoptees also criticised the report, saying it did not establish the government’s complicity strongly enough and that its recommendations were too weak.
