Country recognized scandalous fraud in thousands of adoption processes in a historic report this Wednesday. “It’s just the beginning.”
For the first time, South Korea recognized the practice of human rights frauds and violations through its adoption program abroad, through which it sent about 200 thousand children Out of the country in the decades that followed the Korea War.
The conclusions, released Wednesday by the Commission for the Truth and the reconciliation of the South Korean government, point to the fact that these children were “sent abroad like luggage“.
South Korean adoption agencies systematically falsified documents to facilitate the adoption of children, sometimes presenting as orphans children who had their parents livingrevealed the commission. In some cases, babies who died before being adopted were replaced by other children with the same identity.
Between the 1950s and 1990s, South Korea has become the largest source of international adoptions in the world, sending mainly children to the United States and Europe. The process was promoted as a second opportunity for orphans and abandoned children during the country’s poverty in the postwar, but the new report points to a Reality much more dark: Adoption has become a profitable business model.
Adoption agencies charged a thousand foster families in fees, which in turn would be used to obtain more children.
It reports distressing cases of affected by great fraud. One of them is that of a girl named Chang. Adopted by a family in Denmark in 1974, his adoption agency lied and said the girl came from an orphanage, despite knowing who her mother was. In 1988, this same agency charged $ 1500 of adoption fees and an additional $ 400 “donation” per child.
One of the victims of 56 cases classified as human rights violations, Anja Pedersen, was sent to Denmark in 1976 under the name of a girl who had died; Mia Lee Sorensen, sent to Denmark in 1987, was informed that her mother had died at birth. When she found her biological parents in 2022, they were shocked to learn that she was alive: her mother had been unconscious during childbirth and later she was told that the baby had died.
The commission cannot process the adoption agencies involved, but its conclusions have legal weight and the government is required to follow its recommendations. The Commission asked the State to present a Formal apology to those affected. And this “is just the beginning,” said one of the victims, Mary Bowers.
Other countries such as Norway and Denmark – the commission’s investigation began at the end of 2022 and received 367 cases of case analysis, most of Denmark – opened their own surveys, while the United States, the largest beneficiary of Korean adoptions, have not yet done so.
