This year, for the first time, South Korea recognized human rights violations through its adoption program abroad, through which it exported “like luggage” about 200,000 children out of the country in the decades following the Korea War.
Kim Tak-un was four years old when it was adopted by a Swedish family in 1974.
A native of South Korea, Tak-un lived with his father, a single manual worker who frequently moved due to work. One day, in the summer of 1974, while he was at his aunt’s house, Tak-un He left the street and disappeared.
Local police considered him abandoned and referred him to an adoption agency that organized his adoption For Sweden in five months.
When his father realized that his son was missing, he sought it everywhere. It eventually found out-too late-that Tak-un had already been sent abroad. Devastated, demanded the return of Tak-un. When the adoption agency did not respond, it made the story public.
More than 50 years later, for the first time, South Korea recognized human rights violations through its adoption program abroad, through which out of the country in the decades followed by the Korea War.
In March 2025, the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission released the initial conclusions of its investigation into the country’s 72 -year -old international adoption program.
Based on More than 360 cases presented by Korean adopted from 11 countries, the commission revealed widespread violations of human rightsincluding counterfeit documents, lack of parental consent and cases of exchange of children – shaking the adopted and their families.
One of the greatest scandals in history
Since the end of the Korea War (1950–1953), South Korea has sent more than 200,000 children abroadbecoming the largest exporting country of children for adoption in the worldeven while becoming a developed economy.
Existing studies have shown that the international adoption of South Korea began as a Response to the high number of mestizos children born of Korean mothers and American soldiers during the war.
It is estimated that thousands of these children were born, and the first president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, ordered his shipping abroad with the argument that they were “Inadequate” for an idealized nation as ethnically homogeneous.
However, international adoption did not end when this “emergency” was exceeded. From the mid-1960s, it expanded to include children of other vulnerable contexts, including those affected by poverty, family disruption and births outside marriage.
This was closely linked to the policies carried out by the military regimes of South Korea. The most important figure was Park Chung Heea military general who came to power through a coup in 1961 and ruled until his murder in 1979.
Its regime gave priority to rapid economic growth, relegating social welfare to the lowest of priorities. Child care was treated as an individual responsibility, not the state.
Os public systems to categorize and take care of children – were abandoned, lost or runaway – were extremely limitedand the authorities in most cases put the burden in their parents to recover their separate children. This is probably why, after minimal checks, the authorities referred Tak-un to an adoption agency.
Western authorities often interpreted the professionalism of Korean social workers as proof of liberal values shared with regard to child well-being and placed strong confidence in their procedures. When serious flaws appeared-as in Tak-un-they were often discarded as exceptions and not as signs of deeper systemic problems.
Even when the facts were confirmed in 1975, the Swedish authorities continued to refuse the child’s return.
The Swedish Consul General in Seoul at the time, Lars Bergargued that It was Tak-un’s “best interest” to remain in Swedeninstead of being sent back to “an uncertain destination with the father without a job or residence.”
This reflected, in part, the inner reality of Sweden: Like many western societies of the time, Sweden faced a shortage of adopted children, and the international adoption had become an important way to satisfy the desires of couples who wanted to adopt.
In the early 1970s, almost half of all internationally adopted children who arrived in Sweden came from South Korea. Which meant that when they arose cases such as Tak-un, Swedish authorities gave priority to the rights of adoptive parents, framing their defense in the speech of child well-being.
Earlier this month, the Sweden Adoption Commission published its own report, examining the Swedish practices of international adoption, including those involving South Korea; recommending the end of Swedes to adopt children abroad.
Tak-un never returned. According to The Conversation, he uses his Swedish name and lives in a small town in Sweden. Despite contact attempts, it did not answer. It is still uncertain if the father’s message has ever come to him or if he knows something about his early years in Korea.
“But the story of Tak-un is not just a painful exception-it is a disturbing reminder of what has been lost in the name of care,” writes the researcher Youngeun Koin the article.
