S. Korean President apologizes for stolen children adopted overseas

 

S. Korean president apologises over foreign adoptions of stolen children

Asia / Pacific

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung on Thursday offered a “heartfelt apology” for the country’s ill-managed adoption programme of the 1970s and 1980s that led to tens of thousands of children being sent to new homes abroad. An inquiry in March found that many of the children were wrongfully taken, even stolen, from their biological parents. 

Issued on: 02/10/2025 - 11:21

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FRANCE 24

Photos of adoptees participating at the Overseas Korean Adoptees Gathering are displayed on a large screen during the conference in Seoul, South Korea, on May 21, 2024. © Jae C Hong, AP

South Korea’s president apologised Thursday for poorly managed foreign adoption programmes that were rife with abuses and fraud, months after the country’s truth commission admitted the state's responsibility for such practices for the first time.

President Lee Jae Myung said in a Facebook post that he was offering a “heartfelt apology and words of comfort” on behalf of the country to South Koreans adopted abroad and their adoptive and birth families.

Findings by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and recent court rulings have confirmed some cases of human rights abuses in the course of international adoptions, Lee said, adding that the government failed in its oversight role in such cases. He did not elaborate.

Lee said he “feels heavy-hearted” when he thinks about the “anxiety, pain and confusion” that South Korean adoptees would have suffered when they were sent abroad as children. He asked officials to formulate systems to safeguard the human rights of adoptees and support their efforts to find their birth parents.

South Korea has faced growing pressure to address widespread fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption programmes, particularly during a heyday in the 1970s and 1980s when the country allowed thousands of children to be adopted each year.

Records falsified

Many adoptees discovered their records were falsified to portray them as abandoned orphans, while others were removed, or even stolen, from their birth families.

In a landmark report in March, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded the government bore responsibility for facilitating adoption programmes that were driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs. 

The report followed a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States and Australia. 

Its finding broadly aligned with a 2024 Associated Press investigation, in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), which detailed how South Korea’s governments, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to supply around 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas, despite years of evidence that many were procured through questionable or outright unscrupulous means.

After years of delay, South Korea in July ratified the Hague Adoption Convention, an international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions. The treaty took effect in South Korea on Wednesday.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)