SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said Thursday it will investigate 237 more cases of South Korean adoptees who suspect their family origins have been manipulated to facilitate their adoptions in Europe and the United States.
The new cases in the commission’s expanded investigation into South Korea’s overseas adoption boom involve adoptees from 11 countries, including the United States, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, who were adopted between 1960 and 1990. More than 370 adoptees from Europe, North America and Australia have filed requests for an investigation into their cases over the past year.
When the commission announced it would investigate the first 34 cases in December, it said the records of many adoptees sent west had clearly been tampered with and falsely labeled as orphans or had their identities falsified by using the data from a third person would have taken over.
The commission said most applicants allege their adoptions were based on falsified records that purged their status or origins to ensure their adoptability and expedite cross-border custody transfers. Some applicants asked the commission to investigate abuse they said they had experienced in South Korean orphanages or in the care of their foreign adoptive parents.
The commission’s potential findings could allow adoptees to take legal action against authorities or the government, which would otherwise be difficult as South Korean civil courts shift the burden of proof entirely to plaintiffs, who often lack information and resources.
Of the 271 cases accepted by the commission so far, 141 are Danish adoptees, including members of the Danish Korean Rights Group, co-led by adoptee activist Peter Møller, which submitted the first 51 applications in August last year. Other cases accepted by the commission include the cases of 28 adoptees from the US and 21 from Sweden, officials said.
The commission, which examines applications in the order in which they are submitted, is also expected to investigate the remaining 101 cases, officials said.
About 200,000 South Koreans, mostly girls, have been adopted into the West over the past six decades, forming what is believed to be the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees.
Most were placed with white parents in the US and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. South Korea was then ruled by a series of military dictatorships focused on economic growth and seeing adoption as a tool to reduce the number of mouths to feed, eliminate the “social problem” of unmarried mothers, and deepen ties with the democratic West.
The military governments enacted special laws to encourage foreign adoption, which in practice allowed adoption agencies to circumvent proper child abandonment practices, as they sent thousands of children to the West each year during the heyday of adoption.
Most adoptees were registered by authorities as abandoned orphans found abandoned on the streets, although they often had relatives who could be easily identified or located. This practice often makes it difficult or impossible to trace their roots.
It was only in 2013 that the South Korean government required foreign adoptions to go through family courts, ending a decade-long policy that allowed authorities to mandatorily child donations and international transfers of custody.