Nearly 300 adoptees demand S. Korea probe their adoptions
Nearly 300 South Koreans who were adopted to European and American parents as children are demanding South Korea investigate their adoptions, which they suspect were based on falsified documents that laundered their real status or identities as agencies raced to export children
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Nearly 300 South Koreans who were adopted to European and American parents as children have so far filed applications demanding South Korea’s government to investigate their adoptions, which they suspect were based on falsified documents that laundered their real status or identities as agencies raced to export children.
The Denmark-based group representing the adoptees also called for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to prevent agencies from destroying records as they face increasing scrutiny about their practices during a foreign adoption boom that peaked in the 1980s.
The 283 applications submitted to Seoul’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission through Tuesday describe numerous complaints about lost or distorted biological origins, underscoring a deepening rift between the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees and their birth nation decades after scores of Korean children were carelessly removed from their families.
Peter Møller, attorney and co-founder of the Danish Korean Rights Group, said he also plans to sue two Seoul-based agencies – Holt Children’s Services and Korea Social Services – over their unwillingness to fully open their records to adoptees.
