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Editor’s note
This article is the 12th and last in a series about inter-country adoptions. While over 160,000 Korean children have been adopted abroad since the 1950-53 Korean War, it is believed that many cases have infringed on relevant laws or violated children's right to know the truth about their filiation. The series will review such violations in transnational adoptions of Korean children and elsewhere, and discuss receiving countries' moves for their own investigations. This series is co-organized with Human Rights Beyond Borders. ― ED.
Lee Kyung-eun / Courtesy of Lee Kyung-eun
In March 2023, I met a delegation from the Swedish government at my office. They were an investigation committee on inter-country adoption abuses, and we had met a year earlier in Europe for an intensive consultation shortly after they began their work.
Sweden wasn't the only country to undertake such investigative efforts. A handful of other Western European countries were or are currently reviewing past inter-country adoption abuses at the urging of adoptees, who have raised concerns about illicit practices in their adoptions. After varying degrees of pressure from the media and adoptees, these governments have agreed to look further into these matters.
During my first meeting with the Swedish investigation committee, I offered three recommendations that are overarching enough to be considered principals for an investigation.
First, as inter-country adoption involves more than one country and entails shared responsibility between the receiving and sending countries, any investigative effort should occur in both countries. Many investigations remain limited to the receiving side, thereby severely undermining the inquiry, especially because many crucial decisions are made in states of origin. Accordingly, I recommended that the investigators visit the country of origin and include the opinions of local experts.
Based on this recommendation, they seemed bewildered to attempt such an investigative endeavor. They reasoned that it could be challenging to collect such opinions because different countries had large waves of adoptees at different periods. For example, since the largest number of Korean adoptions occurred before the 1990s, many Korean adoptees are now in their 30s or 40s or older. Even if the investigators attempted such a feat, they said securing assistance in those states of origin would be challenging. As such, the team didn’t even entertain the idea of entering China.
Despite such obstacles, it's notable that Korea was included in the list of countries under investigation, especially in light of European receiving countries' attitudes toward Korea as an exporting country, which we may describe as contradictory compared to other areas of their relationship.
On the one hand, receiving countries deem Korea to be a peer with similar levels of political, economic and social development. On the other hand, Korea has long been a major source of children for adoption; no doubt this has been reinforced by European receiving countries' belief in Korea's inter-country adoption program as transparent, safe and clean. Even amid a wave of inter-country adoption scandals that erupted in the media throughout the world, Korea remained on the periphery. Unlike typical states of origin, Korea is an OECD country where adoptable children are often healthy, fully vaccinated and younger than 2 years old. The major adoption agencies had historically provided comprehensive services, including escorting children overseas to adoptive parents, thus saving adoptive parents a trip to Korea.
With all these convenient services to deliver children to receiving countries from a wealthy, highly advanced state, one wonders why these receiving countries never asked the fundamental question, "Why is this happening in Korea?"
A letter sent from Korea's then-Health Minister Koh Jae-pil in 1975 to Swedish parents who adopted a Korean girl, named Emma Gate after adoption. This letter shows inter-country adoption from Korea was a systematic one involving the government. Courtesy of Emma Gate, Lee Kyung-eun
International standards are clear that when a family cannot protect a child, the state must protect that child. Korea, a country that boasts of its turnaround from a recipient to a donor country, has consistently failed to provide sufficient protection for its children, even when it suffers the lowest birthrate in the world. If Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and other receiving countries do not export their children, why not question why Korea does so?
Moreover, looking beyond Korea, in states of origin that suffer from repeated cases of illicit practices, why has it taken so long for receiving countries to mount such investigations? We can conclude that either the receiving countries did not know, which demonstrates a failure in shared responsibility between receiving and sending countries to protect the rights of children, or receiving countries cared more about maintaining a steady source from which to acquire children rather than asking critical questions.
I cannot answer why receiving countries never asked such questions about Korea, let alone other countries of origin. During the past two years, I have asked European diplomats, government officers and experts such questions, but I have never received an answer. This lack of response has not deterred me from asking, and I hope that any adoptee, adoptive family or birth family member will also never stop asking their governments the hard questions.
My second recommendation is not to approach this issue as a case-by-case problem but to examine the systematic flaws and patterns of abuse. One should examine the immigration system of receiving countries, including the rules and procedures that allow children to enter the country for adoption.
Lastly, receiving governments should not rely on adoptees to petition the authorities for investigations. Adoptees have suffered enough injustice. They are not the ones who have to remedy the abuses brought upon them by their own governments' negligence. On the contrary, receiving governments have a duty to pursue investigations actively.
I gave these three recommendations to the Swedish investigation committee, but I also offer these to any adoptee pursuing the truth. Do not be dissuaded by the lack of answers you receive, but keep posing those tough questions and continue your pursuit to the right to origins. Whatever discouragement you may feel, please know that your efforts have been fruitful; otherwise, receiving countries would never be undertaking these investigations.
Human Rights Beyond Borders (HRBB) welcomes the pursuit of truth, justice and rectification or reparation for adoptees in their receiving countries. Therefore, HRBB has started a more active campaign to lobby the receiving countries' governments to bring about better, more fundamental and sustainable changes. Our website is open, so please give your thoughts to contact@hrbb.org.
Lee Kyung-eun (kyung.lee@hrbb.org) is director of Human Rights Beyond Borders and author of the Korean-language book, "The Children-selling Country," and the English book, "The Global Orphan Adoption System: South Korea's Impact on Its Origin and Development."
