South Korea reckons with many years of the overseas adoption scandal

Kim Tak-un was 4 years previous when he was adopted by a Swedish household in 1974. Initially from South Korea, Tak-un had lived along with his single father, a laborer who moved continuously for work. At some point in the summertime of 1974, whereas staying along with his aunt, Tak-un wandered exterior and disappeared.

Native police thought of him deserted and referred him to an adoption company, which organized his adoption to Sweden inside 5 months. When his father realized his son was lacking, he searched in all places, solely to find – too late – that Tak-un had already been despatched abroad. Devastated, he demanded Tak-un’s return. When the adoption company failed to reply, he went public with the story.

In March 2025, South Korea’s Reality and Reconciliation Fee launched preliminary findings from its investigation into the nation’s 72-year-old worldwide adoption program. The total report is anticipated within the subsequent few weeks because the investigation is now accomplished.

Primarily based on greater than 360 instances submitted by Korean adoptees from 11 nations, the fee uncovered widespread human rights violations, together with falsified paperwork, lack of parental consent and instances of kid switching – shaking up adoptees and their households.

Because the finish of the Korean Warfare (1950–1953), South Korea has despatched over 200,000 youngsters overseas, changing into the world’s largest nation for adoption even because it grew into a sophisticated economic system.

Current research have proven that worldwide adoption from South Korea started as a response to the massive variety of mixed-heritage youngsters born to Korean moms and US troopers in the course of the struggle.

It’s estimated that 1000’s of such youngsters had been born and South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, ordered their abroad placement on the grounds that they had been “unfit” for a nation imagined as ethnically homogeneous.

Nonetheless, worldwide adoption didn’t finish as soon as this perceived “emergency” was over. From the mid-Sixties onward, it expanded to incorporate youngsters from different weak backgrounds, together with these affected by poverty, household breakdown and out-of-wedlock births. This, and the function of worldwide adoption, is explored in my upcoming e-book.

This was intently tied to the insurance policies pursued by South Korea’s navy regimes. Crucial determine was Park Chung Hee, a navy basic who got here to energy by way of a 1961 coup and dominated till his assassination in 1979.

His regime prioritized fast financial development, relegating social welfare to the bottom precedence. Childcare was handled as a person, not a state, duty. As I level out in my earlier analysis, public programs to categorize and care for youngsters – whether or not deserted, misplaced, or runaway – had been extraordinarily restricted, and authorities largely positioned the burden on mother and father to retrieve their separated youngsters. That is most likely why, after solely cursory checks, authorities referred Tak-un to an adoption company.

Tak-un’s case attracted media consideration in Sweden as properly. Nonetheless, in an interview with Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish nationwide board of well being and welfare – which oversaw the Korean adoption program – dismissed the claims, stating they had been “99 p.c sure” the story was false and insisting that Korean social employees had adopted correct procedures.

The belief that Swedish authorities positioned in South Korean adoption procedures might have been due to the best way the Korean social employees offered their work. As the primary era of Koreans educated in US-style skilled social work, they framed worldwide adoption as being concerning the youngster, the significance of a household, and emotional wellbeing.

The analysis for my upcoming e-book reveals that whereas they could have genuinely believed in worldwide adoption as a legitimate type of youngster welfare, there have been additionally sensible the reason why this occurred. With nearly no public funding for youngster welfare, many noticed worldwide adoption – the place adoptive mother and father coated the prices of care – as a perfect option to apply their coaching.

In interviews with me, now-retired social employees acknowledged flaws in South Korea’s broader youngster welfare system, comparable to the shortcoming to confirm a baby’s true standing. But, with out public assets to construct a dependable system or prioritize household reunification, they typically handled worldwide adoption as a primary, reasonably than a final, resort.

Furthermore, the prevailing perception on the time that “regular” middle-class households supplied probably the most steady atmosphere for a kid’s growth supplied additional ethical justification for sending youngsters overseas.

Western authorities typically interpreted Korean social employees’ professionalism as proof of shared liberal youngster welfare values and positioned robust belief of their procedures. When severe flaws surfaced – as in Tak-un’s case – they had been continuously dismissed as exceptions reasonably than indicators of deeper systemic issues.

Even when the information had been confirmed in 1975, Swedish authorities nonetheless refused to return the kid. The Swedish consul-general in Seoul on the time, Lars Berg, argued that it was in Tak-un’s “finest curiosity” to stay in Sweden, reasonably than be despatched again to “an unsure destiny of the daddy with out work and residence.”

This mirrored, partly, Sweden’s home realities: Like many Western societies on the time, Sweden confronted a scarcity of adoptable youngsters, and worldwide adoption had change into an essential option to meet the desires of potential mother and father.

Within the early Seventies, almost half of all internationally adopted youngsters arriving in Sweden got here from South Korea. This meant that when points like Tak-un’s emerged, Swedish authorities prioritized the rights of adoptive mother and father, framing their protection within the language of kid welfare.

Sweden’s Adoption Fee has simply launched its personal report on June 2, analyzing the nation’s worldwide adoption practices, together with these involving South Korea. Echoing my analysis findings, it advisable an finish to permitting Swedes to undertake youngsters from overseas.

So, what turned of Tak-un? Finally, South Korean officers acquiesced to the Swedish authorities, and the Korean adoption company was cleared of any wrongdoing. Tak-un by no means returned. The final hint within the archives is his beginning father’s plea to listen to from him.

I situated Tak-un, who now goes by his Swedish title and lives in a small city in Sweden. Regardless of makes an attempt to succeed in him, he didn’t reply. It stays unsure whether or not his father’s message ever reached him or if he is aware of something about his formative years in Korea.

This silence isn’t merely private. A system that claimed to behave for the kid’s welfare as an alternative routinely erased adopted youngsters’s pasts, ignored their beginning households and determined their futures for them. Tak-un’s story isn’t only a painful exception – it’s a haunting reminder of what was misplaced within the title of care.

Youngeun Koo is an assistant professor on the Centre for East and South-East Asian Research, Lund College.

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