South Korea's truth commission says government responsible for fraud and abuse in foreign adoptions
South Korea’s truth commission has concluded that the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s truth commission has concluded that the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins.
The landmark report released Wednesday followed a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States and Australia, representing the most comprehensive examination yet of South Korea’s foreign adoptions, which peaked under a succession of military governments in the 1970s and ’80s.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a government-appointed fact-finding panel, said it confirmed human rights violations in 56 of the complaints and aims to review the remaining cases before its mandate expires in late May.
However, some adoptees and even a senior investigator on the commission criticized the cautiously written report, acknowledging that investigative limitations prevented the commission from more strongly establishing the government’s complicity.
That investigator, Sang Hoon Lee, a standing commissioner, also lamented the panel’s decision-making committee’s 5-4 vote on Tuesday to defer assessments of 42 other adoptees’ cases, citing a lack of documentation to sufficiently prove their adoptions were problematic. Lee and the commission’s conservative chairperson, Sun Young Park, did not specify which types of documents were central to the discussions.
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