SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean government said it plans to end the declining adoption of Korean children by foreigners, while U.N. investigators expressed “serious concerns” about what they called Seoul's failure to provide truth and reparations. massive violations of human rights stems from decades of mass international adoption.
Friday's announcement came hours after the UN human rights office released South Korea's response investigators calling on Seoul to lay out concrete plans to consider complaints from adoptees sent abroad with falsified documents or abused by foreign parents.
The issue has rarely been discussed at the UN level, even as South Korea faces growing pressure to combat the widespread fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption program, especially during the boom of the 1970s and 1980s when it sent thousands of children to the West each year.
The country will phase out foreign adoptions over five years, aiming to reach zero no later than 2029, as it tightens welfare policies for children in need of care, Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Seoran said during a briefing.
South Korea has approved 24 international adoptions in 2025, up from about 2,000 in 2005 and an average of more than 6,000 per year in the 1980s.
In the health ministry briefing and the UN response, officials focused on future improvements rather than past problems.
“In the past, adoptions were primarily handled by private adoption agencies, and while they appeared to prioritize the best interests of the child, there may have been other competing interests,” Lee said.
“Now that the adoption system is being restructured into a government structure and the Department of Health and the government are playing a greater role in the adoption approval process, we have an opportunity to reassess whether international adoption is truly a necessary option,” she added, citing efforts to promote domestic adoption.
UN calls on Seoul to offer stronger legal protections
UN investigators, including special rapporteurs on trafficking in persons, enforced or involuntary disappearances and child abuse, raised the adoption issue with Seoul after months of communication with Yuri Kim. The 52-year-old was sent to live with a French family in 1984 without the consent of her biological parents based on documents that falsely described her as an abandoned orphan.
Kim said she suffered severe physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her adoptive parents and has petitioned the United Nations as part of broader efforts to remedy the situation. seek accountability from governments and adoption agencies in South Korea and France.
Citing broader systemic problems and the Kim case, UN investigators criticized South Korea for failing to provide adoptees with effective access to remedies for serious abuses and for “possibly denying their rights to truth, reparation and memorialization.”
They also expressed concern about the government's suspension. fact-finding investigation in past adoption abuses and fraud, despite reports of serious violations, including cases that may amount to enforced disappearances.
In its response, South Korea highlighted past reforms aimed at preventing abuses, including a 2011 law that restored judicial oversight of international adoptions, ending decades of oversight by private agencies and leading to a significant decline in the number of international adoptions.
South Korea also mentioned recent steps to centralize adoption powers.
However, the government has said further investigations into adoptions and greater compensation for victims will depend on future legislation. He proposed no new measures to address the massive backlog of inaccurate or falsified records that prevent many adoptees from reconnecting with their birth families or learning the truth about their ancestry.
Choi Jung-gyu, a human rights lawyer representing Kim, called South Korea's response “superficial.” He noted that promises of larger compensation, which would reduce the need for victims to go to court, were not clearly spelled out in bills proposing to reopen trials. Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights violations.
In April, the government also vetoed a bill that would have removed the statute of limitations for human rights violations involving state involvement, although it had previously done so. President Lee Jae-myung took office in June. In October, Lee apologized for past adoption problems, as recommended by the truth commission.
Choi, who represents several plaintiffs suing the government over human rights abuses under past dictatorships, says they often face lengthy legal battles when authorities reject truth commission findings as inconclusive or cite expired statutes of limitations.
Pressure is growing to solve adoption problems
Kim, who could not immediately be reached for comment, filed a rare compensation petition in August against the South Korean government, saying authorities falsely registered her as an orphan at the time of her adoption despite having a family.
After nearly three years of investigating complaints from 367 adopted children from Europe, the United States and Australia, the truth commission in March found Kim and 55 other adoptees to be victims of human rights violations, including falsification of children's origins, loss of records and failure to protect children.
That was weeks before the commission dropped its investigation into the adoption due to internal disputes among commission members over which cases deserved to be labeled problematic. The fate of the remaining 311 cases, either delayed or not fully resolved, depends on whether lawmakers create a new truth commission through legislation.
The commission's findings acknowledge the government's responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse. The program was based on attempts to reduce welfare costs and was supported by private agencies that often manipulated the origins and ancestry of children. The findings largely match previous Associated Press reporting.
AP investigation in collaboration with Frontline (PBS)detailed how the South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to send some 200,000 Korean children abroad despite evidence that many were acquired through dubious or unscrupulous means.
Seoul's previous military governments passed special laws encouraging foreign adoptions, eliminating judicial oversight and giving sweeping powers to private agencies that bypassed proper child abandonment procedures and sent thousands of children abroad each year.
Western countries largely ignored the abuses and sometimes pressured South Korea to maintain supplies to meet high demand for babies.
Kim Tong-hyun, Associated Press
