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A group of South Koreans adopted in Europe has urged authorities to investigate their adoptions, which they say are based on forged documents and involve rights violations.
About 200,000 South Koreans have been adopted overseas in the past few decades, most of them in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly to white parents in the United States and Europe.
Critics claim that past authoritarian leaders saw adoption as a way to reduce the number of people to feed, solve the “problem” of unwed mothers and deepen ties with the democratic West.
“Our main goal is that all adoptees should have access to their own factual information — background information,” said Peter Møller, a lawyer and co-director of the Danish Korean Rights Group, which was adopted to Denmark in 1974.
“We are now fighting for the right to know our own true story,” he added at a news conference in Seoul.
He added that South Korean adoptees had submitted more than 300 applications for Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The committee is a government agency that investigates events from Japan’s rule of North Korea in 1910 until the end of South Korea’s dictatorship in 1993.
Mr Moller submits documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on November 15
Hundreds of adoption-related applications have been submitted by people in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, the United States and other countries.
Many want the truth and reconciliation commission to find out whether the government is also responsible for failing to monitor the agency, and to confirm whether the increase in adoptions is driven by increasing payments and donations from adoptive parents.
It is this narrative, many believe, that drives institutions to create their own supply.
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The complaints include inaccurate or falsified information in adoption documents that misrepresents their biological origins, such as wrong names, dates or places of birth, or details about biological parents.
“The reason why we seek the truth about past events is not to punish someone, but to resolve (adoptees’) resentments and prevent similar incidents from happening again,” activist Min Young Chang wrote in a joint statement . Korean civil society.
“When we address their grievances, adoptees abroad can restore their identities and reconcile with adoption agencies and the Republic of Korea.”
The commission said it plans to receive applications from adoptees by Dec. 9 and decide later this month whether to launch an investigation.
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