Commission highlights fraud and abuse in South Korea foreign adoption programme

Truth and Reconciliation Commission chairwoman Park Sun Young, right, comforts adoptee Yooree Kim during a press conference in Seoul (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

South Korea’s truth commission has concluded that the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption programme 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 report 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 1980s.