Programme, which began after Korean Warfare as a manner of eradicating mixed-race kids from society, violated human rights.
Revealed On 2 Oct 2025
South Korea’s president has apologised for a infamous foreign adoption scheme arrange after the 1950-53 Korean Warfare that prompted “anxiousness, ache, and confusion” to greater than 14,000 kids despatched overseas.
President Lee Jae-myung mentioned in a Fb put up on Thursday that he was providing “heartfelt apology and phrases of consolation” to South Koreans adopted overseas and their adoptive and beginning households, seven months after a Truth and Reconciliation Commission mentioned the programme violated the human rights of adoptees.
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The fee, which investigated complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the US and Australia, held the federal government accountable for facilitating adoptions by way of fraudulent practices, together with falsifying information to painting kids as deserted orphans and switching identities.
Lee mentioned he felt “heavy-hearted” when he thought concerning the “anxiousness, ache and confusion” that South Korean adoptees would have suffered once they have been despatched overseas as kids, and requested officers to formulate methods to safeguard the human rights of adoptees and assist their efforts to search out their beginning dad and mom.
Mass worldwide adoptions started after the Korean Warfare as a solution to take away mixed-race kids born to native moms and American GI fathers from a society that emphasised ethnic homogeneity, with greater than 140,000 kids despatched abroad between 1955 and 1999.
Overseas adoptions have continued in newer instances, with greater than 100 kids on common, usually infants born to single girls who face ostracism in a conservative society, nonetheless being despatched overseas for adoption every year within the 2020s.
After years of delay, South Korea in July ratified The Hague Adoption Conference, a global treaty meant to safeguard worldwide adoptions. The treaty took impact in South Korea on Wednesday.
Former president Kim Dae-jung apologised throughout a gathering with abroad adoptees in 1998, saying: “From the underside of my coronary heart, I’m really sorry. I deeply really feel that we now have dedicated a grave incorrect in opposition to you.”
However he stopped in need of acknowledging the state’s duty for the a long time of malpractice.
