Park Sun Young, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, comforted adopter Yooree Kim at a press conference in Seoul, South Korea on March 26. Ahn Young-Joon/AP Closed subtitles
Seoul, South Korea - South Korea's government investigation into human rights violations in past international adoptions led to the landmark's recognition of government responsibility in March, which has stopped.
Adopters and advocates accuse the country of politicization and lack of understanding within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is the government agency leading the investigation.
South Korea is one of the major countries that bring children abroad for adoption. According to official data, South Korea has adopted nearly 170,000 babies since 1955, and experts suspect the actual number is high. 65% of them went to the United States.
The investigation began in 2022, when a petition from 367 South Korean adopters in 11 countries, including the United States, said they were mistakenly registered as orphans for adoption. In a temporary report in March, the bipartisan truth and reconciliation committee found that in 56 cases, adoption agencies forged or vague documents in the process promoted by the government.
However, the Commissioner disagrees on the issue of prompting adopters’ petitions: the lack of accurate documentation.
Last month, the committee decided to put the remaining 311 cases on hold, citing differences of opinion and insufficient time among the Commissioners. The current investigation deadline ends in late May.
Minutes of the April meeting showed four committee members and chairman Park Sun Young argued whether adopters needed clear evidence that their identities were deliberately forged as admitted victims.
They postponed the other 42 cases presented at the meeting, saying that the cases lack such evidence.
The other four members of the committee said the lack of accurate documentation itself is evidence of human rights violations and government negligence.
Rev. Kim Do Hyun, president of Crut, a civic organization that adopts North Korea abroad, said those who lack documents are victims of greater rights violations. Kim has advocated South Korean adopters and helped them find their roots for more than 20 years.
"The intention to destroy the right to origin of children is deeply embedded in the practice of creating orphan registration," King said.
The committee found that the adoption agency sent the baby to a “abandoned child” when it actually disappeared or had parents. The South Korean government has passed legislation and neglect to freely grasp the institutions to collect adoption fees and donations that the committee calls the "child trade."
Born in 1979 in 1979, Jonggeun Song passed in the Netherlands at the age of 4, and protested on April 1 in front of the South Korean Child Rights Protection Agency in Seoul, South Korea. He holds books, ``fake documents, broken lives, release records, release records. Chris Jung/Nurphoto Closed subtitles
The study found that the orphan status of the vast majority of Korean adopters is fabricated.
Because documents about their origins do not exist or are forged, adopters are often stuck in trouble when trying to find their own birth family.
Pastor Kim said the committee recognized the contradictory nature of widespread document forgery, while insisting on proving that.
Adopters who are petitioning for investigation hope the committee will help them track their roots and verify their long-term struggle with adoption agencies and the South Korean government’s child welfare organizations.
"(The Truth and Reconciliation Commission) is actually the only way to investigate and thoroughly review adopters," said Peter Møller, a South Korean adopter in Denmark, who is co-founder of the Danish Korean Rights Group, which led the petition work.
But contrary to their wishes, Moller said: "In the domestic political struggle, these 311 cases have been taken hostage, including mine."
Former President Yoon Suk Yeol appointed controversial figures to lead the organization. A few days after the martial law was declared, he nominated his chairman Park, which led to the president's impeachment.
The park has sparked objections from some staff, civil society and state victims of violence. They cite her praise for the 1961 military coup and dictator Chun Doo-Hwan, who said Park was not suitable for leading an organization whose mission was to contribute to national unity by clarifying the truth about state violence and human rights abuses involved in government.
Moller said Parker and some commissioners may have been politically motivated to avoid accusing past Conservative government of misconduct, as most international adoptions were conducted under military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.
He regrets that the basic human rights issues of adopters “reduce it to the level of political views.”
The current committee is scheduled to close in November. In order to conduct a moratorium on the investigation, the new term of the committee is required to be approved by the parliament. Several bills aimed at expanding its mandate and strengthening its transparency and accountability have been proposed by opposition MPs.
Moller said he would like to see the committee "return to its reality - this beacon, an independent, non-political beacon to achieve truth and reconciliation".