Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“South Korean governments committed numerous human rights violations over decades in a controversial programme that sent at least 170,000 children and babies abroad for adoption, a landmark inquiry has found. It said the government’s lack of oversight enabled the ‘mass exportation of children’ by private agencies that were driven by profit, and found examples of fraud, falsified records and coercion. Since the 1950s, South Korea has sent more children abroad for adoption than any other country, with most sent to Western countries. South Korea has since moved to tighten its adoption processes, but some adoptees and their biological parents say they are still haunted by what they went through. The BBC spoke to one woman who claimed her adoptive parents ‘took better care of the dog than they ever did of me’. ‘This is a shameful part of our history,’ said Park Sun-young, the chairperson of the commission, at a press briefing.” (03/26/25)