SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's government investigation into human rights violations in past international adoptions, which led to a landmark admission of government responsibility in March, has ground to a halt.
Adoptees and advocates are blaming the politicization and lack of understanding within the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the government body leading the investigation.
South Korea is one of the leading countries that sends children abroad for adoption. According to official data, nearly 170,000 babies have been adopted from South Korea since 1955, while experts suspect the actual number is higher. Sixty-five percent of them went to the United States.
The investigation began in 2022 at the petition of 367 South Korean adoptees from 11 countries, including the U.S., who said they were falsely registered as orphans to be put up for adoption. In an interim report in March, the bipartisan Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that in 56 cases, adoption agencies falsified or obscured documents in a process facilitated by the government.
But commissioners were divided over the very problem that prompted the adoptees' petition: a lack of accurate documentation.
And last month, the commission decided to put the remaining 311 cases on hold, citing differences of opinion among commissioners and shortage of time. The current term for investigation ends in late May.
Minutes from the April meeting show four commission members and chairwoman Park Sun Young argued over whether adoptees needed clear evidence their identities had been intentionally falsified to be recognized as victims.
They deferred 42 other cases that were presented for review at the meeting, saying those cases lack such evidence.
The commission's other four members said the lack of accurate documents was in itself a human rights violation and proof of government negligence.
Reverend Kim Do Hyun, president of KoRoot, a civic organization for Korean adoptees abroad, says people who lack documents are the victims of a bigger rights violation. Kim has advocated for South Korean adoptees and helped them find their roots for more than 20 years.
"The intention to destroy children's right to origin was deeply embedded in the practice of creating orphan registrations," Kim says.
The commission found that adoption agencies sent away babies as "abandoned children" when they in fact they were missing children or had parents. The South Korean government gave the agencies a free hand, through legislation and neglect, to collect adoption fees and donations in what the commission called a "child trade."
Adoptees may face long odds in search of their origins
Studies have found that the orphan status of an overwhelming majority of South Korean adoptees was fabricated.
Because documents about their origin are nonexistent or falsified, adoptees often run into a dead end when trying to find their birth family.
Rev. Kim says it's contradictory for the commission to recognize widespread document falsification and at the same time insist on the evidence to prove it.
Adoptees who petitioned for the investigation have hoped the commission would help them trace their roots and validate their long struggle with the adoption agencies and the South Korean government child welfare organization.
"The [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] is actually the only way for adoptees to have their cases investigated and thoroughly reviewed," says Peter Møller, a South Korean adoptee from Denmark. He is a co-founder of the Danish Korean Rights Group, which led the petition effort.
But contrary to their wish, Møller says, "The 311 cases, they have been taken hostage, my cases included, in a domestic political fight."
Politics bogs down the quest for truth and reconciliation
Former President Yoon Suk Yeol appointed controversial figures to head the organization. He nominated its chair, Park, just days after declaring martial law, which led to the president's impeachment.
And Park drew objections from some staffers, civic society and victims of state violence. Citing favorable remarks she has made about the 1961 military coup and dictator Chun Doo-hwan, they said Park was unfit to lead an organization whose mission contributes to national unity by clarifying truths about state violence and government-involved human rights abuse.
Møller says Park and some commissioners may be politically motivated to shy away from accusing past conservative governments for wrongdoings, as a majority of international adoptions took place under military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.
He regrets that the issue of adoptees' basic human rights was "pulled down to a level where it is about political opinions."
The current commission is set to close in November. For the suspended investigation to resume, a new term for the commission needs to be approved by parliament. Several bills aimed at expanding its mandate and strengthening its transparency and accountability have been filed, mostly by opposition lawmakers.
Møller says he wishes to see the commission "go back to what it was actually meant to be — this lighthouse, independent, nonpolitical lighthouse for truth and reconciliation."
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