Since 1953, almost 200,000 Korean children have been sent to 14 Western countries through inter-country adoption. According to this article, published in the Korea Herald, of the thousands of adoptees and families that attempt to reunite every year, less than 3 percent are successful, as documents have often been lost or falsified by adoption agencies, hindering these reunions. The adoption structure in Korea has long been plagued with complaints that false documents have been used to send children abroad for adoption, that unwed mothers have been pressured to give up their children, and that birth parents have been encouraged to think of inter-country adoption as a “study abroad” opportunity rather than a permanent separation. Many adoptees have joined forces with unwed mothers’ groups, lawmakers and special interest lawyers, calling for changes to the system to better safeguard the rights of the children involved and protect unwed mothers from being pressured to give up their children.
These groups have had some success. In August 2011, amendments to the Special Adoption Law were passed and went into effect a year later. These amendments, along with Korea’s recent announcement that it was to join the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption, represent a step forward in improving the Korean adoption system for these adoptee rights groups. The amendments aim to facilitate transparency in Korean foreign adoptions by requiring adoptions in Korea to be finalized in court which, among other outcomes, would help prevent citizenship issues that affect many adoptees.
According to the article, however, adoption agencies and related groups are pushing to overturn the amendments just nine months after they went into effect, claiming that the legal obligation for parents to register their children has led to an increase in the number of mothers abandoning their children. In actuality, birth registration was in the Special Adoption Law before the amendments were passed. And, as it stands, the Special Adoption Law actually erases the record of the child’s birth parents after an adoption is successfully completed. Adoptees, single mothers’ groups, lawyers and lawmakers involved with the revisions say the government needs to provide more support to unwed and single parents by creating child support laws and to allow Korean adoptees more rights in Korea ― including the right to know who their biological parents are.