Singapore: Australian adoptees say South Korea must act to make it easier for adoption records to be accessed and families to reunite, after the country’s leader apologised for human rights violations caused by its overseas adoption program.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung offered a “heartfelt apology and words of comfort” on behalf of the country to adoptees, their parents and birth parents in a Facebook post on Thursday, acknowledging the “anxiety, pain, and confusion” many had endured.
Rows of babies waiting for overseas adoption in 1984 at a South Korea orphanage.
A government apology was one of the key recommendations of South Korea’s landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Earlier this year, the inquiry concluded that systemic fraud and abuse had plagued the country’s privatised adoption program, including falsified orphan registrations, leading to a profit-driven “mass exportation of children” with minimal procedural oversight. The findings were based on complaints made by adoptees in 11 countries, including Australia.
Australian-Korean adoptee group KADS Connect said that “words alone are not enough” and expressed its dismay that the apology was delivered via Facebook post, without an official ceremony, media, adoptees or their families present.
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“Written in Korean, it was inaccessible to most overseas adoptees, and it fails to fully acknowledge the Korean state’s responsibility in the adoption system,” KADS Connect co-founder Anna Trifonopoulos said.
“Both the Australian and South Korean governments must take meaningful steps to ensure that adoptees can trace and connect with their families safely, while also supporting adoptees and their families to reclaim and reconnect to their identities and histories with dignity.”
Korean Adoptees in Australia Network Inc president Shaun Kwak echoed this call, saying better resourced post-adoption services were the top priority so adoptees could seek “the truth of their individual origins should they choose to”.
