Beijing: Australian-South Korean adoptees will give personal testimony to a new inquiry that will, for the first time, probe alleged failures in the decades-long adoption program between the two countries.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek has appointed retired ACT Magistrate Robert Cook to lead the inquiry, which has already started its first stage of auditing state and Commonwealth practices that facilitated adoptions between Australia and South Korea from 1964 to 1999.
During the second stage, to commence in July, adoptees will be able to submit their personal testimonies and request that their adoption paperwork be investigated, with the department opening expressions of interest for this process on a dedicated website. Cook’s final report is due in December.
Australia’s investigation was triggered by a landmark inquiry by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which last year found evidence of widespread fraud and malpractice in the country’s adoption program, including the falsification of papers.
Though only a few Australian adoptees participated in that inquiry, the findings echoed the concerns many others had long held about their own adoptions, including irregularities and even falsehoods in their official adoption files.
Australian-South Korean advocacy group KADS Connect said adoptees had waited a long time for answers.
“This investigation is an important and overdue step in acknowledging Australia’s role in the systematic human rights violations that occurred in Korean intercountry adoption,” KADS Connect co-founder Samara Kim said.
“We would also like to see a more explicit pathway for redress and meaningful support for adoptees who are still struggling against enormous institutional barriers to access their original files and searching for their families.”
In terms of references released this week, the Australian inquiry will investigate whether government processes “contributed to, or failed to prevent, the occurrence of illegal or illicit practices in Australia” and whether “inadequately evidenced adoptions” occurred.
Plibersek said adoptees and their families would be at the centre of the investigation’s efforts.
“We can’t erase the past, but our hope is that this investigation will bring some answers for the families and communities who were negatively affected by historic adoption practices,” she said.
Around 200,000 South Korean babies were sent overseas for adoption in the decades after the end of the Korean War. This included some 3600 adopted by Australian families since late 1970s, with most cases facilitated by the Seoul-based Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) – one of four private agencies investigated by the South Korean inquiry.
At least four Australians were given a “truth confirmed” status by the South Korean inquiry last year, which found their adoption paperwork was fabricated. Some files contained conflicting papers that said they were orphaned while also recording details of their biological parents.
That inquiry concluded the country’s legacy as the world’s biggest baby exporter was premised on a profit-driven system that facilitated the “mass exportation of children to meet demand” with minimal procedural oversight.
Carissa Smith, who was sent to Australia for adoption in 1986, believes her records contain inconsistencies and that important information about her identity has been altered or lost.
“Like many adoptees, I have spent years trying to piece together my own history from incomplete records,” she said.
“What gives me hope is that, for the first time, Australia is formally examining its own role in these adoptions. This investigation is not just about paperwork. It is about understanding the lifelong impact these practices have had on adoptees and their families.
“I hope it will help answer difficult questions about whether Australian authorities recognised warning signs, how decisions were made, and whether more could have been done to protect children.”
Kim said adoptees would continue to push for the Australian inquiry to go beyond the 1999 cut-off, which was the same one used in the South Korean inquiry.
“The Commonwealth’s expanded role in intercountry adoption from 1999 onwards warrants its own scrutiny,” she said.
This masthead has previously revealed that former NSW government social worker Josie McSkimming raised internal concerns about Eastern Social Welfare Society practices, and the vetting processes for adoptive parents undertaken by the state’s adoption branch, when she was an employee there in the 1980s.
She also disclosed how she and her husband, who was not a department employee, were tasked with escorting two South Korean toddlers on a flight home from Seoul to their new lives in Australia following a 1984 work trip to meet Eastern Social Welfare Society representatives.
In October, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung issued an apology on behalf of the country to adoptees and their families for the failures in the adoption program.
In February, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission reopened its investigation into the program and began accepting new cases after its previous mandate ended with more than 2000 complaints unresolved.
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Lisa Visentin is the North Asia correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Beijing. She was previously a federal political correspondent based in Canberra.Connect via X or email.