South Korean Adoptees Adopted from Denmark Seek Truth About Their Origins.
Danish adoptees call for South Korea to investigate adoptions. Will the U.S. Korean adoptees follow? If you are a Korean adoptee who would also like to seek the truth, join Adoption Truth and Transparency.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Dozens of South Koreans adopted by Danish parents decades ago have formally demanded the South Korean government investigate their adoptions, which they say were marred by widespread practices that falsified or obscured children’s origins.
Most South Korean adoptees sent abroad were registered by agencies as legal orphans found abandoned on the streets, although they frequently had relatives who could be easily identified and found. This made the children more easily adoptable as agencies raced to send more kids to the West at faster speeds.
“None of us are orphans,” said Peter Møller, attorney and co-head of the Danish Korean Rights Group, as he described the group’s members who filed the application.
“(In) a lot of papers, the Korean state at the time had stamped papers that say people were found on the streets. If you do a little bit of math, that would mean that from the 1970s and 1980s, Seoul would be flooded with baskets with children lying around in the streets. … Basements will be filled with lost child reports at police stations.”
Møller, who was adopted to Denmark in 1974, said about 50 more of the group’s members are expected to join the application and that he plans to come back to South Korea with their files in September.
The story continues here.
