Return records to adoptees and stop child trafficking disguised as adoption.

The Real Priority Is Ending International Adoption

The debate over where to store adoption records for Korean adoptees is gaining momentum once again. Millions of dollars are being allocated to secure the “perfect” building to hold records, many of which are blank, falsified, or incomplete. But let’s be honest: this is not the solution.

Let’s confront the real issue—the international adoption industry itself, which enabled the destruction of families, the falsification of identities, and the commodification of children for profit.

Here’s what we should be focusing on—and why record-keeping is a distraction from the real work ahead:

➤ 1. The Real Crime Is the Industry—Not the Filing System

• The global adoption industry enabled and profited from falsifying thousands of Korean children’s identities.
• Agencies sold children through legal documents filled with fiction—and that’s the definition of child trafficking.
• Preserving fake records in expensive buildings doesn’t change the fact that these documents were never accurate in the first place.

➤ 2. Adoptees Still Don’t Have Legal Right to Access Their Files

• A budget of $24,477,513.00 is the budget to store Korean adoptee records for 4 years. Millions will be spent on buildings and archival processes that don’t serve adoptees.
• Korean adoptees do not have a legal right to access their full birth records.
• So why funnel funds into a storage system that continues to exclude the very people the records are about?

➤ 3. A Million+ Were Already Spent Scanning Blank Pages for 9 years

• Huge resources have already been wasted digitizing blank or incomplete documents.
• Many records are missing, forged, or filled with fabricated details—names, birthdates, origins, and family history.
• These documents are evidence of human rights violations, not simply items to be archived.

➤ 4. Give Adoptees Their Records—Fake or Not

• Instead of building new structures to hide these files again, we should deliver every Korean adoptee their records, regardless of their accuracy.
• This is about truth and transparency—fundamental rights enshrined in both international and national law.
• Knowing the truth about one’s origins is a basic human right.

➤ 5. The National Rights Commission Isn’t Personally Impacted

• While well-intentioned, the people leading the Commission are not adoptees themselves.
• They are not the ones who lived through decades of identity loss, grief, or gaslighting.
• Without lived experience, their incentive to fight corruption or expose adoption profiteers is limited.

➤ 6. There Is No Neutral Record-Keeping in a Corrupt System

• Agencies that facilitated adoptions should never have been entrusted with storing or maintaining records.
• It’s a blatant conflict of interest—they had every reason to falsify and obscure the truth to continue profiting.
• Whether records are stored in a prestigious building or a basement, the problem remains: the content is untrustworthy.

➤ 7. Stopping International Adoption Is the Only Path to Justice

• International adoption, as it exists today, cannot be reformed—it must be abolished.
• The falsification of birth records is not a paperwork error—it’s evidence of child trafficking.
• We must stop this industry before it harms future families and children the way it harmed us.

➤ 8. This Isn’t About Feelings—It’s About Facts and Law

• Adoption is not just a “touchy subject.” It’s a system that violated the rights of thousands.
• Commodifying human lives through falsified paperwork is a violation of international law.
• Agencies are not saviors—they are part of a long-standing, legalized crime against children and families.

Korean adoptees don’t need a new building. We need justice.

Justice means giving us our records—false, blank, or altered—because we have the right to see the evidence of what was done to us. Justice means stopping the system that continues to traffic children under the guise of humanitarianism. And justice means no longer trusting those who profited from our loss to “protect” our history.

End international adoption. Fund the victims. Demand accountability.

Responding to Korean Adoptees Left Behind, Records Disappear Article Source