Child Kidnapping On the Rise in China

The South Korean embassy in China posted an “Important Notice for the Prevention of Infant Kidnapping’ on its homepage on Nov. 15 for the 700,000 permanent residents and 5 million Korean tourists who visit China.

The embassy asked Koreans to educate their children about abduction prevention and prepare for kidnapping threat, saying that materialism in China is leading to the frequent kidnapping of children.

Some people point out that foreigners visiting China also need to be cautious as more and more people are kidnapping children there.

Child kidnapping is spreading to Shandong Province from the southern part of China, such as Guangdong and Yunnan provinces.

Kidnappers abduct children playing in parks or even steal sleeping children after breaking into others’ homes.

An 8-month-old child living in Gaozhou was abducted early in the morning on July 20 while his parents were asleep.

A 2-year-old boy was taken away by a kidnapper at an amusement park in Guangdong after his parents lost sight of their child.

A Chinese news agency said that the crimes are usually organized by 4-8 people. They form a kidnapping group, a delivery group, and a selling group. Kidnapped children are said to be sold to families without children for several thousand yuan (hundreds of thousands of won) to tens of thousands of yuan (several million won).

2-years olds and those under 2 are usually targeted for abduction in China because children will think their foster parents are their real parents when they are raised.

orionha@donga.com