• A long overdue end to overseas adoption

After shifting in July from a privately led child adoption system to a public framework managed by central and local governments, South Korea has decided to gradually halt overseas adoptions of domestic children beginning next year. The move comes 73 years after the system was introduced in 1953. As recently as the early 2000s, more than 2,000 children were adopted overseas each year, but the figure fell to double digits starting in 2023. Under the current plan, overseas adoptions will be fully suspended beginning in 2029. South Korea, the only member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to have continued sending children abroad for adoption, is finally shedding the stigma of being labeled a “child-exporting country,” though the reckoning has come late.

Overseas adoption was introduced as part of efforts to address the aftermath of war. After the Korean War left more than 100,000 orphans and the number of children of mixed U.S. and Korean parentage increased, the country began sending children abroad for adoption. From the 1980s onward, children born to unwed mothers came to make up the majority of overseas adoptions. Under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, international adoption is regarded as a measure of last resort, to be chosen only when a child cannot be protected in the country of origin. Yet South Korea relied on the practice for decades, often justifying it on the grounds of social and economic hardship. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, about 170,000 children have been adopted overseas over the past 70 years, more than twice the number of domestic adoptions, which totaled about 82,000.

While overseas adoption did provide many children with the chance to grow up in stable families, critics have long warned that the system became commercialized as private organizations came to dominate adoption procedures. When it emerged that fees for each overseas adoption reached tens of millions of won, accusations followed that the practice amounted to profiting from the export of orphans. In March, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it had confirmed human rights violations in 56 cases among 375 adoptees sent to 11 countries, including the United States, Denmark and Sweden. The findings included cases in which children recorded as “missing” were falsely registered as “orphans.” Inadequate record management has also left many adoptees unable to locate their biological parents after reaching adulthood. These outcomes reflect a series of shameful failures rooted in the state’s neglect of its responsibility to protect adopted children.

Last year, domestic adoptions totaled 154, compared with 58 overseas adoptions. Although the proportion of domestic adoptions is rising, a full suspension of overseas adoption without stronger support for single-parent families and more robust domestic adoption policies risks merely extending periods of uncertainty for children awaiting placement. The core principle of child protection is that priority should be given to a child’s family of origin. The government must now fully shoulder its responsibility to ensure that all children, whether raised by biological or adoptive parents, can grow up in a warm and stable family environment.