South Korea has announced plans to cease its dwindling foreign adoptions of Korean children, a move that follows “serious concern” voiced by United Nations investigators.
The UN has criticised Seoul’s perceived failure to ensure truth-finding and reparations for widespread human rights violations linked to decades of mass overseas adoptions.
The government’s announcement on Friday came just hours after the United Nations human rights office released South Korea’s response to investigators.
These investigators had urged Seoul to outline concrete plans to address the grievances of adoptees sent abroad, many with falsified records or who suffered abuse by foreign parents.
While the issue has rarely been discussed at the UN level, South Korea has faced increasing pressure to confront the extensive fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption programme. This was particularly prevalent during a boom in the 1970s and 1980s, when thousands of children were annually sent to Western countries.
Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Seuran said during a briefing that the country will phase out foreign adoptions over a five-year period, aiming to reach zero by 2029 at the latest.
The transition will coincide with the tightening of welfare policies for children in need of care.
South Korea approved foreign adoptions of 24 children in 2025, down from around 2,000 in 2005 and an annual average of more than 6,000 during the 1980s.
In the health ministry’s briefing and response to the UN, officials focused on future improvements rather than past problems.
“Adoptions were mainly handled by private adoption agencies before, and while they presumably prioritised the best interests of the child, there may have also been other competing interests,” Ms Lee said.
“Now, with the adoption system being restructured into a public framework, and with the Health Ministry and the government having a larger role in the process for approving adoptions, we have an opportunity to reassess whether international adoption is truly a necessary option,” she added, citing efforts to promote domestic adoptions.
UN investigators, including special rapporteurs on trafficking, enforced or involuntary disappearances and child abuse, raised the adoption issue with Seoul after months of communication with Yooree Kim. The 52-year-old was sent to a French family in 1984 without her biological parents’ consent, based on documents falsely describing her as an abandoned orphan.
Ms Kim said that she endured severe physical and sexual abuse by her adopters and petitioned the UN as part of a broader effort to seek accountability from governments and adoption agencies in South Korea and France.
Citing broader systemic issues and Ms Kim’s case, UN investigators criticised South Korea for failing to give adoptees effective access to remedies for serious abuses and for the “possible denial of their rights to truth, reparations, and memorialisation”.
They also voiced concern over the suspension of a government fact-finding investigation into past adoption abuses and fraud, despite reports of grave violations including cases that may amount to enforced disappearances.
In its response, South Korea highlighted past reforms focused on abuse prevention including a 2011 law that reinstated judicial oversight of foreign adoptions, which ended decades of control by private agencies and resulted in a significant drop in international placements.
South Korea also cited recent steps to centralise adoption authority.
However, the government said further adoption investigations and stronger reparations for victims would hinge on future legislation. It offered no new measures to address the vast backlog of inaccurate or falsified records that have blocked many adoptees from reconnecting with birth families or learning the truth about their origins.
Choi Jung Kyu, a human rights lawyer representing Ms Kim, called South Korea’s response “perfunctory”. He noted that promises of stronger reparations, which were meant to reduce the need for victims to litigate, are not clearly spelled out in draft bills proposing a relaunch of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.
The government also vetoed a bill in April that would have removed the statute of limitations for state-related human rights violations, although that was before President Lee Jae Myung took office in June. Ms Lee issued an apology in October over past adoption problems, as recommended by the truth commission.
Mr Choi, who represents multiple plaintiffs suing the government over human rights abuses under past dictatorships, said they often face prolonged legal battles when authorities dismiss truth commission findings as inconclusive or cite expired statutes of limitations.
Ms Kim, who could not immediately be reached for comment, filed a rare petition for compensation against the South Korean government in August, noting that authorities at the time of her adoption falsely documented her as an orphan despite having a family.
Following a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the US and Australia, the truth commission in March recognized Ms Kim and 55 other adoptees as victims of human rights violations including falsified child origins, lost records and child protection failures.
That was weeks before the commission halted its adoption investigation following internal disputes among commissioners over which cases warranted recognition as problematic. The fate of the remaining 311 cases, either deferred or incompletely reviewed, hinges on whether lawmakers establish a new truth commission through legislation.
The commission’s findings acknowledged state responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse. The program was driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins. The findings largely aligned with previous reporting by The Associated Press.
The AP investigation, in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), detailed how South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to send some 200,000 Korean children overseas despite evidence that many were procured through questionable or unscrupulous means.
Seoul’s past military governments passed special laws promoting foreign adoptions, removing judicial oversight and giving vast powers to private agencies, which bypassed proper child relinquishment procedures while shipping thousands of children overseas each year.
Western nations largely ignored the abuses and sometimes pressured South Korea to maintain the supply to meet their high demand for babies.
