SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean government said it plans to end dwindling foreign adoptions of Korean children, while United Nations investigators expressed “serious concern” over what they described as Seoul’s failure to ensure truth-finding and reparations for widespread human rights violations linked to decades of foreign mass adoptions.
The announcement on Friday came hours after the United Nations human rights office released South Korea’s response to investigators urging Seoul to outline concrete plans to address complaints of adoptees sent abroad with falsified or abused records by foreign parents.
The issue has rarely been discussed at the UN level, even as South Korea faces growing pressure to confront widespread fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption program, particularly during a boom in the 1970s and 1980s when it sent thousands of children to the West each year.
The country will phase out foreign adoptions over a five-year period, with the aim of reaching zero by 2029 at the latest as it tightens welfare policies for children in need of care, said Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Seuran during a briefing.
South Korea approved foreign adoptions of 24 children in 2025, down from about 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 prioritized the best interests of the children, there may also have been other competing interests,” Lee said.
“Now, with the adoption system being restructured in a public framework, and with the Ministry of Health and the government having a greater role in the process for the approval of adoptions, we have the opportunity to reassess whether international adoption is really a necessary option,” she added, citing efforts to promote domestic adoptions.
The UN urges Seoul to offer stronger remedies
UN investigators, including special rapporteurs on trafficking, enforced or involuntary disappearance 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 the consent of her biological parents, based on documents falsely describing her as an abandoned orphan.
Kim said she suffered severe physical and sexual abuse from her adopters and petitioned the UN as part of a wider effort to seek accountability from the governments and adoption agencies in South Korea and France.
Citing broader systemic issues and the Kim case, the UN investigators criticized 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 remembrance.”
They also expressed concern over the government’s suspension of a fact-finding investigation into past adoption abuses and fraud, despite reports of serious violations including cases that could amount to enforced disappearances.
In its response, South Korea highlighted past reforms focused on preventing abuse including a 2011 law that reintroduced judicial oversight of foreign adoptions, ending decades of control by private agencies and resulting in a significant reduction in international placements.
South Korea also cited recent steps to centralize adoption authority.
However, the government said more adoption investigations and stronger reparations for victims depended on future legislation. She offered no new measures to address the large 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 who represents Kim, called South Korea’s response “superfluous.” He noted promises of stronger reparations, which were meant to reduce the need for victims to litigate, are not clearly spelled out in the bills that propose relaunching the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.
The government also vetoed a bill in April that would have lifted the statute of limitations for state-related human rights violations, although that was before President Lee Jae Myung took office in June. Lee issued an apology in October over past adoption problems, as recommended by the truth commission.
Choi, who represents several plaintiffs suing the government over human rights abuses under past dictatorships, said they often face protracted legal battles when authorities dismiss truth commission findings as inconclusive or cite expired statutes of limitations.
Pressure grows to address adoption problems
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 even though she had a family.
After a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States and Australia, the truth commission in March recognized Kim and 55 other adoptees as victims of human rights violations including falsified child origins, lost records and child protection failures.
This 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, depends on whether lawmakers establish a new truth commission through legislation.
The commission’s findings acknowledged state responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program riddled with fraud and abuse. The program was driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulate children’s backgrounds and origins. The findings largely aligned with earlier reporting by The Associated Press.
The AP investigation, in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), detailed how the South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked together to send an estimated 200,000 Korean children overseas despite evidence that many were acquired through dubious 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 abandonment procedures while shipping thousands of children abroad each year.
Western nations have largely ignored the abuses and sometimes pressured South Korea to maintain supply to meet their high demand for babies.