SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A 52-year-old woman who was adopted to a French family in 1984 without her biological parents’ consent has filed for compensation from South Korea’s government, citing how authorities at the time fraudulently documented her as an orphan although she had a family.

The rare petition filed by Yooree Kim came months after South Korea’s truth commission recognized her and 55 other adoptees as victims of human rights violations, including falsified child origins, lost records and child protection failures.

Her case was highlighted last year in an Associated Press investigation in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation found that South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem for decades to supply some 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas through questionable or downright unscrupulous means.

Their stories have triggered a reckoning that has shaken the international adoption industry, which took root in South Korea before spreading worldwide. Under pressure from adoptees, the Seoul government launched a fact-finding investigation, and hundreds submitted their cases for review.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    16 days ago

    I always saw that kind of adoption from countries far away, as a sort of human trade, and I never understood why it was legal.