SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s government said it plans to end 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 abuses related to decades of mass overseas adoptions.
The announcement on Friday came hours after the United Nations human rights office released South Korea’s response to investigators, asking Seoul to come up with concrete plans to address the grievances of adoptees sent abroad with falsified records or abused by foreign parents.
The issue has rarely been discussed at the UN level, even as South Korea faces growing pressure to address 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 five years, aiming to reach zero by 2029 at the latest, as it tightens welfare policies for children in need of care, Deputy Health and Welfare Minister Lee Seuran told a news conference.
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 in the 1980s.
In the health ministry’s briefing and response to the UN, officials focused on future improvements rather than past problems.
“Adoptions were primarily handled by private adoption agencies before, and while they probably prioritized the best interest of the child, there may have been other competing interests,” Lee said.
“Now, with the adoption system being restructured into a public framework, and the Ministry of Health and the government having a greater role in the adoption approval process, we have the opportunity to re-evaluate whether international adoption is really a necessary option,” she added, citing efforts to promote domestic adoptions.
UN urges Seoul to offer stronger remedies
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 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 at the hands of her adopters and petitioned the UN as part of a larger effort to hold the governments and adoption agencies of South Korea and France to account.
Citing broader systemic issues and Kim’s case, UN investigators criticized South Korea for failing to provide adoptees with effective access to remedies for serious abuse and for “potentially denying their rights to truth, reparations and commemoration”.
They also expressed concern over the suspension of a government investigation into past abuse and adoption 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 restored judicial oversight of foreign adoptions, ended decades of control by private agencies and led to a significant drop in international placements.
South Korea also cited recent steps to centralize adoption authority.
However, the government said further investigations into adoption and stronger compensation for victims would depend on future legislation. It offered no new measures to address the vast number of inaccurate or falsified records that have prevented 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 “super functional.” He noted that promises of stronger reparations, which were meant to reduce victims’ need to litigate, are not made clear in bills that propose relaunching the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.
The government also rejected a bill in April that would have removed the statute of limitations for state-linked human rights violations, although that was before President Lee Jae Myung took office in June. Lee issued an apology in October for past adoption issues, as recommended by the truth commission.
Choi, who represents several plaintiffs suing the government for human rights abuses during previous dictatorships, said they often face protracted legal battles when authorities reject truth commission findings as inconclusive or cite expired statutes of limitations.
Pressure is mounting to resolve adoption issues
Kim, who could not immediately be reached for comment, filed a rare compensation petition against the South Korean government in August, saying 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 from Europe, the US and Australia, the truth commission in March recognized Kim and 55 other adoptees as victims of human rights abuses, including falsified child origins, lost records and child protection failures.
That came weeks before the commission halted its adoption inquiry following internal disputes among commissioners over which cases warranted recognition as problematic. The fate of the other 311 cases, either postponed 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 rife with fraud and abuse. The program was driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and was enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins. The findings largely lined up with earlier reports by the Associated Press.
The AP investigation, in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), detailed how the South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to send some 200,000 Korean children abroad, despite evidence that many were procured through questionable or unscrupulous means.
Seoul’s past military governments passed special laws that promoted foreign adoptions, removed judicial oversight and granted vast powers to private agencies, which bypassed proper child relinquishment procedures while transporting thousands of children abroad each year.
Western nations have largely ignored the abuses and have sometimes pressured South Korea to maintain the supply to meet the high demand for children.