By Ahmed Abdelsalam
South Korean adoptees from Western nations protested outside Seoul's presidential office on Friday, demanding full access to their adoption records and improved efforts to locate their biological families. The demonstration, organized by nine adoptee organizations from Europe and the United States alongside South Korean human rights advocates, called for expanded DNA testing, broader access to administrative and residential records, and new investigations into the manipulation of adoption documents and wrongful child-parent separations.
Protest Outside Presidential Office
The protest followed a gathering of hundreds of Korean adoptees in Seoul last week. Participants urged the government to create clearer paths for reparations for those affected by widespread fraud and abuse in the country's historic adoption program. Adoptees said time is running out to find their families, as many birth parents may have already passed away.
Government Considers Policy Changes
The liberal administration of President Lee Jae Myung is weighing major changes to how the government handles adoptees' requests for records and birth-family searches. Currently overseen by the National Center for the Rights of the Child under the Health and Welfare Ministry, the process may shift to give a larger role to the Overseas Korean Agency under the Foreign Ministry, which is seen as better positioned to coordinate with Western countries that received Korean children. Lawmakers are also debating bills to ease privacy restrictions so adoptees can obtain birth-parent information unless the parents have explicitly requested confidentiality.
Adoptees Highlight Urgency
Activists said officials have taken little meaningful action a year after Lee apologized to adoptees and their families, acknowledging the government's responsibility for facilitating an adoption program rife with fraud. Kee Soon Jager, adopted to Germany in 1976, has searched for her biological parents since 1991. Angelika Lindgren, adopted to Sweden in 1974 and listed as an abandoned child, called for a larger DNA database because adoption documents are often unreliable.
Historical Fraud and Low Reunion Rates
During the peak adoption years of the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of South Korean children were falsely registered as abandoned to meet Western adoption eligibility requirements, even though most had known relatives. Private agencies paid hospitals and orphanages for children and sometimes switched identities to keep adoptions on track. According to Health Ministry records, only 622 of 11,300 family search requests submitted between 2021 and September 2025 resulted in reunions, while in more than 4,600 cases officials could not locate birth parents or determine their consent.
