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This edition of the HRBB newsletter will share some of the recent top international adoption news stories. This content was originally written in Korean to share news about recent international adoption events with our Korean readers. We have translated it into English and edited it for length.
1. Australia
On August 3, 2024, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) released several news pieces covering the allegations of the falsification of adoption records and baby trafficking by the Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS), the sole Korean adoption agency for Australian-Korean international adoptions. Anna, an Australian adoptee from South Korea, told the ABC Background Briefing team that her adoption record had been altered. Anna's adoption record states that she was the daughter of a single mother, but she was actually the fourth daughter of a couple. Upon learning that she was a girl shortly after she was born, her birth father and her doctor forced her mother to give Anna up for adoption. The birth mother never consented to the adoption and hasn't seen her daughter since, unaware that she had been sent to Australia.
Based on Anna’s story, the Background Briefing team reached out to Australian and Korean social workers in named in Anna's adoption documents. They were connected to an Australian social worker, Josie McSkimming, and a social worker from ESWS, Minja (a pseudonym).
In 1987, the same year Anna was sent to Australia, Josie McSkimming worked in the NSW Department of Youth and Community Services and was responsible for matching adoptive parents with adopted children. Even though it was almost 30 years ago, she recalled that the adoption documents sent by ESWS were too similar. "We used to say, as social workers working in the department, these are remarkably similar [case files].” The child’s background was a variation of the same story - the child is the child of a single mother, and the single mother had difficulty raising the child and gave the child up for a better environment. “I was one of the first people to question it.” She continued, saying that she didn't think it was culturally appropriate for the conservative Korean society to be questioned about these similarities at the time. McSkimming admits that she wonders if ESWS had sanitized the adoption records to make them more acceptable to Australian adoptive parents.
Minja (a pseudonym), a former social worker who worked for ESWS, says falsifying adoption records was widespread in the late 1970s and 80s when she worked there. She says that ESWS created “real documents in Korean” and “fake documents in English” for each child and that “in Korean they were not orphans, but in English they were orphans.” She also says that ESWS employees bribed hospital staff in exchange for newborns and that the hospital staff who received the bribes contacted adoption agencies when the child's mother was deemed unable to care for the child because she was single and had no social support. Minja recalled fierce competition among Korean adoption agencies to obtain children at the time.
In a follow-up story released on August 26, 2024, Australian Senator Linda Reynolds said, "The Australian government should cease all intercountry adoptions from South Korea and this organisation [ESWS]…It’s time that we completely re-examine the need and the ethics of intercountry adoption. This is a bellwether case. As a nation, this is a form of trafficking that we have created.” Senator Reynolds said she would call for an inquiry in the next parliament to look into South Korea and other sending countries that have used falsified paperwork and identities.
2. China
On August 28, 2024, the Chinese government decided to stop international adoptions. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed this at a press conference on September 5, saying the end of international adoptions is “in line with the spirit of relevant international covenants.” Since 1992, the Chinese government has officially sent more than 160,000 children abroad for adoption, half of whom were adopted to the United States. News media speculates China’s steadily declining birth rate led the government to close international adoptions for all but blood relatives and step-relatives. Following the announcement, the Nanchang Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the right of Chinese adoptees to know their roots, said, “…we feel a sense of relief that no more children will be separated from their birth place, culture and identity. We hope this moment can shift focus toward the need for post-adoptive services to support Chinese adoptees and their families for the rest of their lives.”
3. South Korea
On August 26, 2024, the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism, Newstapa, reported on allegations that the National Center for the Rights of the Child(NCRC), a public institution under the Ministry of Health and Welfare of South Korea, engaged in gross mismanagement of adoptees records as part of the Adoption Record Computerization Project. From 2013 to 2022, the NCRC has been accused of engaging in blank scans of adoption records, falsified numbers of digitized records compared to the actual amount, non-compliance with guidelines, failure to include page numbers in the scans, failure to secure original records, and inadequate system uploads where digitized records were not properly or completely uploaded to the database system. Following these allegations, the NCRC has undertaken its own investigation while the Ministry of Health and Welfare has initiated an internal audit.
In response to these allegations, ten organizations, including Korean adoptee groups from eight countries (the United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Australia) held a protest on the morning of August 30, 2024, in front of the NCRC building. They demanded that “the mismanagement of adoption records be investigated, and those responsible be punished.” After the protest, a complaint was filed with the Jongno Police Station in Seoul regarding the mismanagement of the adoption record computerization project.
2024. 8. 3. 호주 ABC News 기사 “Australia's South Korean adoption partner falsified adoptee records to bring children to Australia”: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-03/korean-adoptees-falsification-forced-adoption-allegations/104176418
2024. 8. 3. 호주 ABC Background Briefing 팟캐스트 라디오 “The agency accused of paying bribes for babies”: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/backgroundbriefing/the-agency-accused-of-paying-bribes-for-babies/104176170
2024. 5. 2. 호주 ABC Foreign Correspondent 영상 “Investigating South Korea's sham adoptions”: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-02/south-koreas-sham-adoptions/103798500
2024. 8. 26. 호주 ABC News 기사 “Calls for Korean adoptions to end amid alleged orphan 'trafficking' scandal”: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-26/reynolds-calls-for-ban-overseas-adoptions-after-investigation/104252812
2024. 9. 5. AP 뉴스 기사 “China’s halt of foreign adoptions leaves questions about pending cases”: https://apnews.com/article/china-international-adoptions-7112b4ff7e68cca76a5edea310cb835b
2024. 9. 5. 중국 외교부 정례 기자회견: https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/202409/t20240905_11485901.html
2024. 9. 6. CNN 뉴스 기사 “China is ending foreign adoptions of its children. That leaves hundreds of American families in limbo”: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/06/china/china-ends-foreign-adoptions-children-intl-hnk/index.html
2024. 8. 26. 뉴스타파 기사 “10년을 했는데 엉터리? 복지부, 입양기록 전산화 작업 감사 착수”: https://newstapa.org/article/7QFcR
2024. 8. 30. 뉴스타파 기사 “입양 기록 관리 부실" 뉴스타파 보도에 뿔난 입양인들 항의 시위”: https://newstapa.org/article/8W76t
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