A new report from South Korea that was presented this week shows that thousands of women in the cities of Seoul and Daegu and the provinces of South Chungcheong and Gyeonggi were pressured to give their children up for adoption abroad, writes the AP news agency. Sometimes the children were so young that only hours had passed since birth. One of the more than 300 cases that were investigated is the adoption case of Norwegian adoptee Uma Feed. The travel document for Feed. She was adopted to Norway when she was five months old. Facsimile: Private Ho was born in South Korea in 1982, and was adopted as a five-month-old in one of the areas where the truth commission now believes that women were forced to give up their children. – It is a bittersweet victory, says Feed. Background In the 1970s and 1980s, South Korea was ruled by a military government that wanted to create economic growth and reduce the number of people, they saw adoptions as a weighting tool for this. When the country was to host the Asian Games in 1986 and the Olympics in 1998, the regime set up institutions for people who lived in slums, orphans, people with reduced functional abilities and other “undesirables” for a process called “beautifying the streets”. Thousands of women in these institutions were forced to adopt their children, according to the country’s truth commission. The country transitioned to democracy at the end of the 1980s, and has stopped the practice of internment and in 2012 passed a law prohibiting the adoption of children of unknown origin. Uma Feed has previously told her adoption story to other Norwegian media. Found the family who told a different story The new report has been submitted by the Reconciliation and Truth Commission. The commission was established in 2022 to investigate human rights violations linked to the country’s former military regime that ruled the country in the 1970s and 1980s. According to one of the investigators in the commission, Ha Kum Chul, 17,500 children from abroad were adopted out of the country between 1985 and 1986. Ha Kum Chul, an investigator at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, speaks to the media during a press conference this week. Photo: Im Hwa-young/Yonhap / AP The children were transferred to the adoption agency Eastern Social Welfare Society or Holt Children’s Services as newborns, often only hours or days old. Ha and the commission believe that this indicates that the adoption was decided before the birth. Neither of the two adoption agencies mentioned in the report has responded to comments about the commission’s findings. Gradually, the children were placed with families in the USA, Denmark, Norway and Australia. Documents from the institutions show that some of the women agreed to give up their children, while others were pressured to do so. Feed has given a speech to the South Korean National Assembly. The topic here was international adoption. Photo: Privat In Feed’s adoption folder it was stated that she was an orphan, she says. When she found and visited her biological parents, they told a different story. Feed says that she was adopted away without her mother’s consent. She says that she was most likely either sold or taken away from her grandparents, while her mother was ill. – I look a lot like them. It is still difficult to bond because I have lost a lot, I have missed the culture and the language. Uma has found her biological family, who she says have been looking for her. She has an older brother who grew up with her parents. Photo: Privat She says that there is a lot she is disappointed about, but that the most difficult thing is that there is no support system. – One is alone with a lot. Feed has previously reported the Norwegian state to the Oslo police district for being aware of the adoption situation in South Korea, but still continuing to allow adoptions from the country. The case was dropped because she was too old. Now Feed will take both Norway and South Korea to the Human Rights Court in The Hague, because violations of human rights are not statute-barred. Large number of foreign adoptions Earlier this year, VG exposed systematic cheating in adoption papers from South Korea, including that children were listed as orphans, even if the parents were alive. The Ministry of Children and Families has opened an external investigation into foreign adoptions. In an e-mail to news, they write that the hope of the investigation is to get answers to whether and possibly to what extent there have been illegal or unethical circumstances in connection with foreign adoptions to Norway. “When it comes to support for Norwegian adoptees, the government has given post-adoption measures a high priority and has put several measures in place over the past year. This applies, among other things, to the establishment of a new expertise service for adoptees and their families, who can be contacted for advice and guidance. Bufetat has also started a service for assistance in searching for biological origin, and a service for interview support for adoptees,” the email says. A victim of Brothers Home cried during a press conference at the office of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Seoul, South Korea, when the first report was submitted in 2022. Photo: Ahn Young-joon / AP The Truth Commission has previously revealed that women around the port cities of Busan was subjected to the same practice of forced adoptions. Most were sent to the institution Brothers Home, a notorious and later called a “concentration camp”. There they were used as slaves, and many were raped and killed. Altogether, around 200,000 South Koreans have been adopted to the USA, Europe and Australia in the last sixty years. This is probably the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees. Around 6,500 of these were adopted to Norway. Published 14.09.2024, at 22.48
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New report reveals systematic forced adoption in South Korea – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
