The South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to satiate intense demand for adoptable babies in the West, despite years of evidence they were being procured through questionable or downright unscrupulous means, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found.
In this photo provided by Robert Calabretta, right, he and and his biological father, Lee Sung-soo, stand together for a photo while on a visit in Daegu, South Korea , in August of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Robert Calabretta holds a picture of his biological mother and brother while sifting through family mementos at his apartment, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, in New York. After Calabretta was adopted as a baby to an American family, hospital officials told his mother to assume he had died.
In dozens of cases AP examined, it found: Children were kidnapped off the streets. Parents claim they were told their newborns were dead or very sick, only to have them shipped away. Documents were fabricated, leading adoptees to anguished later reunions with supposed parents — only to discover they were not related at all.This city is hailed as a vaccination success. Can it be sustained?
Korean officials fit their laws to match American ones to make children adoptable in the West, where access to birth control and abortion had caused the domestic supply of adoptable babies to plummet. The government endorsed “proxy adoptions” for families to adopt children quickly without ever visiting Korea. Korea also rewrote its laws to remove minimal safeguards or judicial oversight.
Humanitarian workers openly worried about what they were seeing. Francis Carlin, who then ran Korea’s Catholic Relief Services, said there weren’t enough legitimate orphans to feed Western demand, which led to “a lot of the compromises, a lot of the hanky panky” involving larger agencies. Despite the agencies’ common practice of labeling children as “abandoned,” records from 1980 to 1987 show that more than 90% of the Korean children sent to the West almost certainly had known relatives, said Philsik Shin, a scholar at Korea’s Anyang University. It was “almost customary” to document children as abandoned, said Helen Noh, who matched hundreds of children with U.S. parents at Holt from 1981 to 1982.
Adoption Associated Press General News I Child Abuse South Korea South Korea Government Business World News
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Rampant adoption fraud separated generations of South Korean children from their families, AP findsThe South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to satiate intense demand for adoptable babies in the West, despite years of evidence they were being procured through questionable or downright unscrupulous means, a...
Read more »
Rampant adoption fraud separated generations of South Korean children from their families, AP findsThe South Korean government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to satiate intense demand for adoptable babies in the West, despite years of evidence they were being procured through questionable or downright unscrupulous means, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found.
Read more »
George W. Bush Institute hosts North Korean refugees for 3rd annual North Korean Human Rights WorkshopSome North Korean refugees are learning leadership skills to use their voices for change.
Read more »
George W. Bush Institute hosts North Korean refugees for 3rd annual North Korean Human Rights WorkshopSome North Korean refugees are learning leadership skills to use their voices for change.
Read more »
George W. Bush Institute hosts North Korean refugees for 3rd annual North Korean Human Rights WorkshopSome North Korean refugees are learning leadership skills to use their voices for change.
Read more »
South Korean chip executive detained again over alleged technology leak to ChinaSouth Korean chip executive detained again over alleged technology leak to China
Read more »