https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-02/south-korean-adoptees-search-for-answers-over-identity/103694806?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3P6_OrFKCBu-eWSzLEBs6dfxfZzkUunqYz-WrcQpOIzv8VboM33jueDXU_aem_AcSpivtgG2dbZ_UT7miK6z1mYJfkb3LSULchxOsJMgx6nXeQ68_7VKRGBXRCyhDWwFe3SNtYWEgsZN5MvtqyD6qHSeoul Searching
After being ?sold off? as babies, South Korea?s adoptees are searching for answers about their identity.
By Mazoe Ford, Matt Davis and Victoria Allen in South Korea
Foreign Correspondent
Published 1 May 2024, 7:52pm
When Peter reached out to his Korean adoption agency for the first time about 13 years ago to search for his roots, he soon discovered things didn?t add up. ?My social history actually says two things,? Peter told ABC?s Foreign Correspondent.
?One, that I?m an orphan, which means that my parents are dead, but my documents also describe my biological mother. So when we looked at the documents my first question was, ?How can you both be an orphan, having no parents, and then have your biological mother described??.?
Peter said his adoption agency, Holt Children?s Services, also gave him two different city names as his place of birth and there was conflicting information about his date of birth. ?How is this possible?? the Danish lawyer asked himself.
As that question played on his mind, Peter also began to wonder whether any other adoptees had noticed similar document discrepancies. With time on his hands during the pandemic, he reached out to the Danish Korean adoptee community. Some social histories ?were like a copy-paste? while others had dates that did not line up, he said.
There were also cases where adoptees were listed as orphans but later discovered their parents were very much alive. ?Everything looked very strange, so we began to question, ?How come these stories don?t fit??,? Peter said.
?We collected all the stories and then we decided to go to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Korea [and make] a formal complaint in the hope that they would investigate the case.?
?We are adults and we have the right to know?
South Korea?s TRC is tasked with investigating historical human rights violations. It agreed to take on the adoptees? cases. The Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), which Peter co-founded, initially presented the commission with 51 Danish cases. Then word spread. ?The day after, we received hundreds of emails from all over the world, so we decided to open up our complaint to the commission to have as many adoptees as possible,? Peter said.
?We also saw American cases, cases from other places in Europe, from Australia.?
Peter, who now lives in Seoul, ended up coordinating 375 cases to be submitted from Korean adoptees in 11 countries. He said he also continued to try to get information from the adoption agency, Holt, about his own case, but got nowhere. ?Of course, I think most adoptees would respect if it is the wish of the birth family not to be contacted what we actually challenge is whether our private, intimate information can be the private property of adoption agencies,? he said.
?It?s very important for us to know our true identity and for people to know where do I come from? We are adults, and we have the right to know.?
Babies: Supply and demand
Since the end of the Korean War 71 years ago, about 200,000 children have been adopted from South Korea to families around the world. Following The Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953, orphanages were full of thousands of war orphans and babies fathered by foreign soldiers. South Korea?s leaders saw this as a social welfare problem, so the children were sent abroad. Interest surged after Harry and Bertha Holt, a Christian couple from the US, adopted eight babies in 1955. The Holts then continued to make headlines as they set up what would become Korea?s biggest adoption agency. In the following decades, more agencies were set up and international adoption became a lucrative business for them. At the same time, South Korea had little social welfare support unwed mothers were shamed into handing over their newborns and poor families had little choice. There is also evidence that some children were stolen. Figures from the South Korean government show adoption peaked in 1985 when there were 8,837 children sent abroad an average of 24 a day. The turning point came during the 1988 Seoul Olympics when the world?s media took notice, describing babies as Korea?s ?primary export?. Numbers have fallen most years ever since. In 2022, 142 Korean children were adopted overseas.
?Nothing is verifiable?
Later in life as adults, many adoptees feel a pull to South Korea and make the journey back. They want to connect with a country they have never really known. Not every Korean adoptee feels compelled to search for their birth family, but many do. Mary Bowers was adopted as a baby in 1982 to a small town in Colorado, in the United States. Curious about what living in Korea would be like, she moved to Seoul in 2020. ?It?s definitely been a roller coaster,? Mary, 42, said.
?I have good days where I feel like I?ve learned a lot and I?ve made lots of connections and I feel pretty great. But there are also days where I?m just flat on the floor, I can?t breathe, I can?t move, I can?t handle anything.?
Mary said her adoptive parents were told her birth mother was a single mother who was too poor to raise her. However, after Mary moved to Seoul and went to look at her file at the Eastern Social Welfare Society adoption agency, she discovered ?conflicting information?. Mary said she went back to Eastern multiple times over the past few years to try to clarify the discrepancies but was never offered an explanation. She said staff eventually told her they had tried but failed to contact her birth mother, and that her case was now closed. ?Now that I?ve realised that my documents have two names listed for my mother, who did they contact? I have no idea,? Mary said.
?Or if I?m listed as an orphan, what parents are there to even send a letter to?
?I asked for proof that they sent the letters, but they wouldn?t send me any kind of receipts, and I asked them for redacted receipts and they wouldn?t send redacted receipts nothing is verifiable.?
?Alarming patterns? in adoption stories emerge
Mary got on with her life in Seoul, but she continued to grapple with the confusion surrounding her identity. When she heard about Peter M?ller and the TRC complaint case, she knew she had to submit her story too. She joined a group called the Australia-United States Korean Rights Group (AUSKRG), a group of adoptees from America and Australia who were adopted through Eastern. ?To find other people who have had similar experiences and to have my experience validated as, ?Wait, this happened to me too?,? Mary said.
?You?re not losing your mind. You?re not going crazy. This is something that was pervasive. That makes me feel more self-assured and sane.?
The AUSKRG formed in late 2022 after hearing the TRC had accepted the Danish cases and was open to receiving more submissions from around the world.
?More questions than answers? for Australian adoptee
Over the decades, 3,600 adoptees have been sent to Australia. Australian adoptee Chae is one of the AUSKRG members who submitted his case to the TRC. Chae?s adoption file lists two conflicting stories: one was that he was born to a single mother, and the other was that his mother was married but had fallen pregnant while having an affair and was pressured to give the baby up. ?When you?re trying to understand where you come from and trying to find your family it?s quite difficult to reconcile that you have two different leads to go on,? Chae said.
When Chae travelled to Seoul in 2023 to do his birth family search, he went into his adoption agency, Eastern, to try to look at his file. He said staff brought a large folder with his documents into the room but wouldn?t allow him to see half of them. ?It was quite frustrating and confronting, and when I tried to clarify things with Eastern I left with more questions than answers,? he said.
Answers are something the 33-year-old craves. ?In my life as an adopted person, I?ve struggled so much with identity,? he said.
?Identity is such a fundamental part of your happiness as a human being and your sense of belonging and I want to find that sense of happiness and belonging in the world through reconciling my identity.?
Diving into decades of archives
The adoptees who submitted cases to the TRC have high hopes the investigation will find the truth behind South Korea?s adoption past. Amy Jung, the lead investigator for the TRC?s intercountry adoption team, said she and her colleagues understand that acutely. ?We are currently under a lot of pressure but we do not mind this pressure,? she said. ?It urges us to feel more responsible and carry out the investigation with utmost care.?
Ms Jung said that so far, because of ?outside influences including the media?, South Korea?s four adoption agencies have had ?no other choice but to co-operate? with her team. ?Although they were a bit hesitant about certain requests we made, they willingly cooperated with us,? she said.
?Our investigators went into the adoption agencies? archives to physically look for the records, we checked their document filing system and how they were stored, and we scanned and stored the applicants? documents page by page.?
The TRC has until next year to deliver its findings. ?When the investigation is over, the result will show what happened in the past and whether human rights were violated,? Ms Jung said.
?We will make recommendations to the government bodies or adoption agencies who might be responsible.?
?We were pretty much sold for a profit?
The adoptees who submitted their cases hope the commission will also follow the money during its investigation. ?I think maybe initially in the years immediately after the Korean War there may have been humanitarian need for children to find families,? Mary said.
?But as time went on, the adoption agencies found there was significant money that people were willing to pay to adopt a child. We were pretty much sold for a profit.?
Helen Noh, a retired professor of social work who was employed by Holt Children?s Services as a social worker for a year in 1981, agreed there was a profit motive. ?At the time I was working [adoptive families paid] $US3,000 ($4,609) for a child,? Professor Noh said.
?It was more than one year?s salary for a social worker like me it was a lot of money. Adoption should be done in the best interests of the child, but there were many cases where that didn?t happen and it was really done in the interests of the agency.?
Professor Noh, whose job at Holt was to match children with families in the west, said that at the time she genuinely felt like she was helping people. Her view changed in the years that followed when she began doing academic research into South Korea?s intercountry adoption practices. ?I started studying the issues more in depth and the more and more I looked into it, the more problems I saw,? Professor Noh said.
?Mothers were pushed to place their children for adoption and sometimes the relatives, grandparents, uncles, aunts would do it without the parents? consent. Adoption agencies would visit hospitals or maternity homes, leave name cards and telling them, ?If you have a child whose family may have issues let us know?, and we know that adoption agencies also handed some money to these hospitals and maternity homes for a child. And we know of many cases where the parents or grandparents were told that when the child goes overseas they?ll be receiving pictures and letters regularly and when the child grows up they will come back. But once the child was gone [the adoption agency] refused to talk to them.?
South Korea?s reckoning
Foreign Correspondent made several requests for interviews with Holt Children?s Services and Eastern Social Welfare Society and sent a list of detailed questions to each but received no responses. In a written statement, the South Korean government said it was waiting for the results of the TRC investigation, but pointed to progress made in recent years. ?Separate from the investigation into past cases, Korea has continued efforts to strengthen national responsibility for adoption and has been preparing for the ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption,? the statement said.
?Korea considers it important to uphold the principle that the best protection of children should take place within their family and country of origin.?
The Hague Convention is an international treaty which makes intercountry adoption a last resort. Any cases would be managed by government in accordance with international standards, not through private adoption agencies. Adoptee advocates welcome this development but have said they will be watching closely to see if it is adhered to and policed. They also hope the TRC?s recommendations will bring about more change. ?I would hope to see historical acknowledgement of what happened, an official apology from the government and some kind of restitution for what happened,? Mary said.
Peter said he hopes the TRC?s findings would ?lead to a stop to adoptions from South Korea?.
He said an apology would be ?too easy? and that instead he hopes for answers and truth. Peter added that he also feels deeply for adoptive parents who he believed had been wronged too. ?My [adoptive] mother, she gets very sorry and one day she said to me, ?Peter, I want to say I?m sorry because I didn?t know this?,? he said.
?And I said, ?Of course you didn?t know this. And this is not your fault. This is made by greedy people who wanted money?. Many, many people ask me, ?You have had a good life in Denmark, why don?t you just forget about these things?? And I think, I have had a good life in Denmark, but having a good life has nothing to do with the violations of human rights and the sale of children.?
Support lines
Intercountry Adoptee and Family Support Service | 1800 422 377
Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)
Lifeline Australia | 13 11 14
Beyond Blue | 1300 22 4636
Finding new family in adoptees
Chae said he hoped the Australian government would pay close attention to the TRC?s findings. ?I personally would like to see an Australian inquiry into intercountry adoption,? he said.
?And not only South Korea but from other sending countries as well, which also have suspected human rights violations or similar practices. Since the TRC began their investigation, [some] European countries have started their own independent investigations into intercountry adoptions, and I?d love to see the Australian government look at doing something.?
The AUSKRG said it would ?wait to see what the commission?s recommendations will be, but we would expect the Australian government to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law?.
The Australian government said it was ?aware of increasing concerns about the legality of historic adoptions from the Republic of Korea occurring during the time frame subject to investigation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?.
?The Department of Social Services acknowledges the lifelong challenges experienced by intercountry adoptees whose adoptions were impacted by illicit or illegal adoption practices,? a departmental spokesperson said.
?Australia has no immediate plans to launch an inquiry but will be closely monitoring the outcome of the TRC and will work closely with state and territory governments on any follow-up actions.?
Australia continues to facilitate adoptions from South Korea ?if the principles and standards of the Hague Convention and relevant international obligations, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, are upheld?.
For many Korean adoptees, trying to find their roots and understand who they are takes a large emotional toll, and one they say very few non-adoptees can truly understand. ?Adoptees have become adults, have had that lived experience, and I think that as we look towards the future it?s important that we look at the past and what?s happened, and look at ways that we can better support not only adoptees, but birth families too,? Chae said.
He said he had found ?family? in the adoptee community. ?Their unconditional love and support throughout this process has meant the world to me they?re the most incredible people and I know that they?ll always be there for me. Despite everything that?s happened, I?m now proud to be a Korean adoptee.?
