ANNOUNCEMENTS••Edited
South Korea will look into the files of dozens of adoptees from the 1960s to the 1990s, including some Dutch cases. There is a strong suspicion that children have been taken without parental consent and children with false identities have been adopted in Europe and the United States.
The investigation is being conducted by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Adoptees in Denmark have initiated the case. They compared adoption files and came to suspect abuse had occurred.
The nature of complaints varies. It mainly concerns carelessness and negligence in removing children from their families. Adopted children’s ballots would also be incorrect. There would be ‘shadow documentation’, in which Western adoptive parents were given false papers.
According to the initiators, these were not accidents. This would be the systematic working method of two major adoption organizations in South Korea, including KSS and Holt. According to Remco Breuker, professor of Korea Studies at Leiden University, KSS can be compared to child protection. “This is an institution that should actually be watching over the well-being of children, but it didn’t,” Breuker said in the NOS Radio 1 Newspaper.
Four Dutch files
The investigative commission examines 34 cases, including four Dutch files. The establishment of such a committee is a serious remedy, says Professor Breuker. “It indicates that there are strong suspicions that much has gone wrong.”
The cases now under investigation would be the tip of the iceberg. Today was the last day for adoptees to present their case to the committee. A total of 369 adoptees submitted truth requests.
The foundation that defends the interests of Korean adoptees in the Netherlands, NLKRG, is pleased with the research. The foundation hopes that the original adoption papers will be released and that the real story behind the adoptions will become clear.
shadow documents
There were also errors in the file of the radio presenter Mischa Blok, adopted by South Korea in the late 70s. His file stated that she was a foundling and that her Korean parentage is unknown. “At one point I contacted the adoption organization KSS. To my surprise, I received an email response that there was yet another document,” says Blok.
At that time, the KSS provided shadow documents with the children. “But they also had the real document in the South Korean adoption file. It just says who my father is.”
Until the late 1980s, South Korea was a dictatorship. According to Breuker, mothers and parents who opposed the regime were more likely to lose their children. There would also have been an economic motive: orphans were given up for adoption so that the government would not spend money on their care.
South Korea is one of the countries that has given up on the most adopted children. The wave of adoptions began after the end of the Korean War in 1953. About 200,000 children were adopted from South Korea, of which more than 5,000 went to Dutch adoptive parents.
