South Korea’s adoption system sent 200,000 children to families in the United States, Europe and Australia. Many who have searched for their roots discovered that their adoption paperwork was untrue. Now their quest for accountability has spread far beyond Korea’s borders to the Western countries that claimed them. This series is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS).
It’s impossible to know how many of the estimated 200,000 adoptions out of South Korea were handled improperly. But according to reporting by The Associated Press and FRONTLINE, some adoptees looking into their origins have found erased histories, mistaken reunions, falsified adoption papers and switched identities.
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.
Western governments ignored widespread fraud in South Korean adoptions and sometimes pressured the country to keep the kids coming, an investigation led by The Associated Press has found.
They began a pilgrimage that thousands before them have done — a long flight to their motherland, South Korea, to undertake an emotional, often frustrating, sometimes devastating search for their birth families.
Dozens of South Korean adoptees, many in tears, have responded to an investigation led by The Associated Press and documented by Frontline (PBS) last week on adoptions from South Korea.
All her life, Korean adoptee Rebecca Kimmel was told she was abandoned. But the baby in her adoption file was not her. So who was the baby? And who was she? Like thousands of others, Kimmel searches for her past.
The U.S. celebrated saving foreign orphans. But thousands were left without citizenship and at risk of deportation because of loopholes in American law.
FRONTLINE and The AP examine fraud and abuse allegations in South Korea’s historic foreign adoption boom. Watch the full documentary here.
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