October 3, 2025
SEOUL – President Lee Jae Myung on Thursday apologized to adoptees and their families for South Korea’s failures to safeguard the human rights of babies who were born in the country and adopted overseas.
His remarks came a day after The Hague Adoption Convention took effect in the country, once known for the large-scale overseas adoption of children.
“Representing South Korea, I extend my sincere apology and consolation to adoptees, their birth families and adoptive families for their sufferings,” Lee said in a Facebook post.
Lee, inaugurated in June, said over 170,000 children have been adopted by families in other countries since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, a practice which continued even in recent years. In the 2020s, more than 100 babies were sent overseas each year on average.
“Some were adopted by warmhearted families, but others lived painful lives due to adoption agencies’ negligence and connivance,” Lee said.
“I have a very heavy heart for the anxiety, pain and confusion that Korean adoptees have suffered in faraway lands, when they were too young to even speak their mother tongue.”
Lee’s remarks followed the March revelation of the results of a major investigation by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Of the 367 cases it reviewed, 56 involved failures by the relevant adoption agencies to take necessary legal steps, the fabrication of birth records and false reporting of missing children as orphans, largely due to government neglect.
“Human rights violations in the process of intercountry adoption have recently come to light,” Lee said. “The country must have failed to fulfill its responsibilities.”
Effective on Wednesday, South Korea became a member of the Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, commonly known as the Hague Convention.
The full ratification came belatedly, as South Korea signed the convention — which entered into force in May 1995 — in May 2013.
South Korea became one of over 100 countries, including Australia, China and the United States, that have ratified the convention to ensure that intercountry adoption systems operate in the best interests of the children and to prevent child abduction, sale or trafficking.
The ratification will reinforce South Korea’s moves to give its central and local governments greater responsibilities in the intercountry adoption process through new laws introduced in July, such as the Special Act on Domestic Adoption and the Act on Intercountry Adoption.
Lee, in his Facebook post, also pledged to ensure that the country safeguards adoptees, while urging the relevant ministries to coordinate to protect the human rights of adoptees, establish an adoption system with a human rights-based approach, and outline new support measures for Korean adoptees who wish to find their birth families.
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