Danish report sheds light on illegal South Korea adoptions

A new Danish report has claimed that adoptions of children from South Korea to Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s were “characterised by systematic illegal behaviour” in the Asian country.

These violations, the report said, made it “possible to change information about a child's background and adopt a child without the knowledge of the biological parents.”

The report, published on Thursday, was the latest in a dark chapter of international adoptions. In 2013, the government in Seoul started requiring foreign adoptions to go through family courts. The move ended the decades-long policy of allowing private agencies to dictate child relinquishments, transfer of custodies and emigration.

The Danish Appeals Board, which supervises international adoptions, said there was “an unfortunate incentive structure where large sums of money were transferred between the Danish and South Korean organisations" over the adoptions.

The 129-page report, published by an agency under Denmark's ministry of social affairs, focused on the years between 1970 and 1989.

A total of 7,220 adoptions were carried out from South Korea to Denmark during those two decades.

The report based its findings on 60 cases from the three privately run agencies in Denmark - DanAdopt, AC Boerne Hjaelp and Terres des Hommes - which handled adoptions from South Korea. The first two merged to become Danish International Adoption while the third agency closed its adoptions in 1999.

The agency wrote that two of the agencies - DanAdopt and AC Boerne Hjaelp - “were aware of this practice” of changing information about the child's background.

The report was made after a number of issues raised by the organisation Danish Korean Rights Group. In 2022, Peter Møller, the head of the rights group, also submitted documents at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Seoul.

“Danish organisations continuously expressed a desire to maintain a high number of adoptions of children with a specific age and health profile from South Korea,” the report said. The South Korean agencies that sent children to Denmark were Holt Children’s Services and the Korea Social Service.

Boonyoung Han of the Danish activist group told The