South Korea says it sent babies abroad for adoption ‘like luggage’
For most of her life, Mary Bowers had one version of her adoption story.
It was that she was an orphan — born in South Korea to a single mother who, unable to take care of her, handed her over to an adoption agency when she was a baby. In 1982, Bowers was adopted by a family in Colorado.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, she took the time to examine her past more carefully. She started finding discrepancies in her adoption documents. That’s when she decided to move to South Korea and keep digging.
“As I delved further into my adoption file, I found the name of a father, as well, with his whole background, description, aunts, uncles, hometown, height, weight, all of that,” she said. “I was like, ‘well, if he wasn’t in the picture, this seems like a lot of detail to provide about this man,’ who honestly I had spent a good portion of my life hating because I thought, ‘well how could you leave [my birth mother] like that?’”
Bowers also found other discrepancies in her adoption records. For example, she was listed under three different names. The details just didn’t add up.
In 2022, Bowers joined more than 350 Korean adoptees — from 11 different countries — who filed cases with South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission alleging all kinds of malpractice in adoptions. Last week, the commission released a damning report on this — it said South Korean adoption agencies sent children abroad like “luggage” for decades. The report includes details about falsified documents, profit-driven decision-making and children taken from their parents without consent.
“The commission determined that the state violated the human rights of adoptees protected under the constitution and international agreements, by neglecting its duty to ensure basic human rights, including inadequate legislation, poor management and oversight, and failures in implementing proper administrative procedures while sending large numbers of children abroad,” the commission said in a statement.
The commission’s report corroborates an investigation by The Associated Press last year, about how Korean birth mothers were pressured or deceived into giving up their children while adoption agencies bribed hospitals to route babies their way. The AP also produced a documentary on the subject in collaboration with Frontline (PBS) and compiled resources for adoptees who have questions about their backgrounds here.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING = BILLION DOLLAR ADOPTION INDUSTRY
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