Hospitals and adoption agencies colluded to force single mothers to give up their children, truth commission finds
South Korea has found new evidence that mothers were forced to give up their children for adoption in countries including Australia, Denmark and the United States.
It has been known for some time that at least 200,000 South Korean children had been adopted abroad since the 1950s, but allegations have emerged that hospitals, maternity wards and adoption agencies systematically colluded to force parents – primarily single mothers – to give up their children.
Adoption workers in some cases insisted that adoptees were abandoned children and blamed the biological parents for not looking for them.
But a report from a government Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate the claims has detailed some of the coercive methods used to force mothers living in welfare shelters to give up their sometimes day-old children.
