麻豆淫院

Korean adoptees worldwide are grappling with a devastating possibility: they were not truly orphans, but may have been .

For decades, adoptees were told they were "abandoned," "" or "unwanted." Many were told their Korean families were too "poor" or "incapable" to raise them鈥攁nd they should only ever feel grateful for being adopted.

But these long-held stories are now under scrutiny.

Our interrogates the narratives that have obscured the darker realities of intercountry adoption. Rather than viewing adoption solely through the lens of "rescue," our work examines the broader power structures that facilitated the mass migration of Korean children to western countries, including Australia.

South Korea's reckoning with its adoption history

In March, South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its after collecting records and testimony from a coalition of overseas Korean adoptee-led organizations (including the Australia鈥揢S ).

The preliminary revealed a disturbing pattern of human rights violations in the country's adoption industry, including:

• forced relinquishments
• falsified records
• babies switched at adoption
• inadequate screening processes, and
• deep-rooted institutional corruption.

The commission's chair described finding "serious violations of the rights of adoptees, their biological parents鈥攑articularly Korean single mothers鈥攁nd others involved. These violations should never have occurred."

The commission is expected to release its final report soon, but due to the upcoming presidential election and political uncertainty in South Korea, the timeline remains unclear.

Chilling cases

This is not the first time intercountry adoption has made headlines for irregularities, human rights abuses, or illicit and illegal practices.

While Australia was expanding the number of children for intercountry adoption from South Korea in the 1980s, Park In-keun鈥攄irector of South Korea's infamous , an illegal detention facility that sent children overseas for adoption鈥攚as arrested for embezzlement and illegal confinement.

He was ultimately acquitted of the most serious charges in South Korea before to Australia. He was then charged again in 2014 for embezzlement, including government subsidies and wages of inmates in South Korea. He died two years later.

Other allegations of human rights violations and abuses came to light around the same time with the arrest of .

She was accused of facilitating a "baby export" syndicate. Children were believed to have been kidnapped from Taiwan to send to Western countries, including Australia, in the 1970s and 80s. She was , but denied being involved in trafficking.

Since then, other cases have continued to emerge involving countries such as , , , and .

What is the adoption industrial complex?

Intercountry adoption is not just a social practice. It's also an economic and political system sometimes known as the .

This network of organizations, institutions, government policies and financial systems created a globalized adoption economy worth . According to numerous investigations, Western nations, as "receiving" countries, drove the demand for the continuous .

As Park Geon-Tae, a senior investigator with South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, : "To put it simply, there was supply because there was demand."

Australia received an estimated from the 1970s to the present, as part of more than 10,000 intercountry adoptions.

Prospective parents typically paid between US$4,500 and $5,000 to facilitate acquiring a child in Australia in the 1980s, equivalent to .

Since colonization, Australia has had a long and painful history of child removal. From the involving First Nations children to the of children born to unwed mothers, child separation has been deeply embedded in the nation's social policy.

While national apologies have acknowledged the irreparable harms caused by these policies, the same ideologies and structures were repurposed as the .

In recent years, other western nations, such as Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, have begun to investigate their own roles in the intercountry adoption industry. These nations have either suspended their adoption programs, issued formal apologies or launched formal .

Thus far, Australia and the United States have not.

Challenging the 'rescue' myth

Intercountry adoption has long been framed as a humanitarian act. The central idea was that children needed "rescuing" and any life in a Western country would be "better" than one with their families in their home country.

Many adoptees and their original families were expected to just move on or be grateful for being "saved."

However, shows this gratitude narrative disregards the deep trauma caused by forced separation.

have reported that adoptees experience lifelong ruptures due to cultural, familial and ancestral displacement. Forced assimilation makes reconnection with family and culture complex or nearly impossible.

Many intercountry adoptees have also voiced concerns about , violence and mistreatment in adoptive homes.

Questioning the 'orphan crisis' myth

The myth of a global orphan crisis has also been a powerful driver of intercountry adoption.

Adoption groups often reference outdated UNICEF estimates that there are orphans globally. However, this figure obscures the fact most of the children classified as "" are children of single parents, or children currently living in homes with extended family or other caregivers.

This was the case in South Korea. Most children sent for adoption were , but children who had at least one parent or extended family they could have stayed with if they were adequately supported.

The belief that millions of children of single parents were "orphans" in need of "rescue" was used to justify calls for adoptions.

Labeling these children as "orphans" also helped attract millions of dollars in philanthropic donations. However, donors were rarely interested in supporting children to stay with their families and communities in their home countries.

Instead, the focus was often on removing and migrating them for the purpose of .

The question then emerges: was this about finding families for babies or finding babies for Western families?

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