South Korea has, for the first time, admitted that its adoption agencies committed numerous malpractices, including falsifying documents, to make children more adoptable when sending them to homes in America and Europe.

A government agency, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, stated that children were sent away for profit, likening them to ” luggage”. This has been a hard-won victory for South Korean adoptees abroad, who have returned to their birth country advocating for South Korea to acknowledge this shameful chapter in its history.

Adoption agencies falsified documents to present babies as orphans when they actually had known parents. If a baby died before being flown overseas, another baby would be sent in their name. The heads of four private adoption agencies had the power to become legal guardians for children, signing them away for overseas adoption.

The commission’s report marks the government’s first official admission of problems with the country’s adoption practices, including a lack of oversight. The agency recommended that the state apologize for violating the rights of South Korean adoptees.

South Korea is the source of the world’s largest diaspora of intercountry adoptees, with approximately 200,000 South Korean children sent abroad since the end of the Korean War in 1953, primarily to the United States and Europe.

In its impoverished postwar decades, South Korea promoted overseas adoptions to find homes for orphaned, abandoned, or disabled children abroad rather than building a welfare system at home. The government relied on adoption agencies to find and ship children overseas for fees from adoptive families.

Sun-young Park, the commission’s chairwoman, stated, “Numerous legal and policy shortcomings emerged. These violations should never have occurred.”

The findings have repercussions beyond South Korea, as several receiving countries — including Norway and Denmark — have investigated their international adoptions. The United States, which received more children from South Korea than any other country, has not conducted such investigations.

Peter Moller, a South Korean adoptee from Denmark who led an international campaign for the commission to investigate, said, “This is a moment we have fought to achieve: the commission’s decision acknowledges what we adoptees have known for so long — that the deceit, fraud, and issues within the Korean adoption process cannot remain hidden.”

The commission identified cases where children’s identities and family information were “lost, falsified or fabricated” and where children were sent abroad without legal consent.

It cited the case of a baby girl, identified only by her last name, Chang, born in Seoul in 1974. Although her adoption agency in Seoul knew her mother’s identity, the documents sent to her adoptive family in Denmark claimed she came from an orphanage.

In 1988, Korea Social Service, the agency involved, charged a $1,500 adoption fee, as well as a $400 donation per child from adoptive families. South Korea’s per-capita national income at the time was $4,571. Some of these funds were used to secure more children, turning intercountry adoptions into “a profit-driven industry,” according to the commission.

The export of babies from South Korea peaked in the 1980s, with up to 8,837 children sent abroad in 1985. The commission presented a photo showing infants and young children strapped to airplane seats, stating that children were “sent abroad like luggage.”

Anja Pedersen, who was sent to Denmark in 1976 under the name of another girl who had died, said, “While this is not news to us adoptees, it is a significant victory because we are finally receiving acknowledgment of what has happened to us over the years.”

Although the truth commission lacks the power to prosecute adoption agencies, the government is required by law to follow its recommendations.

The adoption agencies have not responded to requests for comment.

Since the commission launched its investigation, some 367 overseas adoptees have requested investigations into their cases, with the majority from Denmark. On Wednesday, the commission recognized 56 of them as victims of human rights violations. Investigations into the other cases continue.

Mia Lee Sorensen, a South Korean adoptee sent to Denmark in 1987, said the commission’s findings provided the “validation” she had been seeking. When she found her birth parents in South Korea in 2022, they couldn’t believe she was alive. They told her that her mother had passed out during labor and that when she woke up, the clinic said the baby had died.

Those whose cases weren’t recognized as victims expressed hope that the commission’s mandate would be extended to conduct more investigations.

“This is only the beginning,” Ms. Bowers said.