South Korea has for decades been known as the world’s largest “baby exporter” – sending hundreds of thousands of children overseas after the country was ravaged by war and many mothers left destitute. Many of those adopted children, now adults scattered across the globe and trying to trace their origins, have accused agencies of corruption and malpractice, including in some cases forcibly removing them from their mothers.

A report released earlier this week by a Korean government commission supports those claims and uncovers new evidence on the coercive methods used to force mothers to give up their children.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, tasked in 2022 with investigating the claims, found that more than a dozen babies in several government-funded care facilities in the 1980s had been forcibly taken to adoption agencies, sometimes “on the day of birth or the next day.”

It examined three care facilities in the cities of Daegu and Sejong where, in 1985 and 1986, 20 children in total were transferred to adoption agencies. Most of those children were adopted overseas in the United States, Australia, Norway and Denmark.

“The circumstances confirm the facilities forcing mothers to give up their parental rights,” the commission told CNN in a statement, marking a bittersweet victory for adoptees who have sought for decades to hold the government to account. The commission is still investigating cases allegedly involving falsified paperwork. An interim report is expected to be published later this year.

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