South Koreans adopted as children by Danish couples ask Seoul to probe irregularities

LONDON

Dozens of South Koreans who were adopted as children by Danish couples several decades ago are now demanding that the government in Seoul investigate the circumstances that led to their adoptions.

The Danish Korean Rights Group, an association that works for Korean adoptees’ rights to identify background information, initiated the effort for the matter to be investigated by the South Korean government.

“The Danish Korean Rights Group has decided to file a case with South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission requesting an investigation into adoptions from South Korea,” it said.

“It's historic that a South Korean adoption case has been filed, and this opportunity won't come again, so now is the time to act.”

The adoptions, which took place from the 1970s until the 1980s by Danish couples, raised concerns when the information provided in connection with many of them proved to be false.

According to the adoptees’ records, information such as their birth names, birth dates and details of their biological parents in the adoption papers are inaccurate.

Several of the children are believed to be wrongly registered as orphans as all 53 people that registered so far for an investigation to take place are not in fact orphans, the Danish Korean Rights Group said.

Fifty more people that were adopted and brought to Denmark are expected to sign up, according to the rights group.

The South Korean government claimed that in the adoption documents that many of the children were registered by agencies as legal orphans found abandoned on the streets, when in some cases, they had relatives that could be easily located.

According to the latest reports, in the last 60 years, around 200,000 South Koreans are believed to have been adopted by mainly European and American couples.

Out of European countries, Denmark received the most adopted children from South Korea, with most them adopted between the 1960s and 1980s.

The South Korean government will take a maximum of four months to decide whether they want to initiate an investigation, and if goes ahead, it would be considered the largest South Korean investigation ever into overseas adoptions.