Nearly 300 demand South Korea probe their adoptions abroad

By KIM TONG-HYUNG
Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Nearly 300 South Koreans who were adopted by European and American parents as children are demanding that South Korea investigate their adoptions, which they suspect were based on falsified documents that laundered their real status or identities as agencies raced to export children. The Denmark-based group representing the adoptees also is calling for South Korea’s president to prevent agencies from destroying records as they face increasing scrutiny about their practices during a foreign adoption boom that peaked in the 1980s. The applications submitted to Seoul’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission describe numerous complaints about lost or distorted biological origins, underscoring a deepening rift between the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees and their birth nation.