Kim Tak-un was 4 years previous when he was adopted by a Swedish household in 1974. Initially from South Korea, Tak-un had lived along with his single father, a labourer who moved steadily for work. In the future in the summertime of 1974, whereas staying along with his aunt, Tak-un wandered outdoors and disappeared.
Native police thought of him deserted and referred him to an adoption company, which organized his adoption to Sweden inside 5 months. When his father realised his son was lacking, he searched in all places, solely to find – too late – that Tak-un had already been despatched abroad. Devastated, he demanded Tak-un’s return. When the adoption company failed to reply, he went public with the story.
In March 2025, South Korea’s Fact and Reconciliation Fee launched preliminary findings from its investigation into the nation’s 72-year-old worldwide adoption programme. The complete report is predicted within the subsequent few weeks because the investigation is now accomplished.
Based mostly on greater than 360 instances submitted by Korean adoptees from 11 nations, the fee uncovered widespread human rights violations, together with falsified paperwork, lack of parental consent, and instances of kid switching – shaking up adoptees and their households.
For the reason that finish of the Korean Struggle (1950–1953), South Korea has despatched over 200,000 youngsters overseas, changing into the world’s largest nation for adoption, even because it grew into a complicated financial system.
Current research have proven that worldwide adoption from South Korea started as a response to the big variety of mixed-heritage youngsters born to Korean moms and US troopers through the conflict.
It’s estimated that 1000’s of such youngsters have been born, and South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, ordered their abroad placement on the grounds that they have been “unfit” for a nation imagined as ethnically homogeneous.
Nonetheless, worldwide adoption didn’t finish as soon as this perceived “emergency” was over. From the mid-Nineteen Sixties onward, it expanded to incorporate youngsters from different weak backgrounds, together with these affected by poverty, household breakdown, and out-of-wedlock births. This, and the function of worldwide adoption, is explored in my upcoming e-book.
This was carefully tied to the insurance policies pursued by South Korea’s army regimes. A very powerful determine was Park Chung Hee, a army common who got here to energy by a 1961 coup and dominated till his assassination in 1979.
His regime prioritised fast financial development, relegating social welfare to the bottom precedence. Childcare was handled as a person, not a state, duty. As I level out in my earlier analysis, public programs to classify and care for youngsters – whether or not deserted, misplaced, or runaway – have been extraordinarily restricted, and authorities largely positioned the burden on mother and father to retrieve their separated youngsters. That is in all probability why, after solely cursory checks, authorities referred Tak-un to an adoption company.
Illustration primarily based on a information article about Kim Tak-un revealed within the Tong-a Ilbo on 6 October 1975:
Art work by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Korean-Swedish adoptee and artist (@chung.woolrim), Writer supplied (no reuse)
The belief that Swedish authorities positioned in South Korean adoption procedures could have been due to the best way the Korean social staff introduced their work. As the primary technology of Koreans educated in US-style skilled social work, they framed worldwide adoption as being concerning the baby, the significance of a household, and emotional wellbeing.
The analysis for my upcoming e-book reveals that whereas they could have genuinely believed in worldwide adoption as a legitimate type of baby welfare, there have been additionally sensible the explanation why this occurred. With nearly no public funding for baby welfare, many noticed worldwide adoption – the place adoptive mother and father coated the prices of care – as an excellent strategy to apply their coaching.
In interviews with me, now-retired social staff acknowledged flaws in South Korea’s broader baby welfare system, corresponding to the lack to confirm a baby’s true standing. But, with out public assets to construct a dependable system or prioritise household reunification, they typically handled worldwide adoption as a primary, slightly than a final, resort.
Furthermore, the prevailing perception on the time that “normal” middle-class households provided probably the most steady surroundings for a kid’s growth supplied additional ethical justification for sending youngsters overseas.
Western authorities typically interpreted Korean social staff’ professionalism as proof of shared liberal baby welfare values and positioned sturdy belief of their procedures. When critical flaws surfaced – as in Tak-un’s case – they have been steadily dismissed as exceptions slightly than indicators of deeper systemic issues.
Even when the info have been confirmed in 1975, Swedish authorities nonetheless refused to return the kid. The Swedish consul-general in Seoul on the time, Lars Berg, argued that it was in Tak-un’s “best interest” to stay in Sweden, slightly than be despatched again to “an uncertain fate of the father without work and residence”.
This mirrored, partially, Sweden’s home realities: like many western societies on the time, Sweden confronted a scarcity of adoptable youngsters, and worldwide adoption had turn out to be an essential strategy to meet the desires of potential mother and father.
Within the early Seventies, practically half of all internationally adopted youngsters arriving in Sweden got here from South Korea. Which meant that when points like Tak-un’s emerged, Swedish authorities prioritised the rights of adoptive mother and father, framing their defence within the language of kid welfare.
Sweden’s Adoption Fee has simply launched its personal report on June 2, analyzing the nation’s worldwide adoption practices, together with these involving South Korea. Echoing my analysis findings, it advisable an finish to permitting Swedes to undertake youngsters from overseas.
So, what turned of Tak-un? Finally, South Korean officers acquiesced to the Swedish authorities, and the Korean adoption company was cleared of any wrongdoing. Tak-un by no means returned. The final hint within the archives is his delivery father’s plea to listen to from him.
I positioned Tak-un, who now goes by his Swedish title and lives in a small city in Sweden. Regardless of makes an attempt to succeed in him, he didn’t reply. It stays unsure whether or not his father’s message ever reached him or if he is aware of something about his youth in Korea.
This silence just isn’t merely private. A system that claimed to behave for the kid’s welfare as an alternative routinely erased adopted youngsters’s pasts, ignored their delivery households and determined their futures for them. Tak-un’s story isn’t only a painful exception – it’s a haunting reminder of what was misplaced within the title of care.
