“Banet Newsletter” Post Breaks Down Issues Related To NCRC And Birth Family Search, And Issues Rallying Cry For Korean Adoptees.
Posted to Paperslip - March 8th, 2025
As a follow up to the recent MBC PD Note Documentary about the torturous years-long birth family search of a Holt Danish Korean Adoptee and the egregious failures of NCRC (The National Center of the Rights of the Child) to properly digitize Korean Orphanage files over the past 10 years, the pro-Adoptee Korean women’s volunteer organization “Banet” issued a follow up via its “Banet Newsletter” Facebook page. The post is a lengthy and informative Q and A (Question and Answer) session with MBC PD Note Documentary Producer Namhyi Lim.
This is well worth reading in its entirety.
Click here to see the original “Banet Newsletter” post.
Below we have reproduced the “Banet Newsletter” post in full, while making some minor spelling and formatting changes for clarity.
For reference please see:
New MBC Video Highlights The Failures of NCRC. KSS Adoptees Should Act NOW
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Please note that we have highlighted important information in RED and added some hyperlinks -
Banet Newsletter:
“Namhyi Lim is the producer of 'PD Notebook', which is MBC (Munwha Broadcasting Corporation's) long-running current affairs TV program and one of the representative current affairs reporting broadcasts.
The curently aired series "Disappeared Adoption Record: The Country That Erased Me" which she joined as a main producer, sheds light on the overall problem of managing the adoption records of children adopted abroad.
Banet interviewed Namhyi to learn about the story of making the program.
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(Question) 1. The recent broadcast of MBC PD Notebook, ‘Lost Adoption Records: The Country That Erased Me’ has received a lot of attention. In particular, the program has caused a huge stir in the adoptee community by reporting in depth on the issue of finding biological families, which is the biggest concern of overseas adoptees. Please briefly explain the background of planning this program.
Namhyi Lim:
"About 10 years ago, I became aware of an organization in the U.S. that supports Korean adoptee families, and I volunteered to assist with adoptees' visits to (their) motherland and (to) help them search for their biological families. I learned that many adoptees long for birth family searching and (I) helped facilitate family reunifications, even producing a related TV documentary. In this process, I learned that there were cases where missing children whom parents were desperately searching for, children temporarily placed in orphanages, and even children kidnapped by family members, (who) were adopted abroad. This happened because, without the explicit renunciation of parental rights, adoption agencies could send children abroad by designating themselves as the guardians and placing them under orphan status. Additionally, in the past, there were no screening processes for adoptive parents, which led to adoptees being placed with unsuitable families and subjected to physical and mental abuse. I became aware of adoptee victims who had suffered such abuse. Now, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Korea is conducting an investigation into human rights violations in the international adoption process, and I was planning to produce a documentary reflecting on the 70-year history of Korea's international adoption (program). During this time, I received a tip about ‘Adoption Records Digitalization Project’ at NCRC (National Center for Rights of the Child), which led me to pivot and focus on producing a current affairs program first.
(Question) 2. The case of (Holt Danish Korean Adoptee) Mr. Park Sang-jo, which was broadcast, clearly showed the practices and absurdities of the adoption agency's post-adoption service (family search). In particular, the agency selectively released adoption records at different times, which made it take a long time for Mr. Park to find his family. (Question -) What was included in the records containing Mr. Park Sang-jo's family information, why were those records important in finding his family, and why do you think Holt belatedly released the documents to Mr. Park Sang-jo?
Actually, I also want to ask Joy Park from Holt about this. How did she end up looking into Sangkyo Park’s CAPOK records, which had been left untouched for about 50 years? And why did the previous caseworker never bother to open them?
Namhyi Lim:
(Holt) Danish (Korean) adoptee Sangkyo Park was under the care of CAPOK (Christian Adoption Plan for Korea) in Daegu until the age of five, after which he was transferred to Holt in Seoul and adopted overseas. Holt’s records stated that he was an orphan with no parental information. However, CAPOK’s records contained accurate details about his biological father. Since Holt and CAPOK merged into a single organization in 1975, Holt had possessed these records all along. Despite this, Holt repeatedly told Sangkyo Park since his 20s that no documents were available to help him find his biological family. At the age of 56, he was suddenly informed—via a shocking email from Holt—that his father had passed away. Desperate to find his remaining family, he repeatedly requested access to his records. However, all he received was his father’s name, an inaccurate birthdate of his father, and part of the old address—never the original documents. As a result, to this day, he still does not know exactly what is written in his records.
Under the current Special Adoption Act, adoptees can request the disclosure of adoption records from both the adoption agency and the NCRC (National Center for Rights of the Child), a public institution under the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Accordingly, Sangkyo Park submitted family search requests to both parties. However, they responded that his case had been closed because "there is no way to confirm whether his father had consented." It’s already outrageous that he only learned of his biological father’s existence later, but to close the case because they cannot confirm the wish of a deceased person is nothing short of twisted logic.
*Here are excerpts from the email responses of the two institutions
<NCRC Email>
Sangkyo: “Holt has information about my father in their CAPOK records.”
NCRC: “Don’t expect that old records from decades ago will still exist.”
<Holt Email>
Sangkyo: “I want to meet my remaining siblings and visit my father’s grave.”
Holt: “How do you expect to find the grave?”
Unable to find his family through NCRC and the adoption agency, Sangkyo Park turned to Banet which helps birth family search and 325KAMRA which uses genetic testing to trace biological relatives. Both organizations accompanied him to public offices such as district offices and city halls. However, each time, they were told that family contact information could not be disclosed due to privacy protection, even though the existence of his deceased father's children (Sangkyo Park’s siblings) had been found in the administrative records. During this time, he, along with a Banet member, visited the Daegu police station's customer service office to find a way to contact his family.
There are two ways adoptees can request the police to help find their biological family. One is to request an investigation based on the "Missing Children Act," which is more suitable when the adoptee is an child with no known parents. The second is to apply for a "Lost Family Search" at the police customer service office. To initiate this, Sangkyo Park needed a document proving his father-son relationship. The police requested adoption documents from Holt, but Holt did not provide them and only confirmed by email that "the two are father and son." Although this email was not the proper document, the police still began taking proactive administrative action. However, the "Lost Family Search" at the customer service office is a service, not an investigation, rooted in the history of separated families during the Korean War, so the officer does not have the authority to obtain phone numbers for the family. As a result, the police had to visit the family’s home at the address registered in the administrative system. This process took several weeks, but eventually, the police met the family and informed them of Sangkyo Park’s whereabouts. The heartbreaking story of how his deceased father and siblings longed for their youngest, Sangkyo, for 57 years can be seen on the PD Note program.
After being reunited with his (birth) family, Sangkyo Park requested the disclosure of CAPOK records to uncover the truth behind his adoption process. Holt claimed that since they no longer managed the records produced by CAPOK, they would transfer all 2,300 child records to NCRC. In November 2024, the documents arrived at NCRC, but due to being stored in a hallway cabinet, not in Holt’s archives, for decades, many of them were moldy and damaged. Furthemore, after the transfer, it was discovered that Holt had withheld Sangkyo Park’s records. They argued that since Holt now managed the combined files, they could not release his CAPOK records. Just before the broadcast, when Sangkyo Park requested the release of the CAPOK records from NCRC one last time, they responded, "We cannot find your previous application documents, so you must start the information disclosure process from the beginning."
<(Banet Newsletter) Note: If you know any adoptees from CAPOK, it might be worth contacting NCRC to request an CAPOK information disclosure to see if there is any additional documents that were not be aware of. There could be cases similar to Sangkyo Park's.>
(Question) 3. Like Park Sang-jo, there are common stories among adoptees that their adoption records are not actively used to find their families. To solve this problem, the law has been revised to transfer adoption records to the NCRC by July. Do you think all these problems will be solved by July?
Namhyi Lim:
In 2013, when KAS (Korea Adoption Service), the predecessor of NCRC, began the adoption record digitization project, they were unable to obtain original scanned records from major adoption agencies such as Holt Korea, Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) - formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society (ECWS), Korea Welfare Society (KWS) / formerly Social Welfare Society (SWS), and Korea Social Services (KSS). Instead, only metadata from 51 selected adoption record items was extracted and integrated into the ACMS (Adoption Centralized Management System) database. This was because, under the Special Adoption Act, KAS was only authorized to receive records from “defunct agencies,” and adoption agencies that were still operating were not obligated to provide their records, refusing to cooperate. As a result, essential documents such as counseling records, which contain detailed information about the circumstances at the time of adoption, remained accessible only to the adoption agencies. This gave them control over the family search process. When adoptees requested access to these original documents, the response varied widely depending on the adoption agency and the caseworker, with no consistent standard. Some adoptees were fortunate enough to receive copies, while others were only allowed to listen as their records were read aloud. Some received nothing at all and left in tears. In some cases, information that was said to exist on one visit mysteriously disappeared on the next.
Starting this July (2025), a new adoption-related law will take effect, centralizing all information disclosure requests under NCRC and requiring the full transfer of adoption agency records. Under the new law, adoption procedures will be directly overseen by the government, divided into domestic and international adoption categories. In the case of domestic adoption, only certain tasks may be outsourced to specialized private agencies. Although South Korea signed the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in May 2013, it has yet to receive parliamentary approval even after more than ten years. The convention requires that adoptions be managed by the state to ensure the principle of the "best interests of the child," but South Korea has so far entrusted this responsibility to private adoption agencies. Ahead of the adoption system’s transition to public management, the NCRC is preparing the transfer of all the records held by private adoption agencies, such as Holt Korea, Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) - formerly Eastern Child Welfare Society (ECWS), Korea Welfare Society (KWS) / formerly Social Welfare Society (SWS), and Korea Social Services (KSS). Now is the time for adoptees to stay engaged and actively voice their concerns to ensure that all records are fully transferred and that the new information disclosure process follows a clear and transparent protocol. FYI, in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Child Policy Division is responsible for adoption-related matters, and its organizational chart and contact information are publicly available online. Within NCRC, which operates under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Adoption Policy Support Division under the Child Protection Headquarters oversees adoption services, with the Adoption Support Team handling related matters.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare, in preparation for the implementation of the new Special Adoption Act, announced its draft enforcement decree and regulations and collected public opinions until January. Several changes have been made regarding the disclosure of adoption records. First, the scope of disclosed information now includes original documents. Previously, if birth parents consented, only specific details (such as name, date of birth, and contact information) were provided. Under the new regulations, a copy of the actual document containing this information will be released. Second, the processing time for disclosure requests has been extended. Previously, agencies were required to decide and notify applicants within 15 days with a possible extension to 30 days under unavoidable circumstances. Under the new decree, if the request includes birth parent information, the response deadline has been extended to 45 days. In reality, both adoption agencies and the NCRC have frequently missed these deadlines. Given that the process often involves sending multiple notices and waiting for responses, the new 45-day period may be a more realistic timeframe. Additionally, if the response cannot be completed within 15 days, agencies are now required to provide applicants with an update on the progress.
One of the most significant changes is the expansion of communication methods for obtaining birth parents' consent. Previously, consent could only be obtained in writing, but now, agencies can contact birth parents via phone (including mobile phones) as well. Moreover, birth parents will have the option to decide which parts of the requested information are disclosed. For example, they may choose to reveal their name and place of origin while withholding their address and contact details.
Despite some progress, the current law still fails to overcome the fundamental limitations that make it difficult to trace biological families.
Article 33, Paragraph 2 of the new law states that the personal information of the parents will not be disclosed ‘if the consent of the birth parents cannot be verified’. I believe this is a toxic provision that hinders family reunification. It is not that consent has been refused, but rather that 'the birth parents' identity information is inaccurate and making it impossible to locate them, or when a letter sent cannot be confirmed as received. Before the adoption special law was enacted in 2012, which stipulated that adoption could only occur once the child was registered under one of the birth parents, the real identity of parents was not always verified during the adoption process. In many cases, adoptions took place even without the birth parents’ consent. As a result, earlier adoption documents often listed only the parents' names and ages, and there were many errors in the information provided.
According to statistics submitted by NCRC from 2018 to 2022, 66% of those who attempted to find their biological family were unable to even confirm the consent of their birth parents. This was due to ‘document errors (42%)’ and ‘no response (25%),’ where it was unclear whether the request had been conveyed. However, when contact was made, more than 70% of birth parents were found to be willing to consent. If adoptees were provided with even the incomplete information that remains in the documents, they could use it as a lead to request the police to search for their family or consider other options, such as hiring a private investigator. However, if the case is closed simply because contact cannot be established, these possibilities are completely blocked. Also there have long been concerns about cases like Sangkyo Park’s, where the birth parents are deceased. During the legislative review process, there was a proposal to allow information disclosure in such cases, but it was ultimately not included in the final version of the law. As a result, even under the new law, information can only be disclosed if explicit consent has been given, except when **both conditions**— the birth parents are deceased and the adoptee has an urgent medical need — are met.
In fact, the reason adoption records have not been fully utilized for family searches is not solely due to legal restrictions. Until now, adoption records have been unilaterally owned by private adoption agencies, and adoptees, the very individuals concerned, have had no authority over them. A fundamental discussion on who truly owns this information is necessary. I believe that a social or legal consensus on this issue will form the foundation for the disclosure and utilization of adoption records. Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Korea acceded in 1991, explicitly states the "right of the child to know their parents." Currently, lawyers from the "Adoptee Right to Know Legal Representation Group" are preparing a constitutional challenge, arguing that the current law, which infringes on the rights of adoptees, should be reviewed for its unconstitutionality. The outcome of this case is being closely watched. Both the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Assembly must recognize that the requirement for birth parent consent to disclose information is unrealistic in cases of overseas adoptions prior to 2012. How can it make sense for the Korean government and adoption agencies, who sent children abroad without verifying the the parents' identities and falsely labeled them as orphans, to then deny adoptees' requests for family information, on the grounds that their parents cannot be contacted due to a lack of information? If government officials remain trapped in the inertia of existing laws, ignoring historical context, it will be difficult to adequately respond to adoptees' requests to trace their roots, regardless of where adoption records are stored or which organization handles information disclosure.
(Question) 4. According to this (MBC) broadcast, it was revealed that NCRC had been managing and supervising records in a messy manner during the past permanent preservation project. What did you feel while covering the relevant organizations, including the Child Rights Protection Center and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and who do you think is most responsible for this result?
Namhyi Lim:
The digitization project of adoption records began in 2013 and was a long-term project that spanned a decade until 2022. It was an excellent plan to preserve documents that could be discarded from closed child protection facilities and combine them with the records from current adoption agencies to build the ACMS (Adoption Centralized Management System). Had it been realized as originally envisioned, it would have become a powerful database for adoptees searching for their families!
When I first met the whistleblower from the NCRC and learned about the situation, my immediate thought was, "Why?" Why did all the safety mechanisms fail? Why had this issue been buried for so long? The goal of this project was to digitize adoption records to the level of public records. To ensure the four key attributes of records—authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability—the plan was to securely gather adoption data from each institution, create a catalog, number each page to prevent omissions and errors, digitize the data into a database for family search purposes, and later ensure the proper preservation of the original documents. The person in charge at the NCRC entrusted the digitization project to an external contractor and oversaw the entire process. However, essential procedures were skipped, processes were arbitrarily changed, costs were inflated, and data uploads were delayed repeatedly. All of these issues were allowed by the NCRC administrators. Why were these injustices overlooked?
The same contractor handled the project for nearly nine years, leading to increasing moral hazard. Although the NCRC and the contractor were supposed to visit the institutions storing adoption records, verify the documents, and scan them on-site, they instead let the institutions to scan the documents themselves and send them to the NCRC. Despite this negligence, the contractor was paid in full without any reduction in project costs. A costly external audit was conducted—something uncommon in digital archiving projects—but it proved useless. Even the auditing firm handled the task carelessly. Accuracy is critical for adoption records, yet the audit was completed without even verifying whether the error-ridden data had been corrected. Ultimately, the contractor exploited the poor oversight of the commissioning agency. A stark example of this mismanagement is that more than half of the hard drives storing the outcome of projects from the past ten years have gone missing.
A records digitization expert who was interviewed in the program, described this as a "system failure." NCRC is a public institution under the Ministry of Health and Welfare. This project was funded by 2 billion KRW in taxpayer money and was subject to government oversight. Within NCRC, official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare is always dispatched to hold senior position. This means that throughout the ten years in which these issues persisted, the Ministry was fully aware of them. For example, the digitized data was never properly uploaded, and this issue remains unresolved to this day. Additionally, excessive payments were made to the contracted company, and although the internal audit team pointed this out, the funds were never recovered. These problems remained unaddressed even as the project’s ten-year timeline came to an end. Eventually, a newly hired whistleblower, who was preparing for adption documents transfer, discovered the reality and decided to speak out. The whistleblower argued that the long-standing internal issues should be reported to an external oversight agency for an audit. However, it was later revealed during the National Assembly’s parliamentary inspection that a government official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare pressured the whistleblower to avoid causing trouble. The reason for bypassing an internal audit was that the head of the audit team at NCRC at the time was the same person who had previously been responsible for reviewing the digitization project. Ultimately, the Ministry of Health and Welfare launched an investigation in response to the whistleblower’s report, but even after two rounds of audits, it remains unclear whether the issues were thoroughly identified. The reason that this problem persisted for so long was due to both NCRC and its overseeing body, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, covering up the issues and preventing any alarms from being raised. This negligence only exacerbated the situation. In the end, the responsibility for all of this lies with the Korean government.
(Question) 5. Has action been taken against those responsible? Are the relevant authorities showing any signs of change?
Namhyi Lim:
I can’t help but let out a deep sigh before responding. First of all, it seems that no personnel disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible yet. The audit by the Ministry of Health and Welfare was already completed in November 2024, and a notice of disciplinary action was sent to the NCRC. It was a lengthy audit that lasted three months, starting in August. Although numerous issues had already been pointed out during the National Assembly audit in September 2024, the Ministry’s audit failed to address all of them. For instance, it overlooked the fact that the contractor responsible for digitizing adoption records failed to upload them to the system. It also ignored the supervisory firm’s negligence in verifying errors in the digitized adoption data, which rendered the system's database irreparably unreliable (an expert interviewed even referred to it as "garbage data"). Furthermore, the audit failed to address the issue of contractors not visiting institutions that hold adoption records to carry out digitization work on-site but instead asking the institutions to do the work themselves and send the files via email—an act of gross negligence. Ultimately, the only corrective measure taken was the recovery of excessive payments made to the contractor for work that was not actually completed. However, it is doubtful whether even this amount will be recovered. Three years ago, the same contractor was found to have illicitly obtained funds, and an internal audit by the NCRC ordered the recovery of approximately 40 million KRW. Yet, that money has still not been collected. Once again, I must emphasize that all of this budget comes from taxpayers’ money.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare held the NCRC accountable for its poor project management by issuing an ‘Institutional warning,’ ordering disciplinary action against those responsible for overseeing the digitization project, and requesting that investigative authorities look into possible collusion between the contractor and NCRC officials. However, there has been no update on any progress related to investigaion. Public institutions are required to disclose management information on *Alio* (All Public Information in One), a government transparency website. The NCRC is also obligated to post audit results and disciplinary actions, yet neither the Ministry’s audit findings nor the subsequent disciplinary measures have been published. What’s even more disheartening is that recent personnel changes within the NCRC have placed key figures from the digitization project back into significant positions. It is deplorable to see those who irresponsibly led the adoption record digitization project for so long continue their duties and even engage in external activities without any consequences. Does NCRC not perceive the severity of the issue as that serious? This raises serious doubts about whether the NCRC is genuinely committed to reflecting on past mistakes and making meaningful improvements.
(Question) 6. If you watch the broadcast, you will see a scene where a bunch of documents are placed on a table and reviewed. Can you briefly explain what that scene is?
Namhyi Lim:
Those are all the documents related to the Adoption Records Digitization Project, which has been conducted 17 times over the past 10 years. Most of these materials can be obtained through information disclosure requests. During the National Assembly audit period, many lawmakers requested relevant materials from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the NCRC, and experts in the field reviewed them together. he project documents include proposals, implementation plans, initiation reports, contracts, various manuals, completion reports, supervision records, and inspection documents—amounting to tens of thousands of pages. Printing them alone took several days. We, the production team, purchased multiple finger guards to flip through every page carefully and used countless index tabs as we painstakingly read through them. At first, terms like open bidding and digitization were unfamiliar, so we had to look them up one by one. But eventually, we could clearly see the sequence and flow of the project at a glance.
(Question) 7. There has been a big movement in the adoptee community recently saying, “You should apply for family search at the adoption agency before July. If the records are transferred to the Child Rights Center, it will be difficult to get help finding your family.” (Paperslip Note: This is clearly referring to Paperslip.org, since we are the ONLY Korean Adoptee organization which has been warning the Korean Adoptee Community for a YEAR about the coming move of ALL Korean Adoption Agency files to NCRC in July 2025). The original idea was to transfer the records to solve this problem, so what do you think about adoptees reacting this way?
Namhyi Lim:
Adoptees who have not received adequate support in their family searches are naturally feeling anxious as the overall system undergoes significant changes. One adoptee who participated in an interview for this program expressed deep frustration about the reality in which personal birth information—so vital to "me"—was freely accessed and concealed by adoption agency staff who had "no real connection" to them. She lamented having to desperately write down whatever information was selectively disclosed—or even mistakenly revealed—by these agencies. She also referenced Professor Kim Hosu’s critique of *“archival violence.”* Anyone who has met adoptees understands how crucial even a small note in a record or the truth hidden between the lines of a counseling document can be. This is why many individuals and organizations involved in this issue are deeply concerned about whether *all* records will be transferred in their entirety, without omissions. I shared the same concern.
Fortunately, within the NCRC’s Adoption Records Management Task Force, which is overseeing the adoption records transfer, there are individuals who understand the significance of these documents. One of the whistleblowers in this case identified critical issues in the previous project while preparing for the transfer of adoption records. However, after coming forward, they were reassigned to another department and remain excluded from the division of records management. Currently, the position for a records management officer remains vacant, despite the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s audit report requiring that the role be filled. The whistleblower's reinstatement is essential to ensuring the proper organization and preservation of documents. The failure to comply with this directive must be addressed urgently. If experts with professional archival knowledge are restored to their rightful positions and allowed to work according to established principles, concerns about the secure management of adoption records will be significantly alleviated.
One concerning issue is that there has been no clear announcement on how family search cases submitted to adoption agencies by July (2025) will be finalized and transferred to the NCRC. Once the new law takes effect, a detailed guidance manual must be prepared for information disclosure applicants, but no such document has been published yet. At the end of 2024, the NCRC’s Records Task Force team reportedly completed a full survey and cataloging of documents held by each adoption agency. Some orphanage records have already been transferred. However, there is an urgent need for clear guidance on the exact transfer schedule, which institutions will handle information disclosure requests around July, and how the transitional period will be managed. Under the current Special Adoption Act, adoption agencies are required to respond to information disclosure requests within 15 days (with a possible 30-day extension). Based on this, they may argue that they will only accept requests until May (2025). However, this would only be feasible if the NCRC had its system fully prepared before the new law takes effect. The legal revision should not create a gap in information disclosure services. Under the current law, adoption agencies remain responsible for handling adoptees’ information disclosure requests until the end of June.
(Question) 8. What do you think are the issues that need to be resolved within the organization before NCRC can properly begin family search after July? For example, a few years ago, the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs said that at least 20 people should be hired to specialize in family search. Do you think there are any plans to increase the number of people?
Namhyi Lim:
It is unclear at this point how much the workforce will be expanded. Adoptees need to actively inquire about this issue. Additionally, this is an opportunity to request that the officials responsible for responding information disclosure requests be identified by name. Until now, the NCRC has used a shared email account for processing to information disclosure requests, often sending automated replies stating that they are "too busy with a heavy workload." When deadlines were missed, there was no individual held accountable. In contrast, all public institutions in Korea require designated officials to communicate via their individual email accounts and take responsibility for their work. The NCRC is reportedly undergoing an organizational restructuring alongside its office relocation in March (2025). Logically, the number of staff should be reinforced to match those previously handling these tasks at each adoption agency. Since each agency had at least four to five staff members in charge, a minimum of 20 additional personnel would be a reasonable estimate. After transferring the documents, a considerable amount of time will be required to standardize and organize different documents from various agencies into a unified system. During this period, meticulous planning is essential to ensure the stable continuation of the family seach service. Also clear policy must be established on how to take over cases where family searches were initiated by adoption agencies but discontinued due to lack of progress. It is crucial to verify whether all the records history related to family search, such as visiting notes or letters left by biological family members, are linked and integrated into each individual's adoption file. Without anticipating these various scenarios and conducting simulations, confusion will be inevitable. It would be advisable to request that the NCRC and the relevant department of the Ministry of Health and Welfare hold an information session to explain the new information disclosure service under the revised legal framework, outline their plans, and address questions.
(Question) 9. The anger of overseas adoptees is great. They are victims, but their voices are not listened to because they are not in Korea. Nevertheless, what do you think adoptees can do? So that NCRC can take responsibility and properly find families?
Namhyi Lim:
While covering this story, the production team was shocked by the overall inadequacy of the adoption records digitization project. Experts said it was hard to believe that a public institution can carry out the project so disastrously? Then we speculated on the possible reasons behind this failure.
Perhaps they assumed that no one would ever know how thoroughly the project had been carried out. Overseas adoptees, who are the actual subjects of these records, do not live in Korea. Without parental consent, they cannot freely access this information, and since the original documents were never properly cataloged, even if data went missing, there would be no way to determine whether it had never existed or had simply been lost. The adoptees I met, upon discovering that their adoption records had been falsified, said, *"When Korea sent us overseas, they never imagined that we would return one day to retrieve our records."* It is heartbreaking, but it rings true. Had they anticipated such a possibility, they would not have recklessly falsified documents in the past. Likewise, if they had expected someone to scrutinize this project in the future, they would not have handled it so carelessly.
The second reason for this negligence may be that, although overseas adoptees are Korean, language barriers limit their ability to communicate and advocate for themselves. Even when adoption-related laws and policies are revised, it is difficult for their voices to be reflected. Recently, European countries such as Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France have declared that they will no longer accept international adoptions due to the illegalities uncovered in past adoption processes. China, facing a declining birth rate, has also ceased sending children for overseas adoption. Because illegal practices were uncovered, China, facing a low birth rate, has also ceased sending children for international adoption. Yet, Korea—the country that has sent the most children overseas—has neither engaged in reflective discourse nor introduced progressive policies regarding international adoption. The country with a record-low birth rate, is not even questioning why we are still sending children abroad for adoption. Instead, Korea decided to implement *state-led* international adoption by enacting a new international adoption law. When the Ministry of Health and Welfare established a consultative body to reform the adoption system, adoptee groups were included only after raising concerns, and their role in the process remained minimal. This was deeply regrettable.
Ultimately, they (Korean Adoptees) are not Korean voters. Politicians who draft laws and governments that implement policies fear the citizens who have voting rights. In fact, there is a system in place that allows overseas adoptees to regain their Korean nationality through dual citizenship. If they reclaim their Korean nationality, they are also granted voting rights. I firmly believe that, in the long run, overseas adoptees must become a political force that can make their voices heard. They need to send representatives to the National Assembly of Korea to advocate for their rights, particularly concerning family search. *"Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt"—the law aids those who are vigilant, not those who sleep on their rights.* Adoptees must unite and show their collective strength.”