Althouse: "South Korea’s export of babies peaked in the 1980s, with as many as 8,837 children shipped abroad in 1985. Children were 'sent abroad like luggage'..."

March 27, 2025

"South Korea’s export of babies peaked in the 1980s, with as many as 8,837 children shipped abroad in 1985. Children were 'sent abroad like luggage'..."

"... the commission said, presenting a photo that showed rows of infants and young children strapped to airplane seats.... Mia Lee Sorensen, a South Korean adoptee who was sent to Denmark in 1987, said the commission’s findings provided the 'validation' that she had been seeking. When she found her birth parents in South Korea in 2022, they couldn’t believe she was alive. They told her that her mother had passed out during labor and that when she woke up, the clinic told her that the baby had died...."

From "World’s Largest ‘Baby Exporter’ Admits to Adoption Fraud/A South Korean truth commission called for the country to apologize to those who were sent abroad 'like luggage' so that adoption agencies could profit" (NYT).

36 comments:

Achilles said...: I keep hearing absolutely crazy stories of corruption coming out of South Korea.

All of their politicians are apparently deeply corrupt. Just reading the excerpt of this story is wild.

And South Korea is not just in a doom loop demographically. They are in danger of having no significant indigenous population in less than 3 generations.; 3/27/25, 11:02 AM
Achilles said...: So this story was in the NYTs which makes is obviously suspect.

This is actually an interesting enough subject to go look for real sources of information. I give a 50 percent chance of anyone in this "article" actually existing.; 3/27/25, 11:04 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: That's horrible. They've now destroyed two families for each stolen baby.; 3/27/25, 11:18 AM
Readering said...: Reminder that South Korea was a military dictatorship during this period. Of course too bad such an export agency was not then operating in the north.; 3/27/25, 11:23 AM
Greg The Class Traitor said...: The death penalty seems appropriate here, not mere "apologies"; 3/27/25, 11:25 AM
n.n said...: Children were Planned... aborted like they are a "burden", sequestered like they are carbon waste, an obstacle to social, clinical, political, criminal, and climate progress. Life deemed unworthy of life. Deja vu.; 3/27/25, 11:31 AM
George Leroy Tirebiter said...: There was a recent Equalizer episode with a similar storyline, where mothers were told their babies died at birth, but instead were trafficked to couples who thought they were doing legal adoptions.; 3/27/25, 11:33 AM
Howard said...: Had a business associate whom he and his wife (both professional white progressive) adopted a Korean infant in around 1993-94. Lost track of them around Y2K or so. Kid is early thirties now. My best friend was adopted into relatively old money in 1960. He's quite grateful celebrating every day he hit the lottery.; 3/27/25, 12:11 PM
Bob Boyd said...: What's the difference between jam and jelly?
You can't jelly a baby into a suitcase.; 3/27/25, 12:25 PM
Tina Trent said...: Achilles: I've worked with and had as social service clients enough people who were trafficked here for various reasons -- housebuilding (Czechs and Polish men) and sex trade (every Korean or Eastern European woman working in a "massage" parlor) to believe the behavior described here. South Korea is a deeply corrupt place. What a terrible tragedy. A family loses a much-wanted child, and another family discovers that the child, usually female, they deeply wanted and raised must all now face this horrible possibility.

Related: I worked on Operation Homecoming, when Bush One (I'm no fan) declared that any biracial Vietnamese youth could come to America as refugees, as they were most likely children of American servicemen. These kids had largely been castouts, not allowed to attend school, abandoned by families, especially the half-black ones. Many turned tricks or sold drugs in Vietnam to survive. Well, we weren't using DNA to confirm that the "families" who brought them here were really blood relatives. Some really bad people were snatching these teens up to get into America, then abandoning them once they got here. So we had a bunch of homeless adolescent illiterate prostitutes of both sexes and teen gang-bangers being dumped in places like Atlanta. That wasn't their fault; it was the fault of the gangsters who pretended to be their families.

The first people on any refugee plane are the warlords and gangsters who destroyed their countries to begin with. That's just one unspoken truth of the refugee industry. America is the most generous country on earth -- and soon, Mars. Now we need to take care of our own citizens -- and be a lot smarter about our generosity to ingrate nations ... and entire continents.; 3/27/25, 1:07 PM
Wa St Blogger said...: There have been many cases of fraudulent adoption practices by unscrupulous entities trying to meet the demand of desperate parents. That is why the Hague convention was put into practice - to try and verify that the child put up for adoption was not stolen and was truly in need of adoption. I am thankful that our adoptees were truly in need. Theft of children was not something that we were originally cognizant of, but after our 2nd, we were very careful to insure that we were not contributing to the exploitation, and stuck with Hague approved agencies and orphanages.

This problem is a logical externality of rampant abortion. More parents desiring children than the available supply, which was curtailed by the wholesale termination of unwanted pregnancies. How many of those children could have been adopted if our culture was not so adamantly against helping women have a REAL choice and not a false dichotomy of raise it or abort it.; 3/27/25, 1:11 PM
robother said...: Knew a single lawyer who adopted a Korean baby around this time (84-86). I wonder what if any vetting of her as a parent (other than income) took place: now, I'm thinking that too may have been part of the deal.; 3/27/25, 1:55 PM
FullMoon said...: Beulah George "Georgia" Tann (July 18, 1891 – September 15, 1950) was an American social worker and child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an unlicensed adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s to 1950. Young children were kidnapped and then sold to wealthy families, abused, or—in some instances—murdered .; 3/27/25, 1:55 PM
Geoff Matthews said...: Aren't similar allegations being made against China?; 3/27/25, 3:07 PM
rhhardin said...: Average IQ 105; 3/27/25, 3:14 PM
Quaestor said...: I got my first deerhound from a couple who adopted a Korean baby during this period. It was a girl they named Ariel whom they raised Jewish. When I met her she was nearly four. She's middled aged now. I wonder what she thinks of this ginned-up controversy.

There are those who'd call me unsympathetic for scoffing, but it seems to me the people who shout the loudest about the evils of adoption seldom have the best interest of the adoptees at heart. If these children had been wrenched from the arms of terrified young mothers, then I would be persuaded to outrage. However, at the peak of this so-called trafficking South Korea's very formidable industrial boom had not yet ignited. Job's were scarce and the population was growing at a rate that helped the Paul Ehrlich's of the coming apocalypse trade stay wealthy. Consequently, it was easy to convince expectant parents to surrender their third or fourth child to the adoption agencies. Today, South Korea's birth rate has slipped below sustainability. Their leadership is in a panic and looking for miscreants to punish for the Republic's inevitable decline, while blithely ignoring the mirror-image panic that took hold in the 1970s and triggered this situation in the first place.

Some say demographics is destiny. However, true destinies are far easy to perceive in hindsight by fame-seeking historiographers than predicted by fame-seeking doom-mongers. Over much of the developed world the population bomb, having sputtered and fizzled, is being replaced by a birthrate disaster as the fashionable cause de jour. Ho-hum.; 3/27/25, 3:33 PM
The Vault Dweller said...: Some of the comments over there touch on the uncomfortable topic of inherent risks with Trans-Racial adoptions. Our society likes to pretend that racial and ethnic identities are merely superficial but several commenters over there who were Korean adoptees by white adoptive parents talk about difficulty bonding with their adoptive parents and feeling like they don't belong, forever an outsider. I suspect it is common for any adopted child to wonder about their birth parents, but are these feelings worsened in Trans-racial adoptions?; 3/27/25, 3:35 PM
Rooks1954 said...: My wife’s brother and his wife adopted two babies from South Korea in the late 80’s. I remember asking at the time why from South Korea? They said it was a lot easier than trying to adopt American babies.; 3/27/25, 3:47 PM
Quaestor said...: Having name-dropped Paul Ehrlich, I recall a substantial bet he made with another academic who made a reputation for himself by conducting lectures while wearing rubber devil horns glued to his bare noggin. As I vaguely recall, the wager involved long-term predictions regarding certain commodity prices and blue-chip stocks. According to Ehrlich's model, an exploding population would cause stock values to tumble, while commodities would skyrocket. Needless to say, Ehrlich lost the bet and avoided settling in a very ungentlemanly manner. I believe his devil-horned counterpart passed away without ever seeing the wager settled in his favor. Am I correct?; 3/27/25, 3:53 PM
Quaestor said...: How I it get that apostrophe s in jobs? Was typing on a Mac to blame?; 3/27/25, 4:01 PM
Quaestor said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/27/25, 4:07 PM
Enigma said...: I always thought of this stuff when I saw the Megadeth album cover for Youthanasia. It's not technically about Asian babies though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youthanasia; 3/27/25, 4:14 PM
BarrySanders20 said...: Picked up my lil brother at JFK in 1975 after they put him on a plane in Seoul and delivered him to us. A handful of adult staff from Lutheran Social Services cared for the kids on the flight over and carried them off the plane (not as luggage but as babies) to new mamas, papas, and siblings. Yes, it was trans-racial, as he joined a family with four POW's (plain old whiteys -- my folks, me and older brother) and our biracial adopted sister. I suppose my folks were social do-gooders. A few years ago my brother visited the orphanage where he lived as an infant and found some birth mother information, but did not follow up. He has expressed gratitude over the years that he was adopted and says he feels fortunate that he was. He's as American in culture and outlook as anyone growing up here in the 70's and 80's.; 3/27/25, 4:14 PM
Spiros said...: One of my cousins picked up a couple in the 1990s -- good kids (not too bright though).; 3/27/25, 4:53 PM
ALP said...: I am relaying this from memory - came across an article that explains how Korean citizenship used to work. Until the 1950's (I think), citizenship wasn't granted simply because you were born within the borders of South Korea. It was a "blood inheritance" from your Korean father. Thus, any baby granted Korean citizenship had to have a father listed on the birth certificate. You know where this is leading: what does a single mother do with a fatherless baby that would not be considered a Korean citizen with all the rights that come with it? This is where the orphanage comes in. The mother would leave the baby at a police station (anonymously). Orphaned babies 'found' by the police were considered to be property of Korea and were granted citizenship, unlike a baby with a single mom and no dad on the birth certificate. This quirk of citizenship provided a pipeline of babies from single moms, until the rules were changed.; 3/27/25, 5:08 PM
Derve Swanson said...: Boo hoo.
How many Palestinian babies did your tax dollars kill today. Those kids got golden tickets to better lives... They don't want to go back. Save your tears.; 3/27/25, 5:10 PM
rsbsail said...: I'm so sick and tires of people calling for a country to apologize, or worse, a politician apologizing for actions which they had no responsibility. If the perpetrators are still alive, go to them for an apology and/or punishment.

Someone claiming to apologize for actions that a country committed long ago, often before he/she was born, is stupid and meaningless.; 3/27/25, 5:23 PM
Narr said...: I don't know about horns, but the person who comes to mind from Quaestor's comment about Paul Ehrlich is the late Julian Simon.; 3/27/25, 5:24 PM
T J Sawyer said...: I recall the Harry Holt Korean babylift of the 1950s.
https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/archive/LysloHHP.htm

"A few children were of Negro-Korean extraction, and they were adopted into Negro families. These were beautiful children! I have heard said that the combination of Negro-Korean is an especially attractive combination, and the children proved this. The Negro adoptive couples were thrilled with the children they received. The children tended to be of quite dark coloring."

It was a different era.; 3/27/25, 5:47 PM
Quaestor said...: FYI, Narr.; 3/27/25, 5:56 PM
boatbuilder said...: Narr: It was Julian Simon, and, Quaestor, Ehrlich did pay off the bet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager; 3/27/25, 6:09 PM
Lem Vibe Banditory said...: Internet: "Correlation means there is a statistical association between variables. Causation means that a change in one variable causes a change in another variable.
In research, you might have come across the phrase “correlation doesn’t imply causation.” Correlation and causation are two related ideas, but understanding their differences will help you critically evaluate sources and interpret scientific research."

Does the overturn of Roe-v-Wade change the rules of the game a bit, as it were?

#Keep asking questions.; 3/27/25, 6:25 PM
Narr said...: Thanks for the clarification-confirmation, guys. I remember Simon's Pninian baldness, but had forgotten the horns.; 3/27/25, 6:37 PM
Donatello Nobody said...: Quaestor: as Yogi reminded us, it’s hard making predictions, especially about the future.; 3/27/25, 10:53 PM
Disparity of Cult said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/28/25, 3:01 AM
Disparity of Cult said...: Being adopted into a good, loving family is what matters. Cultural connections to the originating country can vary.

A co-worker who had emigrated from Korea to the US in her twenties, along with her white American husband, eventually adopted two babies from Korea.

Another co-worker who had emigrated from Korea to the US with her immediate family when she was around seven years old attended a church that had some type of outreach program with Korean-born young people who had been adopted by American families. This co-worker mentioned how a young woman that she knew from the church program insisted on wearing traditional Korean clothing for her senior year high school picture.; 3/28/25, 3:05 AM