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After hundreds of thousands of adoptions, gov't to take over process

Published: 13 May. 2025, 18:33

The ″Baby Box″ in a church in southern Seoul is seen in a picture taken on May 11, 2023. The Baby Box is meant to help mothers give up their babies to the church rather than abandon them in dangerous places. [YONHAP]

Twelve years after Korea signed an international treaty designating the state responsible for overseeing adoption procedures, the country is finally set to implement a revised system that puts the government in charge.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare announced Tuesday that new enforcement decrees and rules for the Special Adoption Act, the Intercountry Adoption Act and the Child Welfare Act will be promulgated by Wednesday. The changes are set to take effect on July 19. The legislation was passed in the National Assembly in July 2023 and has since undergone a two-year preparation period.

The overhaul centers on transferring key adoption responsibilities from private institutions to the central and local governments. Currently, private adoption agencies have managed all aspects of adoption, from taking custody of children to matching them with adoptive parents.

Under the revised system, local governments will assume custody of children prior to adoption. The mayor or governor of the child's residence will become the legal guardian, tasked with quarterly assessments of the child’s adjustment and development.

The process for evaluating prospective adoptive parents will also be handled by the government. National Center for the Rights of the Child (NCRC), established under the Welfare Ministry, will receive applications, while government-designated private agencies will conduct eligibility screenings and counseling.

Adoption illustration [JOONGANG ILBO]

A newly established committee, tentatively titled the Adoption Policy Committee, chaired by the welfare minister and comprising 50 medical, legal and adoption experts, will review child-parent matches. The enforcement rules detail education requirements for prospective adoptive parents and background checks, including criminal records.

Post-adoption follow-up, previously managed by private agencies, will now fall under the Welfare Ministry’s purview, with a minimum one-year monitoring and support period. The NCRC will also be tasked with standardizing and managing adoption records, which had previously been inconsistently maintained by various agencies.

This reform comes 12 years after Korea signed the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption in 2013. Despite signing the treaty, Korea has yet to ratify it due to a lack of corresponding domestic legislation.

The push for legislative reform gained urgency following high-profile child abuse cases, including the death of a young girl named Jeong-in in 2020, which laid bare the limitations of the privately managed adoption system.

A protest is held outside the Seoul Southern District Court in southern Seoul on April 7, 2021, the day that the hearing was held against the couple that abused and killed their adopted daughter Jeong-in. [YONHAP]

Civic organization members hold a protest in central Seoul on April 10 demanding the government disclose information related the people who were adopted to families in foreign countries. [YONHAP]

Another longstanding criticism has been Korea’s status as "the world's largest baby exporter" on the back of the significant number of transnational adoptions, with government data cited in the Welfare Ministry's summary of a discussion on the Hague convention reporting nearly 170,000 overseas adoptions to date, and almost 240,000 total including domestic adoptions.

Of the 212 children adopted last year, 58 — or 27.4 percent — were adopted to families abroad. While this figure marks a decrease from past years, it remains disproportionately high. In line with the Hague Convention’s principle that domestic adoption should take precedence, the revised law includes a mandate that the government devise a Basic Plan to Promote Domestic Adoption every five years.

“Adoption creates a permanent parent-child relationship, and therefore must be handled with the utmost care and responsibility,” said a Welfare Ministry official. “We expect the new system, which strengthens government and local responsibility, will better safeguard the rights and interests of adopted children.”

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
BY NAM SOO-HYUN [[email protected]]