Anchor: KBS has recently obtained government documents from the 1980s, which, for the first time, confirmed the long-alleged illicit pocketing of adoption fees by domestic adoption agencies in the past. An estimated 170-thousand children were adopted out of South Korea after the war before beginning to taper off with the enactment of the Special Adoption Act in 2011. This latest revelation comes as efforts are underway by overseas South Korean adoptees to discover the truth behind their adoptions.
Choi You Sun and Tom McCarthy report.

Report: The arrival of Melene Vestergaard in Denmark from South Korea as a three-month-old in 1983 was the final step in a journey traced through her adoption papers.

The papers include a notification from her Danish agency to her adoptive parents that they will be getting a baby girl, and to send 27-thousand Danish krone to South Korea as a fee. 

Her parents sent the money, which at the time was around three-thousand-500 U.S. dollars.

[Sound bite: Melene Vestergaard, S. Korean Adoptee in Denmark]
"My mother told me that they said it was for administration and the workers need pay of course, and the paperwork. And then, if there was anything left, then it would be used to cover if anyone else's adoption of other children, if the price was very high, then they would help so other people get children."

In 1983, adoption laws in South Korea permitted a maximum of one-thousand-450 dollars in costs per adoption, meaning Melene's parents had paid an additional two-thousand dollars to her adoption agency.

Peter Moller, who was adopted from South Korea to Denmark before the enactment of such a law in 1974, claims that his parents had spent a total of 15-thousand dollars in adoption fees.

[Sound bite: Danish Korean Rights Group Co-Head Peter Moller]
“And the Commission in Korea has also made huge waves out in other countries. France has made a huge investigation where they have concluded already that, that is related to Holt also, that there was actually falsification of documents, that children were sold, Korean children were stolen, and that was a huge fraud connected to adoptions.”

KBS has obtained three sets of government documents from the National Archives of Korea, the first time that the agencies' long-alleged illicit pocketing of adoption fees has been confirmed in state documents, as the government in the past is suspected to have condoned and abetted such illegalities.

One of them is the health ministry's report to the presidential office in 1988, stating that the nation's four adoption agencies, including Holt Children's Services, had taken an additional three- to four-thousand dollars in agent fees with each placement. 

The other documents show that the ministry had raised the issue in a meeting of the heads of relevant agencies, and that official expenses had been directed toward the acquisition of real estate.

KBS inquired with the four agencies about the documents, all of which flatly denied the allegations, citing regular state audits and their account books from the 1980s, which showed the fixed one-thousand-450-dollar adoption fee for every recorded case. 

Soongsil University Professor Noh Hye-ryun, who worked for Holt in 1981, however, told KBS that she had seen separate documents kept by the agency indicating three-thousand dollars were charged for a visa issuance, passport and other services.

Relevant investigations are ongoing in eight countries outside South Korea, while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission launched an investigation into all alleged illegalities surrounding overseas adoption last December. 
Choi You Sun and Tom McCarthy, KBS World Radio News.