AP finds widespread adoption fraud separated generations of Korean children from their families

By Kim Tong-hyung, Claire Galofaro, David Goldman and Jae Hong

The AP-led investigation, published in coordination with Frontline, was born out of reporter Kim Tong-hyung’s decade-long commitment to uncovering abuses in South Korea’s adoption system. He’d grown up in Korea believing the common narrative: that Western families saved orphans who had no other options. But he began questioning that in 2015 while reporting on an abusive facility in Korea and embarked on a 10-year effort to uncover the truth.

He submitted more than 100 requests for government records, searched archives, social welfare institutions and even scoured used books stores. He fought government agencies for months for access to documents. He built trust with adoptees all over the world, who sent him their files so he could examine for himself the stories agencies claimed when they sent children away. Through these records, he learned that his country’s adoption history was far darker than most realized: Korea was responding to intense demand for babies from the West, and by satiating that demand, the country built diplomatic friendships and offset its own welfare responsibilities by sending abroad babies it deemed undesirable.

Kim partnered with Claire Galofaro on the investigations team to piece together not just the Korean government’s culpability, but also that of the Western countries that claimed these children. Galofaro spent weeks examining documents in government and social welfare archives. She tracked down judges and attorneys who dealt in adoptions in local U.S. courts, to reveal cracks in the system meant to ensure babies weren’t bought and sold. In New York, news researcher Rhonda Shafner worked on the project more nearly a year.

Together, Kim and Galofaro interviewed more than 80 adoptees, and worked with Frontline for more than a year to report a feature-length documentary. Kim convinced former adoption workers to describe how mothers were pressured to give their babies away and agencies did nothing to ensure children were truly orphans. Galofaro found humanitarian workers who tried to sound the alarm that agencies were aggressively hunting for children because there weren’t enough real orphans to meet Western demand.

This reporting revealed the investigation’s most stunning findings: people warned that the adoption industry was engaged in dubious practices. Yet the Korean government and the governments of Western nations did nothing for decades to curtail abuses. The AP was able to harness its reach around the world by pulling in an international team of photographers, including David Goldman and Jae C. Hong.

Before the stories were even published, the reporting prompted significant impact: The U.S. State Department, prodded by months of questions from The Associated Press, said for the first time that it would begin to piece together its own role in fraudulent adoptions from South Korea from its archives.

Since the stories were published, the team has heard from many advocates who have been calling for years for adoption reform efforts.

“I have been hearing from adoptees I know and seeing the response on social media and it’s so far making a really meaningful impact — legitimizing adoptee histories and providing such an important lens onto the system,” wrote Eleana Kim, the leading scholar on Korean adoptions.

 “Can’t thank you and the team enough!” wrote one advocate who leads the world’s largest community of adoptees. “Our community of impacted victims are breathing a sigh of relief to feel so validated with your coverage that is so in-depth, capturing much of what we’ve been saying for years!”

Judges were impressed by the comprehensiveness of the reporting, the collaboration and the dedication of Kim bringing his “passion project” to life with multi-year reporting. 

For illuminating abuses in South Korean adoption system and supporting adoptees who lost their birth families in the process, Kim, Galofaro, Goldman and Hong earn this week’s Best of the AP — First Winner.

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