Biological Parents Relinquishment Letters and Surrender Forms
Recent investigations by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea (TRC), academic monographs, and joint media inquiries (such as the AP/PBS Frontline investigations) have documented that parental relinquishment letters—known as Surrender Agreements (Chingwon Pogi Gakseo, 친권포기각서)—were frequently obtained through deception, institutional coercion, and legal fraud rather than informed, voluntary consent.
During the peak adoption decades of the 1970s and 1980s, private adoption agencies—including Holt Children’s Services, Social Welfare Society (SWS), Korea Social Service (KSS), and Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS)—operated in a competitive market to supply infants abroad, creating systematic patterns in how relinquishment documentation was procured and managed.
Core Findings on Relinquishment Letters and Surrender Forms
1. Misrepresentation as Temporary Foster Care
The Deception: Impoverished parents facing temporary illness, divorce, or financial collapse often approached local clinics, orphanages, or agency branches seeking short-term boarding care or subsidized medical treatment.
The Outcome: Agency caseworkers presented complex legal waivers written in formal legal Korean (often mixed with Chinese characters) and represented them as standard "intake paperwork" or temporary custody authorizations. Destitute parents believed their children were in temporary foster care, only to discover later that the paperwork was an irrevocable surrender of parental authority (Chingwon), clearing the child for international transit.
2. Institutional Debt-Trapping in Maternity Homes and Clinics
Hospital-Agency Collusion: Academic research (e.g., Hosu Kim, 2016) and the TRC confirm that adoption agencies established financial pipelines directly into obstetrics clinics, municipal hospitals, and agency-run maternity homes.
Debt Leverage: Unwed and low-income pregnant women who could not afford delivery and hospital fees were offered "free" medical care subsidized by the agency. In exchange, mothers were pressured or required to sign a relinquishment waiver immediately before or within hours of childbirth to satisfy the accrued medical debt.
3. Circumvention and Forgery of Signatures
Third-Party Signatures: Agencies frequently accepted relinquishment waivers signed by third parties without the biological parents' knowledge. Grandparents, estranged relatives, neighbors, or institutional supervisors (such as shelter directors at Busan's Brothers Home) signed relinquishment letters on behalf of biological parents.
Fabricated Documentation: The TRC confirmed cases where relinquishment forms were completely forged using generic personal stamps (dojang) or fabricated thumbprints, or where children were deliberately registered as "foundlings" (Gia) via perfunctory police reports to bypass the legal requirement for parental relinquishment documents altogether.
4. Omission of Revocation Rights and Cooling-Off Periods
Under the military-era Special Act on Adoption (1976), adoption agencies had extensive latitude with minimal administrative oversight. Surrender letters contained no informed-consent disclosures, no explanation of foreign migration, and no legal grace periods for biological mothers to change their minds—protections that were not formally codified into South Korean law until the 2012 amendments requiring a mandatory seven-day cooling-off period.
5. The "Shadow File" Discrepancy
Agencies often maintained two parallel sets of files: confidential domestic files (Adong Sin-sang Josaseo / Jeopsu Daejang) containing accurate family backgrounds, signed protests, or requests to reclaim the child, and sanitized English dossiers provided to Western adoption agencies and parents. These translated files claimed the infant was an "abandoned orphan willingly relinquished by destitute parents" to clear overseas orphan visas and reassure adoptive families.
Sources & Resources
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea (TRC):
Investigation Report on Human Rights Violations in Intercountry Adoption Operations (March 2025; Relaunched TRC3, 2026). Primary state finding establishing systemic documentation fraud, lack of maternal consent, and institutional coercion across the "Big Four" agencies.
Available via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Portal.
Peer-Reviewed Academic Scholarship:
Kim, Hosu (2016). Birth Mothers and Transnational Adoption Practice in South Korea: Virtual Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan. Detailed sociological analysis of the institutional practices of Korean maternity homes and the socio-legal mechanisms used to extract infant surrenders.
Kim, Eleana J. (2010). Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Duke University Press. Evaluates the political economy, social stigma surrounding unmarried mothers, and the administrative machinery that transformed parental surrender into an export industry.
Southern Cross University School of Law and Justice (2025). The Troubled History of Intercountry Adoption. Examines legal supply chains, market dynamics, and involuntary relinquishments from detention facilities.
National and International Inquiries:
National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK): Fact-Finding Investigation on the Human Rights of Intercountry Adoptees and Biological Families. Evaluates constitutional and civil rights violations under South Korean municipal law regarding child displacement and parental consent omission.
Joustra Committee (Commissie-Joustra, Netherlands, 2021): Rapport van de Onderzoekscommissie naar Adoptie in het Verleden. Dutch governmental inquiry documenting forged relinquishment papers and institutional negligence in historical Korean adoption pipelines.
Archival and Investigative Journalism:
The Associated Press (AP) & PBS FRONTLINE (2024–2026): South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning. Forensic multi-year investigation drawing on unsealed government audit files, diplomatic cables, and internal agency intake ledgers detailing coerced surrenders and falsified files. Accessible via PBS FRONTLINE.
This Vantage report on South Korea's adoption crisis provides an overview of the recent official findings into historical adoption fraud, coerced relinquishment, and state responsibility.
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