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Tianna Balkam

Famous TikToker Eun Ae Emily (@eunaeemily), a South Korean adoptee, has finally reached the end of her long journey in searching for the truth of her origin. Her devoted followers have seen firsthand the emotional turmoil she had to go through in finding and reaching out to her biological father. In one letter that he wrote back to her, he said, “if we lived a normal life, we would have lived a good life together” (Emily). Emily discovered that after her father’s business went bankrupt and he lost his job, her mother gave birth to Emily prematurely and the doctor suggested she give her up for adoption. 

A similar story can be found in the experience of another South Korean adoptee, Raven Thomsen (@the_thrifted_korean), who posted a TikTok of her being happily reunited with her biological mother at the airport. She discovered that her mother gave birth to her at age 17 and was told by a social worker that the best and only option was to put her up for adoption immediately (Thomsen). 

Ultimately, the reason Emily and Raven were given up for adoption was because their birth mothers were financially disadvantaged and pressured into it. Unfortunately, these kinds of stories are not rare occurrences. They exemplify the corruption that runs rampant in the adoption system. We often sympathize with the plight of adoptive parents in their struggles to adopt. Yet, it is also crucial to take a look at how the child ends up at an adoption center in the first place.

As an adoptee who was brought into a loving home myself, I am not saying you shouldn’t adopt or that it’s completely unethical. I merely want to emphasize the importance of reevaluating our priorities when it comes to international adoption and shifting our perspective to focus more on the preservation of families.

International adoption started gaining traction after World War II when adopting war-orphans was seen as a philanthropic endeavor. Since then, the major sending countries have included China, Guatemala, and South Korea (Hurt). Though currently, these countries have terminated foreign adoptions with the US due to concerns of corruption. We need to address why and how this corruption has been allowed to pervade the adoption process.

Supply and Demand of Children

Orphans are not as commonly found in the world as people may think. Media tends to exaggerate the number of orphans in economically underdeveloped countries in order to increase the chances for profit. For example, it was found that “90% of the estimated 143 million children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans at all” (Riben). 

This dangerous misconception of a worldwide orphan crisis exacerbated by the media overlooks one important detail. Plenty of older, traumatized, disabled children are in need of homes, but there is a lack of young, healthy children. Furthermore, adoption agencies use a loose definition of “disabled,” meaning any imperfection may be seen as a disability. For instance, I myself was born with a cleft lip and palate, a common oral birth defect, and was considered “disabled.” These orphans suffering from a trauma or disability are typically not the children prospective parents want. They are searching for young, healthy orphans that do not exist. Thus, this discrepancy in supply and demand leads to private adoption agencies hiring middlemen to search for and, if necessary, create “adoptable” children. The middlemen view selling children into adoption as a lucrative business opportunity for making significant profit.

Methods for Stealing Children

These highly paid middlemen use underhanded tactics, including deception and threats, to obtain children to be sold into adoption. They approach vulnerable, impoverished families and expectant mothers and question if they have sufficient money to raise a child. This psychological pressure preys on the fears and doubts of expectant mothers in their ability to take care of their children. They manipulate birth mothers into believing they are better off sending their children away to live with a foreign family. 

Not only will these middlemen exacerbate their fears, they will also exploit their hopes and dreams. The middlemen in Guatemala, often called jaladoras, are a case in point of the coercion and deception prevalent in the international adoption system. As a ploy to trick destitute mothers into surrendering their child, they carry photo albums to show pregnant women pictures of children living comfortably abroad with middle-class families (Nolan 94). This serves as an appeal to their desire to give their children a better life. Another frequently used tactic is making poverty-stricken families believe they are just sending their child away to receive an education, where they will also receive food and shelter. These families are never told that in doing so, they relinquish their rights to their children. Other covert methods of making children “adoptable” include the use of bribery, threats, and even switching the identities of babies.

According to Ethiopian adoptee Tarikuwa Lemma, whose parents were tricked into placing her in one such “education program,” these parents are under the impression that they are “making long-term investments in the future for the entire family” (Lemma). By the time the birth parents realize their child is not receiving the promised education, their child will already be long gone, shipped off abroad for adoption. 

One American couple adopted six-year-old Namata (“Mata”) from Uganda into their home, only to realize afterward that she had been unlawfully taken from a loving mother, who was told the lie that the American couple was simply sponsoring her and her daughter (Davis). This is yet another example of how common it is to fake the proper paperwork and register children as orphans. Thankfully, Mata was happily reunited with her mother in Uganda (Davis).

Another common tactic is to forge records listing the child as an orphan through falsifying adoptability documents or the death certificates of the birth mother. Obscuring the origins of the child allows the middlemen to smoothly transition the child into an adoption institution as an orphan on paper without setting off any red flags. 

In early June 2024, Pakistani child welfare activist Sarim Burney and his associates “allegedly forged documents to facilitate the adoption of three baby girls” through this method (Irfan). His case is one of many in South Korea where it was discovered that 200,000 adoptees from the country may have had their documents falsified over the past 60 years (Irfan). Even people like Burney, who are supposed to act as a guardian for children, are not impervious to the effects of corruption and greed. 

Middlemen are hired by adoption intermediaries within the network of child laundering involving people from both the private and public sector. Adoption intermediaries will not bother to question whether or not the placement of a child in an orphanage was the right choice, or they may even be complicit in covering up a child’s true origins. Therefore, it is difficult to determine if a child came to be at an orphanage through genuine or fraudulent means. 

Mariam Kobelashvili, an adoptee born in the country of Georgia, had to search for her long-lost twin because the hospital told their biological mother that one baby died during childbirth (Smith et al.). It is plausible the hospital worker was involved in the illegal adoption network since middlemen can appear as anyone. They are known to present themselves to expectant mothers as “midwives, maids, nurses, obstetricians, civil registrars,” or even as directors of nurseries and daycares (Nolan 94). These ordinary roles allow the middlemen to naturally come near unassuming expectant mothers and convince them that their bleak financial situation is unsuitable for raising their child. Economic and social inequality also play a factor as the middlemen are usually of a higher social class than the mother-to-be, making the mother more susceptible to their schemes. 

What You Can Do

You can help to ease the burden birth parents face by financially supporting organizations that provide them with post-placement care and resources. Contributing to organizations like BraveLove and the On Your Feet Foundation will help give birth parents a voice and strengthen the platform to share their perspectives and stories. Additionally, encouraging open adoptions and allowing the birth parents to maintain a connection with their child will alleviate their struggles caused by corrupt practices in international adoption. 

Works Cited

Davis, Jessica.  “The ‘orphan’ I adopted from Uganda already had a family.” CNN, 13 Oct. 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/10/13/opinions/adoption-uganda-opinion-davis/index.html.

Eun Ae Emily [@eunaeemily]. “If we lived a normal life, we would have lived a good life with Eun Ae.” TikTok, 28 March. 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8LUNNam/.

Hurt, Alyson. The number of US international adoptions from each country. State Department. https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/622545261/i-found-my-birth-mother-it-didnt-rock-my-life-and-that-s-ok.

Irfan, Anmol. “How International Adoption Is Failing Children.” Nonprofit Quarterly, 15 Aug. 2024, nonprofitquarterly.org/how-international-adoption-is-failing-children/.

Lemma, Tarikuwa, “International Adoption made me a commodity, not a daughter.” The Guardian, 31 Oct. 2014, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/31/international-adoption-made-me-a-commodity-not-a-daughter.

Nolan, Rachel. “Adoption Rings and Baby Brokers.” Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala, Harvard University Press, 2024, pp. 89–115. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.9128008.8.

Raven Thomsen [@the_thrifted_korean]. “I’m not crying, you're crying” TikTok, 4 June. 2024, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8LDWXmc/.

Riben, Mirah. “Adoption Criminality and Corruption.” HuffPost, 14 Jan. 2015, www.huffpost.com/entry/adoption-crimes-and-corru_b_6467540.

Smith, Nicola, et al. “Lies, love and deception: inside the cut-throat world of international adoption.” The Telegraph, 6 Dec. 2022, www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/international-adoption-scandal/.