8 Korean adoptees sue Denmark over identity rights violations

Eight people adopted from South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s filed a lawsuit Monday in Denmark, alleging the government failed to verify the legality of their adoptions and denied them their rights to identity and family life.

The lawsuit joins a growing wave of legal challenges worldwide stemming from South Korea's overseas adoption program, through which more than 140,000 children were sent abroad between 1955 and 1999. A South Korean government truth commission determined in March 2025 that the program involved widespread fraud, including falsified orphan registrations and identity tampering.

The eight plaintiffs are each seeking 250,000 Danish kroner ($39,150) in damages, for a total claim of 2 million kroner. They are basing their case on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to private and family life.

"The Danish state had an obligation to ensure that the children were legally allowed to be adopted from their birth families, and that was clearly not the case," Viktor Kieler Herskind, the lawyer representing the adoptees, told AFP.

According to the Korea Times, the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission's March 2025 report found that international adoptions from South Korea included fraudulent orphan registrations, identity tampering and inadequate vetting of prospective adoptive parents. South Korea issued a formal apology in October 2025, with Seoul acknowledging "unjust human rights violations" in the adoption process — the country's first such acknowledgment.

Denmark suspended international adoptions in 2024, the Korea Times reported. Similar cases have been filed in other countries, though few have resulted in successful outcomes for plaintiffs.

The Danish case is part of a broader global movement in which adoptees from South Korea and other countries are pressing governments and adoption agencies to account for decades of alleged misconduct in international adoption programs.