South Korea ratifies treaty aimed at safeguarding international adoptions

After years of delay, South Korea has ratified the Hague Adoption Convention, an international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions. The announcement Tuesday is a significant policy shift decades after sending tens of thousands of children to the West through an aggressive but poorly regulated adoption system. The government faces growing pressure to address widespread fraud and abuse that plagued its adoption program, particularly during a heyday in the 1970s and 1980s when the country allowed thousands of children to be adopted every year. Many adoptees have since discovered their records were falsified to portray them as abandoned orphans, carelessly separated or even stolen from their birth families.