South Korea’s government fabricated birth records, falsely reported children had been abandoned and failed to properly conduct safety checks of prospective parents during its postwar frenzy of sending babies overseas for adoption, a long-awaited investigation reported on Wednesday. Authorities say more than 200,000 South Korean children have been adopted overseas since the 1950s, when the impoverished country was rebuilding from the devastation of World War II and the Korean War – giving rise to a massive and lucrative adoption industry. Many of those adopted children, now adults scattered across the globe and trying to trace their origins, have accused agencies of coercion and deception, including in some cases forcibly removing them from their mothers. On Wednesday, the government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings on the first 100 cases analyzed out of 367 total petitions filed by adoptees sent overseas between 1964 and 1999. The adoptees hail from 11…
