The documentary called “Hemmeligheden i skyggearkivet” revealed that several adoptions from South Korea were, in fact, human trafficking. The children were stolen from their families and sold for a lot of money to “adoptive families” in Denmark. As a reaction to the documentary, the Danish Appeals Board (Ankerstyrelsen) is investigating all of the adoptions from South Korea from the 1970s and 1980s.
- Several political parties are asking for a much deeper investigation – to include more countries (People from Denmark adopted over the years from 50 different countries) and over a longer time span.
- The Minister of Social Affairs announced that she will look over the adoption rules in Denmark (which already changed in 2016) to see if they can be improved in order to ensure that such situations don’t happen again.
- The issue seems to be the private adoption agencies from Denmark and South Korea (and maybe other countries) that accepted fake identities for the children in exchange for large amounts of money.
- The issue of human trafficking masked as adoptions is not unique to Denmark. The United Nations asked all the countries to look into the adoptions from abroad, as many cases of human trafficking have been revealed. Norway, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands have already initiated investigations since last year.
