Korean adoption system misidentifies birth parents, 15 years of errors go unchecked
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Anna Kim Riley, who was born in Daejeon in 1984 and adopted to the United States in 1985, is seen in this photo taken around the time of her adoption. In 2023, she was connected with a woman listed as her birth mother through Korea’s Adoption Central Management System, but a DNA test later confirmed they were not biologically related. Courtesy of Anna Kim Riley
By Hankookilbo
- Published Jun 18, 2025 1:00 am KST
- Updated Jun 18, 2025 1:00 am KST
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For Anna Kim Riley (born Jang Won-sook), a 40-year-old Korean American adoptee, 2023 was supposed to be a pivotal year.
Born in Daejeon and adopted to the United States, she believed she had finally found her birth mother through Korea’s official adoption database, the Adoption Central Management System (ACMS) run by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. But a DNA test soon proved they were not biologically related.
“I was furious and deeply confused,” Kim told the Hankook Ilbo via email. The mistake was not hers, but rooted in years of system mismanagement.
The ACMS, operational for over 15 years, is riddled with data entry errors and structural flaws that have gone unaddressed. The system was built in 2010 under the now-defunct Korea Adoption Services agency, which has since become the National Center for the Rights of the Child (NCRC).
Despite spending more than 2 billion won ($1.4 million) over a decade on digitizing adoption records, the system has repeatedly mishandled names and addresses, and even deleted key information during updates.
The adoption document for Anna Kim Riley shows she was born on Nov. 22, 1984, in Daejeon, but the information retrieved through Korea’s Adoption Central Management System was entirely different. Courtesy of Anna Kim Riley
Internal documents obtained by Rep. Kim Nam-hee of the Democratic Party of Korea detail critical failures. When one file is updated, information in another may disappear. Legacy addresses can’t be input correctly due to formatting limitations.
In some cases, when a child’s data is entered, it overwrites data for siblings. Staff report that information entered one day vanishes the next after a system upgrade.
A social worker involved in adoption services shared a troubling experience. “In a case where a mother had placed two children for adoption, entering data for the second child caused the birth mother’s name to disappear from the first child’s record. After a system upgrade, even pre-entered information for a child vanished entirely.”
An official at a facility that helps adoptees locate their birth parents echoed similar concerns. “We want to help adoptees reunite with their birth families, but it’s simply impossible with this system.”
Many of the adoption records date back decades and often include outdated address formats. The birth family search service run by the NCRC relies on these addresses to send inquiry letters to birth parents. When addresses are only approximately entered, the likelihood of successful contact drops significantly.
Even more troubling, the government is preparing to transfer thousands of records from private adoption agencies such as Holt to the state-run system next month, despite ongoing flaws. Without urgent reform, experts warn, more records could be compromised.
Last year, 3,374 overseas adoptees submitted requests to access their birth records in Korea. Fewer than 1 percent — just 259 people — were successfully reunited with family members.
An inspection report from the 2013 “Adoption Information System Improvement Project” conducted by the Korea Adoption Services (now the National Center for the Rights of the Child). Courtesy of Rep. Kim Nam-hee’s office.
When questioned about the issue, the Ministry of Health and Welfare claimed that 185 out of 204 records entered incorrectly had been corrected.
However, an independent review of 10 cases by the Hankook Ilbo revealed that half had not been fixed, and in one case the data had been erased entirely.
Kyung-eun Lee, an international law expert at Seoul National University, condemned the situation. “Treating vital personal records this way is discriminatory. If the system was flawed from the start, there is a duty to make it right.”
For Anna Kim Riley and the estimated 200,000 overseas adoptees like her, the failure is more than a technical glitch — it’s a barrier to reclaiming their identities.
“I don’t think the Korean government ever expected us to come back,” she said. “And even now, it seems like they treat us — children who were once poor, disabled or unwanted — as disposable.”
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.