Swedish-Korean adoptee’s pioneering research on flawed adoptions gains belated recognition

Tobias Hubinette’s findings on illegal international adoptions confirmed by investigations in Seoul and Stockholm

Two decades ago, when Tobias Hubinette began publishing research papers on the dark history of Korea’s overseas adoption program, his work was dismissed as radical, even extremist.

Now, the Swedish adoptee — born in Korea as Lee Sam-dol — is seeing both Seoul and Stockholm acknowledge what he has long maintained.

Earlier this year, state-run commissions in both countries found widespread human rights violations in intercountry adoptions from the 1960s to 1990s, when the adoption of Korean babies to the West was at its peak.

“I’m very happy about the development that is happening, both in the receiving countries and in the countries of origin,” Hubinette said in an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul Monday.

Adopted to Sweden in 1972 when he was just 7 months old, Hubinette became active in the Korean adoptee community in the 1990s. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Korean studies from Stockholm University and is now a senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University.

Hubinette’s early research uncovered alleged irregularities in intercountry adoption records and called into question Korea’s adoption system, which sent roughly 200,000 children to the West between the 1960s and 1990s. His detailed review of documents traced the origins of transnational adoption — or, in his words, “forced child migration.”

“The fact-based conclusions I presented 20 years ago seemed crazy at the time. There was a lot of resistance,” Hubinette said, noting that while he was occasionally invited to conferences in Korea to discuss his research, his work received little recognition.

“At that time, Koreans were not ready to hear it,” he recalled. “I guess there was still a sense of shame, and many other social issues were at the forefront. Adoption issues just weren’t seen as a priority. And for someone like me, who was viewed mainly as a Swede, it was also difficult to be taken seriously in Korea.”

Korea has often faced criticism for once being the world’s largest “baby exporter” in international adoptions. But Hubinette argues that the country of origin should not bear all the blame.

He argues that Korea’s political and social circumstances, combined with sweeping social changes in the West, created the conditions for the deeply flawed adoption system.

“It was invented in Korea, but not by Koreans alone. It was created by Koreans and Westerners together during and after the Korean War,” he said. “At first, it was only about sending out mixed-race children, because the government at the time was obsessed with ethnic purity.”

Hubinette said the so-called 1968 revolution in the West — marked by contraception, legalized abortion and the rise of second-wave feminism — led to a collapse in domestic adoptions, leaving prospective parents to look abroad. Korea emerged as a primary source.

By the late 1970s, the system had become deeply corrupt under Korea’s military dictatorship, the researcher noted.

“That’s when the worst adoptions happened, in the 1980s and 1990s,” Hubinette said. “Private agencies were running child welfare in Korea, closely tied to the government. Some even managed to survive the fall of the dictatorship.”

A photo from Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report on overseas adoption released in March shows Korean babies and children aboard a plane to Denmark in December 1984. According to a TRC official, these children lacked appropriate care during their journey, as the primary focus was on sending as many children as possible in one plane. Courtesy of TRC

The Swedish Korean adoptee’s own search for his origins has been fraught with uncertainty.

Classified as a “foundling,” Hubinette has little reliable information about his early life in Korea. According to adoption documents, he was discovered as an infant on a moving train when he was about a month old.

Despite decades of searching, he has never been able to find his birth parents.

Yet Hubinette’s persistence in researching adoption issues is now bearing fruit, as governments in Korea and Europe begin to confront long-standing allegations of corruption and irregularities in international adoptions.

In March, Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report citing state oversight failures in flawed international adoptions. The findings showed that among the roughly 140,000 international adoptions conducted between 1955 and 1999, more than 8,000 children were sent to Sweden alone.

Three months later, the Swedish government released the results of its own sweeping investigation into international adoptions, including those from Korea, which found that thousands of cases involved unethical or illegal practices. The report recommended that Swedish authorities apologize to adoptees and their birth parents, provide compensation and create a DNA database to help reunite families.

Stakeholders have until October to provide feedback, Hubinette said, after which the Swedish government will decide which recommendations to implement.

The prospect of change offers hope to thousands of adoptees who have spent decades searching for the truth. But Hubinette noted that for many, it comes too late.

“It’s good that these are happening now, but it’s very late. Many birth parents and adoptive parents have already died,” he said. “And many adoptees themselves have also died.”