Korean Adoptee Uma Feed Takes Legal Action Against Norwegian State for Enabling Illegal Adoption

Document type: Web page copy

Publication date: 23 September 2025

Oslo, September 23, 2025 – Korean adoptee Uma Feed delivered a formal notice of intent to sue the Norwegian state through a dramatic performance art piece at the Ministry of Children and Families today. Feed alleges her international adoption was illegal and demands both declaratory judgment and compensatory damages.

She alleges that the Norwegian state violated her rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to private and family life. She also claims that Norwegian authorities contributed to her being subjected to human trafficking in violation of Article 4 of the ECHR.

The case references a September 28, 2022 joint statement on illegal intercountry adoptions from UN committees, including Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), which established that illegal adoptions violates numerous international human rights laws, and can constitute human trafficking. Additional supporting arguments cite the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts.

The legal notice was delivered through a performance piece titled “ARV” (Norwegian for Heritage/Legacy), performed by Feed herself at the ministry’s reception. The performance referenced the tragic deaths of other international adoptees in Norway, including victims of drowning, shooting, and domestic violence by adoptive parents.

“These three fates are not mine, they belong to other international adoptees who had to pay with their lives,” Feed stated in her performance. “The dead cannot return, but from today we adoptees will no longer carry them! Norwegian State! The notice has been given – from today it is you who must carry them.”

The legal notice references decades of concerns about international adoptions from South Korea. As early as 1976, Norwegian media reported on the purchase of children from South Korea. In Sandefjords Blad on March 26, 1976, State Secretary Kjell Knudsen from Ministry of Social Affairs called for an end to “the hunt for children in the world’s poorest countries.” At that time, an “expert group” was “in the process of assessing the adoption problems” with the intention of “creating clearer rules that will ensure that Norwegian authorities have control over the adoptions throughout”.

When new adoption legislation was introduced in 1986, the Council for International Adoptions and adoption intermediaries Adoptions Forum and Children of the World warned that the proposed consent requirements would be “impossible to control for international adoptions.” Despite these warnings, the Justice Department proceeded with the legislation, stating in official documents that this was something they would “have to accept.”

Feed argues that international adoption is a transnational act occurring in both South Korea and Norway, creating international legal responsibility for Norwegian authorities. She contends that the demand side of the transaction in Norway enabled human rights violations on the South Korean side.

Central to the case is the question of what Norwegian authorities knew or should have known about the adoption process, particularly regarding their oversight of private adoption organisations.

Feed’s case represents a challenge to historical practices and questions of state responsibility in international adoption procedures.

The Norwegian Ministry of Children and Families provided no response to Uma Feed upon receiving the legal notice.

This report is based primarily on information provided in Uma Feed’s press release, with references fact-checked by the reporter.