South Korean adoptees who were placed with Danish families in the 1970s and 1980s are suing Denmark to secure information about their birth families. The plaintiffs say they were told they had been abandoned or were “street orphans,” but subsequent inquiries have found that many were not, according to reporting on their claims.
The lawsuits target Denmark over what the adoptees describe as barriers to obtaining records and exercising a right to know their origins. The coverage also places the cases in a broader historical context: South Korea’s government has reported that more than 140,000 children were sent overseas for adoption between 1955 and 1999.
While the sources describe the adoptees’ background and the motivation for the litigation, they do not agree on specific legal details such as the exact court, the specific documents sought, or how Denmark’s authorities are responding. The common thread across outlets is that adoptees are pursuing judicial relief to learn more about their birth family circumstances and to correct information they say they were previously given.
