Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: Thousands of children from South Korea have been adopted by
Speaker 1: Australian families over decades. In many cases, these children were
Speaker 1: raised to believe they were orphans, and their adopted families
Speaker 1: believed they were doing something loving and selfless by giving
Speaker 1: them a home. But a much more sinister truth has
Speaker 1: been laid bare by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in
Speaker 1: South Korea. Today. Associate editor for The Saturday Paper, Martin
Speaker 1: Mackenzie Murray on the trafficking of fake orphans and whether
Speaker 1: Australia is finally ready to confront its part in the trade.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, May twenty one. Mary. I want to start
Speaker 1: by asking about every union that happened in Seoul back
Speaker 1: in twenty ten in that room.
Speaker 2: I have to be a little careful about divulging the
Speaker 2: details because it's a very personal and sensitive issue to
Speaker 2: this person. This person's our young woman, and there were
Speaker 2: South Korean adoptee from the now scandalized Eastern Social Welfare
Speaker 2: Society was the name of the adoption agency, and like
Speaker 2: many of these adoptees, this woman had grown up in
Speaker 2: Australian suburbia with an entirely invented biography. Those inventions were several,
Speaker 2: but probably the most profound one was that she grew
Speaker 2: up believing that she was an orphan. And so the
Speaker 2: reunion is very far from a fairy tale, because, for one,
Speaker 2: the young woman was reuniting with a mother she thought
Speaker 2: was dead, and the mother on her side, she had
Speaker 2: no idea that her daughter had been adopted out to Australia.
Speaker 2: She was denied that bit of information was lied to
Speaker 2: about it. So you have this meeting which is filled
Speaker 2: with extended family, and neither party has mutual language, so
Speaker 2: it's broken haltingly by a translator, which is insufficient to
Speaker 2: get across the various confusions, and this sudden kind of
Speaker 2: disclosure and unpackaging of all these liars that they had
Speaker 2: believed for so many years. And so then they went
Speaker 2: in their separate ways, and in fact they have not
Speaker 2: seen each other since. And it's not a story that
Speaker 2: we would typically, I think, concentrate or emphasize upon in
Speaker 2: the media when we talk about adoption reunions. We like
Speaker 2: those stories of the research and the happy outcome.
Speaker 1: So how did it come to be that her entire
Speaker 1: background was fabricated as an adoptee.
Speaker 2: So from a few years ago there was a petition
Speaker 2: in South Korea to submit Eastern Social Welfare Society the
Speaker 2: adoption agency to investigation. For decades, South Korea has been
Speaker 2: the largest exporter of children via intercountry adoption that peaked
Speaker 2: in the middle of the nineteen eighties, and the Eastern
Speaker 2: Adoption Agency was the largest in South Korea. And stories
Speaker 2: started coming out as people were encountering discrepancies in their
Speaker 2: own stories. You know, their adoption documents might comprise two pages,
Speaker 2: really scant stuff, and it turns out upon scrutiny, filled
Speaker 2: with lies and fabrications. So there were these discrepancies that
Speaker 2: the children now adults wanted to unravel and in doing
Speaker 2: so unraveled really quite sickening, repugnant abuses by this adoption agency.
Speaker 3: South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has announced the preliminary
Speaker 3: results of a year's long investigation into overseas adoption involving
Speaker 3: an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand babies over decades.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Speaker 2: turned its attention to these adoption malpractices. It found that
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases, adopted children were declared as
Speaker 2: orphans when in fact they were simply the children of
Speaker 2: mothers that had been coerced into relinquishing their child. It
Speaker 2: had found that the agency had facilitated huge numbers of
Speaker 2: adoptions with very little procedural oversight, and it found that
Speaker 2: a lot of information of these children had been lost
Speaker 2: either through negligence or lost cynically, or that the biographical
Speaker 2: data of these adopted children had been entirely falsified or fabricated.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about the story of Samara Kim?
Speaker 1: Another South Korean adoptee that you spoke to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was another adoptee of the Eastern Adoption Agency.
Speaker 2: She's also an academic that specializes in intercountry adoption practices.
Speaker 2: She's authored several papers on this and is currently a
Speaker 2: PhD candidate in it. She grew up believing she was
Speaker 2: an orphan. She possessed a scant biography, as contained in
Speaker 2: her adoption documents, but beyond this, the little biography she
Speaker 2: had was in itself fabricated. She wasn't an orphan, and
Speaker 2: in trying to get answers she said, when she realized
Speaker 2: that so much of what she knew of her past
Speaker 2: and the conditions of her adoption were invented through gross
Speaker 2: negligence or even criminality, she now suffers this existential crisis.
Speaker 2: I think she described it as like a jigsaw puzzle
Speaker 2: which was never complete anyway, but the few pieces she
Speaker 2: had for it she suddenly lost.
Speaker 1: And Samara's doing a PhD on international adoption, as you said,
Speaker 1: so what does she have to say about what's driving this?
Speaker 2: Several things were driving it, and sort of depends on
Speaker 2: which decade we're looking at.
Speaker 3: South Korean adoption began with mixed race and other orphans
Speaker 3: following the nineteen fifty to fifty three Korean War, in
Speaker 3: part to Korean favor with allies, especially the US.
Speaker 2: South Korea isn't unique in this, but after the Korean
Speaker 2: War there was a increase in biracial babies born of
Speaker 2: US soldiers, for instance. There was a kind of a
Speaker 2: cultural suspicion of such babies. It invited embarrassment upon families
Speaker 2: because it was seen to be kind of diluting kinship,
Speaker 2: diluting strong Korean bloodlines. And I felt like there was
Speaker 2: an appropriate analogy with the Irish Magdalene laundries. So in
Speaker 2: South Korea, similarly to Ireland, we experienced it here in
Speaker 2: Australia as well, to a lesser extent, was unwed mothers
Speaker 2: or single mothers being ostracized, being considered sinful or spiritually corrupt,
Speaker 2: and embarrassed or shamed or coerced into relinquishing their children.
Speaker 2: And those children that were taken from their mothers, these
Speaker 2: children are now given often falsified documentation and entirely invented pasts.
Speaker 4: So the fundamental cause of such a variety of occurrences
Speaker 4: is that the state has turned a blind eye to
Speaker 4: the continuous occurrence of these illegal and unlawful acts over
Speaker 4: the decades, has not implemented any mechanism to control them.
Speaker 2: As time moved on into country adoption simply became incredibly profitable.
Speaker 2: I was hesitant last week speaking to all these adoptees
Speaker 2: to use this kind of bloodless phrase of supply and demand.
Speaker 2: But there are two sides of inter country adoption. There's
Speaker 2: the sending country and the receiving country, and there have
Speaker 2: to be kind of cultural and political conditions to receive
Speaker 2: children from other cultures. So Samara's contention is that what
Speaker 2: drove a lot of Western adoption in Australian adoption was
Speaker 2: a sense of kind of cultural superiority, and she felt
Speaker 2: it laundered explicitly or often implicitly, a certain form of colonialism.
Speaker 2: And I think it's still true today that the word
Speaker 2: adoption is sort of haloed by ideas of benevolence.
Speaker 3: Advocates say human rights abuses also need to be addressed
Speaker 3: by the countries to which Korean adoptees were sent.
Speaker 2: So a sense of Western superiority and even kind of
Speaker 2: saviorism played a part in a process that was in fact,
Speaker 2: in some cases not adoption but really human trafficking.
Speaker 1: After the break, how the Australian governments promised to investigate
Speaker 1: fall short.
Speaker 3: Mari.
Speaker 1: Australia has adopted a lot of children from South Korea,
Speaker 1: which is currently confronting the fraud and abuse that has
Speaker 1: been part of that industry there. But you mentioned that
Speaker 1: this goes beyond South Carea, so tell us about some
Speaker 1: of the other countries Australians have adopted from.
Speaker 2: Plenty of countries. One woman I spoke to Kimber she
Speaker 2: was part of what was called the Julie Chew Ring
Speaker 2: now the Juli Chew ring astonished Taiwan. At the time
Speaker 2: that it was revealed, which is in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: Julie Cheu was she presented herself as a lawyer, which
Speaker 2: was another sort of fraudulence of hers She was a
Speaker 2: legal secretary. In nineteen eighty two, her home was raided
Speaker 2: after the exposure of a what was essentially a criminal
Speaker 2: syndicate dedicated to the trafficking of babies, but it involved
Speaker 2: doctors and midwives and lawyers, each acting corruptly to procure babies,
Speaker 2: and there are stories today still suggesting that babies were
Speaker 2: outright kidnapped from crowded markets, taken from their prams in
Speaker 2: other cases, corrupted doctors and midwives, coercing mothers into relinquishing
Speaker 2: their children, not telling them where they were going, falsifying
Speaker 2: birth certificates. Believed there was at least twenty six so
Speaker 2: called Julie Chew babies sent to Australia in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, most of them to South Australia, and Kimber
Speaker 2: was one of this cohort. Julia Cheu was sentenced initially
Speaker 2: to life sentence, it was reduced to about six year
Speaker 2: years but it begs the question what cultural and bureaucratic
Speaker 2: conditions existed in Australia that an outright, flagrantly kind of
Speaker 2: wicked criminal syndicate could be mistaken for a legitimate adoption agency.
Speaker 2: And that question, for the adoptees I was speaking to
Speaker 2: this week, hasn't been adequately answered.
Speaker 1: So has Australia begun to confront or reconcile with its
Speaker 1: roll and all this is a player in the overseas
Speaker 1: adoption industry.
Speaker 2: So just prior to the federal election, the Albanese government
Speaker 2: made a promise that it would begin an inquiry into
Speaker 2: Australia's processing and reception of Korean South Korean adoptees should
Speaker 2: it be a re elected But the problem here, according
Speaker 2: to every adoptee that I spoke to, is that the
Speaker 2: profundity of what happened and the profundity of australia negligence
Speaker 2: to deal with outright criminal syndicates or countries that aren't signatories,
Speaker 2: for instance, to the Hague Convention of nineteen ninety three
Speaker 2: that helps govern into country adoption. The problem with undertaking
Speaker 2: an inquiry like this by the Department itself is that
Speaker 2: there's an obvious conflicted interest there. The other issue would
Speaker 2: be that if it limited its attentions to South Korea,
Speaker 2: you'd be losing a lot. I've just given it the
Speaker 2: Julie Chew example for instance, but there are many others
Speaker 2: from different countries.
Speaker 1: So it's fair to say that adoptees are not confident
Speaker 1: in terms of whether the inquiry is serious and related
Speaker 1: to the outcomes that they desire.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, definitely. Another adoptee I spoke to was Linnell Long,
Speaker 2: who in the late nineties established the inter Country Adoptee
Speaker 2: Voices Group. Her personal story was that she was brought
Speaker 2: from Vietnam in nineteen seventy three, taken from a war
Speaker 2: zone when she was five months old, and flown to
Speaker 2: Melbourne straight into the care of abusive parents. Her adoption
Speaker 2: was broken by the Lutheran chi and the Australian government
Speaker 2: and she suffered many, many, many years of abuse. This
Speaker 2: was ventilated in the Royal Commission in Institutionalized Child Sexual Abuse.
Speaker 2: Her father was convicted for his abuse, and last year
Speaker 2: she in fact received a letter from the Immigration Minister
Speaker 2: which expressed sorrow and said that you accepted that there
Speaker 2: was not a robust system in place when Linnell was adopted.
Speaker 2: So Lenell's point is Well's first, It's very large one.
Speaker 2: She believes that mostly into country adoption is unconscionable, and
Speaker 2: that there are rarely conditions that would justify the removal
Speaker 2: of a child from biological parents and their country of
Speaker 2: origin and that culture. Linnell said for a long years
Speaker 2: she described it as the adoption fog, And what she
Speaker 2: meant by the adoption fog was her own internalization of
Speaker 2: what she described as the myths of benevolence, so that
Speaker 2: adoption was only ever a good thing and the adoptees
Speaker 2: should only ever be infinitely grateful for it. And this
Speaker 2: was internalized sort of so deeply. She says that any
Speaker 2: deviation from a feeling of gratitude she could feel shame about. Now,
Speaker 2: keep in mind that that kind of deep sense of
Speaker 2: internalized gratitude extended to abusive parents, and so she said,
Speaker 2: it took us some time to kind of liberate herself
Speaker 2: from that sense of gratitude and to understand that adoption
Speaker 2: in this case wasn't benevolent at all. One it facilitated
Speaker 2: provision of a very vulnerable child into the hands of
Speaker 2: abusive parents, and two, it spoke to a profound negligence
Speaker 2: and bureaucratic failure on the behalf of the Australian government.
Speaker 1: And finally, Marty, when you look at the regulation to
Speaker 1: know so around adoption, has it gotten any better over time?
Speaker 1: Do we know that?
Speaker 2: In some ways? Lenel Lung would would sort of passionately
Speaker 2: say not. However, for instance, Australia is still dealing with
Speaker 2: South Korea in adoptions. The only thing that's been removed
Speaker 2: or shall I say, corrected in that sense, is that
Speaker 2: we're not dealing with specifically the Eastern Adoption Agency Taiwan.
Speaker 2: We still deal with nor A Taiwan signatories to this
Speaker 2: ninety three Hague Convention. And I think, you know, you've
Speaker 2: got political and potential legislative reform. But there's something else,
Speaker 2: which I think is what I might call cultural reform,
Speaker 2: which is that the way media contemplate these issues is
Speaker 2: particularly narrow. I think we quite cynically pursue quote unquote
Speaker 2: feel good stories to the exclusion of deeper and more
Speaker 2: profound stories that are messier and more complicated but probably
Speaker 2: truer to the experience. And something else that I was
Speaker 2: discussing with Lenow is whether or not you know, in
Speaker 2: all of these cases there is the persistence of the
Speaker 2: word adoption to describe them when a more appropriate description
Speaker 2: in most of these cases is human traffic. And I
Speaker 2: wondered what would happen popularly or politically if sometime ago
Speaker 2: we used the more appropriate description for it.
Speaker 1: Marty. Thank you for your reporting on this, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thanks Matte.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, the Nationals will not be forming
Speaker 1: a coalition with the Liberal Party, ending a seventy nine
Speaker 1: year partnership. Nationals leader David little Proud made the announcement
Speaker 1: after discussions with the new Liberal leader Susan Lee over
Speaker 1: the past week, citing nuclear energy as a major point
Speaker 1: of disagreement for the two parties. And Foreign Minister Penny
Speaker 1: Wong is visiting three Pacific island nations in our first
Speaker 1: standalone own trip since the election. Senator Wong is visiting Vanawatu,
Speaker 1: Tonga and Fiji, with a UN Climate Change Conference COP
Speaker 1: thirty one near the top of her agenda. Australia is
Speaker 1: hoping to co host the event next year, with Adelaide
Speaker 1: proposed as the host city. I'm Daniel James seven am
Speaker 1: will be back tomorrow