TRC Decision on Truth-Finding About Brothers Home of Busan -
January 21, 2025.
Posted to Paperslip on April 9th, 2025.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR SENSITIVE CONTENT.
Download the original Korean report:
Decision on Truth-Finding in Human Rights Violation Case (4) of Brothers Welfare Center (PDF)
Thank you to Jack Greenberg for the TRCK PDF.
Please refer to the original Korean report linked above for documents / graphics, which we have not included or translated below.
If you wish to attempt translation of these documents / graphics yourself, please see:
Google Lens + ChatGPT Translation Tutorial
ChatGPT additionally allows you to upload images for translation if you have a login.
See Related -
TRC Confirms 31 Children Sent Overseas For Adoption Through Infamous Brothers Home of Busan
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Paperslip Note:
In our personal opinion, there are likely FAR more cases of Overseas Adoptions originating from Brothers Home than can ever be proven. Most of the evidence from Brother’s Home has been destroyed by its former operators, which apparently continued to operate under a different name following the closure of Brothers Home in 1987.
Brothers Home was located in Busan, a large metropolitan city which was a major source of children for overseas adoption. We personally believe that it was inevitable that children from Brothers Home were funneled through Nam Kwang Orphanage in Busan, a major feeder orphanage of the Korean Adoption Agencies Holt and KSS. While Nam Kwang likely provided children for the other major Korean Adoption Agencies as well, it is known that Holt and KSS were major destinations of children from Nam Kwang who were adopted overseas.
We want to note however, that (anecdotally) we believe that the vast majority of children sent for overseas adoption came from mothers who gave birth at hospitals, maternity clinics, and single unwed mothers homes.
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TRC Press Release:
Decision on Truth-Finding in Human Rights Violation Case (4) of Brothers Welfare Center
Below is our ChatGPT image translation of the TRC Report on Brothers Home, released January 21st, 2025. Please note that ChatGPT is not a perfect translator, so please refer to the original Korean document linked above. Also see the original Korean document for documents / graphics, which we have neither included below nor translated.
Some BOLDS and all red highlighting ours. We have added page numbers.
Page 1:
“Press Release
Date of Release: January 21, 2025 (Tuesday)
Contact: Investigation Division, Section Chief Kim Jung-mi
Phone: 02-3393-9950
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(04554) 173 Toegye-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, Namsan Square Building 5~6F
<March 15 Memorial Hall> (51727) 1 Maseong-ro 2-gil, Masanhappo-gu, Changwon-si, Gyeongsangnam-do
Decision on Truth-Finding in Human Rights Violation Case (4) of Brothers Welfare Center
– Additional 130 people acknowledged… 31 out of overseas adoptees confirmed to have been adopted abroad –
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Chairperson Park Si-young, hereafter "the Commission") made the fourth decision on the truth-finding of the "Brothers Welfare Center Human Rights Violation Case (4)" during its 96th committee meeting held on January 21 in Jung-gu, Seoul.
This case involves severe human rights violations committed against children who were forcibly detained in the Brothers Welfare Center – a facility established on July 20, 1960, and closed on August 20, 1992. Under the pretext of addressing homelessness and vagrancy, police rounded up individuals and placed them in the facility, where they were subjected to forced labor, assault, abuse, family separation, death, and other serious human rights violations.
◼ The Commission confirmed 130 additional victims eligible for truth-finding compensation through this fourth decision.
◼ In particular, it was newly confirmed through the current investigation process that 31 out of the children confined at the Brothers Welfare Center between 1976 and 1989 were adopted overseas.
※ Of the 31 adopted overseas during 1988–1989, four children were transferred from the Brothers Welfare Center to other facilities before being adopted abroad, and their names were registered with the adoption agencies.
◼ There have been suspicions—reported in domestic and international media (such as the 2017 Probe File and 2019 AP exclusive)—that the Brothers Welfare Center was involved in the overseas adoption of children. These suspicions have been raised repeatedly in previous truth-finding decisions (1st to 3rd rounds).
◼ This 4th truth-finding decision includes requests from adoptees overseas who went through the Brothers Welfare Center and other welfare facilities before being adopted abroad.
◼ The Commission obtained relevant documents from three overseas adoption agencies, Busan City, the Child Welfare Office, and other related institutions.
Page 2:
Among those confined, 31 children were confirmed to have been adopted overseas (including 1 who submitted a petition), and 17 biological mothers were also identified.
◯ It was revealed that the required public notice titled “Notice for Confirmation of Unidentified Guardianship Obligation,” which is meant to help locate the child's guardians before adoption, was either not carried out or not properly implemented. This should have been done in local district offices near the child's last known location or the location of the adoption agency. However, in many cases, adoption procedures proceeded overseas while this public notice was either omitted or conducted in unrelated locations.
◻ The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended the government to take the following actions:
Issue an official apology
Restore the honor of the victims
Recover and confirm the identities and family relationships of individuals who were harmed during the forced confinement process, including missing persons.
Page 3:
Appendix
Photos and Documents Related to the Truth-Finding of Human Rights Violation Case (4) at Brothers Welfare Center
Photo 1. Personal Information Record Card of Victim Child Park ○○, Adopted Overseas from Brothers Welfare Center
This child was born to Kim ○○, a woman confined at the Brothers Welfare Center, and was forcibly confined along with her. The child was sent to an adoption agency and registered just one and a half months after birth, and was adopted overseas three months later.
Although there is a written consent for adoption signed by the biological mother, it was confirmed that due to the internal regulations of the Brothers Welfare Center, such as:
Article 410 prohibiting photography inside the facility,
Restricted access and communication between residents and outsiders,
Environmental conditions that limited mothers’ ability to exercise guardianship,
And difficulty in verifying the authenticity of consent under such circumstances, it is difficult to determine whether the adoption consent was obtained voluntarily and legitimately.
Page 4:
Photo 2. Certificate of Public Notice for Confirmation of Unknown Guardian and Confirmation Form for Child Eligible for Adoption (regarding victim child Gi ○○)
In March 1977, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs introduced a system to prevent the disappearance of children and to help locate them by requiring facilities to post public notices for children whose guardians were unknown, under the guideline "Guidelines for the Post-Placement Management of Children in Child Welfare Facilities."
This system intended for notices to be posted in the area where the child was found and in the jurisdiction of the facility where the child was residing.
However, for the 21 children confirmed through the Certificate of Public Notice for Confirmation of Unknown Guardian, all notices were posted in areas unrelated to the place of discovery or were conducted within the jurisdiction of the facility’s location due to the facility being transferred from another location.
Because of the special adoption law enacted on January 31, 1977, overseas adoption agencies were required to submit documents proving that public notices had been posted to confirm the absence of guardians when applying for an overseas adoption permit for a child.
As a result, even though the system was meant to help locate lost children, public notices were often posted in irrelevant areas while overseas adoption procedures were already underway. This practice is far from ensuring the child’s right to live with their family and instead was an act of mere formal compliance.”
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Commentary by Jack Greenberg, author of the related Korea Times article:
TRC Confirms 31 Children Sent Overseas For Adoption Through Infamous Brothers Home of Busan
Posted to Paperslip on April 9th, 2025.
Private commentary shared with the permission of Jack Greenberg.
Bolds and red highlighting ours.
"Although the TRC identified illegal overseas adoptions from the Brothers Home, these were addressed in the Commission's fourth report on the Brothers Home rather than as part of the ex-officio investigation into overseas adoptions.
That, of course, begs the question: Why? I suspect it has to do with the thematic framing of each investigation. The Brothers Home case primarily focused on illegal detention and the abuses suffered within the institution itself. These are understood as part of the broader system of forced institutionalization in privately operated group living facilities. In that framing, the adoptions were treated as another form of institutional violence, often through the lens of, say, a “vagrant” mother unjustly deprived of her child.
By contrast, the ex-officio adoption investigation begins from a different starting point (of) systemic abuses in Korea’s international adoption program. It focuses on how adoption agencies, government ministries, and other intermediaries facilitated wrongful removals, falsified records, altered identities, and so on.
While illegal adoption is a through-line in both investigations, the context, causes, and institutional actors differ in noteworthy ways.
The TRC may have chosen to keep the Brothers Home cases within that institutional “file” to maintain narrative and evidentiary coherence, rather than splitting or duplicating them across investigations. Still, that decision raises a deeper issue: does this kind of compartmentalization obscure the fact that illegal adoption wasn’t merely a footnote to the abuses at Brothers Home—but potentially part of a much broader systemic pattern? It’s something that it would be helpful for our own purposes to scratch at more: to what extent does this framing do justice to the victims’ experiences, and to what extent does it reflect the limits of bureaucratic categorization?"
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Below -
The 4 pages of the original TRCK
Decision on Truth-Finding in Human Rights Violation Case (4) of Brothers Welfare Center (PDF)
from January 21, 2025:
