There were murky conditions surrounding adoptions in the Asian country, which sent more than 140,000 children overseas between 1955 and 1999.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) – Eight people adopted by Danish nationals from South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s are suing Denmark for allegedly denying them their right to identity, origins and family life, their lawyer said Monday.
In the lawsuit, the eight, who were all adopted when they were very young, claim that Danish authorities should have known their adoptions were illegal and therefore failed in their responsibility to protect them.
The plaintiffs have each sought 250,000 kroner ($39,150) in damages, for a total of 2 million kroner, citing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which refers to respect for private and family life.
“The Danish state had an obligation to ensure that the children were legally allowed to be adopted by their birth families, and this was clearly not the case,” their lawyer Viktor Kieler Herskind told AFP.
The state should have “actively investigated” the adoption process in South Korea, he said.
He alleged that successive Danish governments were aware of shady conditions surrounding adoptions in the Asian country, which sent more than 140,000 children overseas for adoption between 1955 and 1999, according to an official South Korean investigation.
In October 2025, Seoul apologized for the first time for state-sanctioned abuses, saying “unjust human rights violations” had been committed.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission found in March 2025 that human rights violations had occurred in international adoptions of South Korean children, including “fraudulent registrations of orphans, identity manipulation, and insufficient verification of adoptive parents.”
It also found “numerous cases where proper legal approval procedures” for South Korean-born parents “were not followed.”
Kieler Herskind said Denmark also reportedly failed to respect adoptees’ right to maintain contact with their country of origin.
Several similar lawsuits have been filed around the world, but few have been successful.
In 2022, the Netherlands was ordered to pay damages and interest to a woman born in Sri Lanka in 1992 for acting “unlawfully” when she was adopted by a Dutch couple.
Denmark froze international adoptions in 2024 after a series of serious problems with international adoption practices came to light.
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From Agence France-Presse
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