South Korean adoption agencies sent children abroad like "luggage" for decades, labelling some as orphans when they had parents and sending alternative babies when infants had died before heading overseas,

South Korea’s truth commission has concluded that the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins.

A South Korea commission urged South Korea to issue an official apology for an adoption process that was often fraudulent.