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.

The largest exporter of international adoptees allowed fraud to flourish, as the government pushed the adoption agenda

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,