South Korea is facing scandals that occurred decades ago. A state commission found that hundreds of children were fraudulently given for adoption to Western countries between the 1960s and 1990s. The commission’s chairman held the governments of that era responsible for the irregularities.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea investigated complaints from 367 people adopted to the United States and Australia.

After a nearly 3-year investigation, it was revealed that the governments of the time had direct responsibility for “fraud, irregularities, and abuses” in the adoption programs.

Orphaned children in South Korea were falsely represented as parentless, their identities and statuses deliberately distorted by adoption agencies.

It was also found that the South Korean governments did not oversee or penalize these institutions that generated “two thousand dollars per baby.”

About 200,000 children in South Korea, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, were adopted by families in Europe and the United States.

The administrations of that time were accused of initiating adoption processes to “deport children of disabled and unmarried mothers.”

As the scandal was officially acknowledged for the first time in the country’s history, the commission called on the government to formally apologize.

The chairman of the commission used the phrase, “Children were sent abroad like suitcases.”