World’s Largest ‘Baby Exporter’ Confronts Its Painful Past; "But when Ms. Sorensen found her birth parents in South Korea last year, they could not believe she was alive. They told her that her mother

had passed out during labor and that when she woke up, the clinic told her that the baby had died"; if this is true, this is a very serious situation and opens up a very dark side of this story

‘Mia Lee Sorensen’s Danish parents used to tell her that her birth family in South Korea had put her up for adoption. According to her adoption papers, she was born prematurely in 1987 to a family that could not afford her medical bills and wished for her to have a “good future” abroad.

But when Ms. Sorensen found her birth parents in South Korea last year, they could not believe she was alive. They told her that her mother had passed out during labor and that when she woke up, the clinic told her that the baby had died.’

South Korea has the world’s largest diaspora of intercountry adoptees, with more foreign adoptions overall than any other nation. About 200,000 children have been sent abroad since the end of the Korean War in 1953, mostly to the United States and Europe.

Those adoptions have continued today, even as the country suffers one of the world’s lowest birthrates. In 2021, the top intercountry adoption hubs were Colombia, India, Ukraine and South Korea. (Before the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, China had topped the list.)’