South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Swedish Adoption Commission have released their three-year investigations into the country’s international adoption practices, revealing severe human rights violations.
Youngeun Koo uses the case of Tak-Un Kim—a four-year-old boy who went missing and was subsequently adopted to Sweden in 1974—to explore the complex history of international adoption and the multiple state and institutional actors on both the sending and receiving sides that enabled the transfer of children over decades.
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom (@chung.woolrim), Swedish-Korean adoptee artist and activist, created an illustration for the piece based on a news article about Tak-Un published in the Tong-a Ilbo on 6 October 1975.