President Lee Jae Myung said on Thursday that he presents his sincere apologies on behalf of the country to both South Koreans adopted abroad and their adoptive and biological families.
In a post on Facebook, he writes that he feels sorrow over the "anxiety, pain and confusion" that South Korean adoptees must have felt when they were sent abroad as children.
A truth and reconciliation commission recently found that the adoptions were marked by abuse and violations of human rights and that the government failed in its responsibility.
According to the Authority for Family Law and Parental Support, more than 9,200 children were adopted from South Korea to Sweden between 1969 and 2022.
The Swedish government's investigator proposed in June this year that international adoptions should be stopped. The Adoption Commission was appointed in the autumn of 2021 after Dagens Nyheter's revelations about how adopted children from, among other places, South Korea were stolen from their biological parents in the 1970s and 1980s.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (The Moderate Party) said then that he does not rule out that all internationally adopted people should receive an apology from the state.
