[INTERVIEW] Children bear cost of adoption delays, advocate says

Children awaiting adoption in Korea are losing precious time to form bonds with permanent families as lengthy reviews and unclear screening standards delay placements, the head of an adoptive families’ advocacy group said.

In an interview with The Korea Times after a press conference Tuesday outside the Board of Audit and Inspection in central Seoul, Oh Chang-hwa, head of the National Adoptive Family Federation, called for faster adoption matching and transparent assessment standards.

“Children are there and parents are there. But they cannot meet,” he said.

His organizations and six other civic groups submitted a petition asking the state auditor to inspect the screening and matching procedures under the new adoption system, which took effect on July 19, 2025, shifting responsibility for adoption procedures from private agencies to the central and local governments. Their complaints center on administrative delays, allegedly inconsistent screening and excessive collection of sensitive family information.

According to figures submitted to the National Assembly and cited by the federation, 271 children were awaiting matching and 613 prospective adoptive households were waiting to be matched as of the end of August. In the roughly 13 months since the new system took effect, only six adoptions had been finalized with court approval, while 113 child-family matches had been completed.

For Oh, the central concern is not simply how long adults must wait to become parents. It is how much of a child’s early life passes without a permanent family.

“Babies start becoming wary of strangers at around six months,” Oh said. “We believe it is best for children to join an adoptive family before that stage. That is why we call this a ‘golden window’ and argue that children should be placed before their first birthday.”

Yet even reaching the matching stage can take an inordinate amount of time, he said. By his estimate, reviewers consider about 40 prospective households a month, but only about 20 children are matched.

“With roughly 270 children waiting, matching 20 a month would take well over a year just to clear the existing backlog,” he said. “And more children keep coming into the system.”

To speed up the process, he called for expanding the pool of matching committee members, arguing that the current eight-member body cannot keep pace with the caseload.

Oh also criticized a lack of clear, consistent screening standards, saying prospective parents are left uncertain about why they have been rejected or what they need to address.

According to his organization, one couple, for example, received no request for additional information or clarification before their application was turned down. Only in the rejection notice did they learn the reasons: they had not yet told their first child that the child was adopted, and they had expressed a preference for a girl.

Oh challenged the assumption that more intensive screening can reliably predict whether someone will become an abusive parent.

“No one can know for certain how someone will raise a child,” Oh said. “They say they will find good parents, yet they cannot even define what makes a good parent.”

The pursuit of certainty should not come at the expense of children’s opportunity to grow up in a family, he added.

His criticism was not a call to eliminate all screening, he said, but to make the process more transparent and its decisions accountable.

“The government said it would take responsibility,” Oh said. “That means it must also take responsibility for the time children spend waiting.”

An adoption official at the Ministry of Health and Welfare acknowledged that a buildup of cases during the transition to the new system had contributed to delays. But he stressed the need for thorough assessments to protect children’s best interests, saying that the ministry would work to clarify screening standards and address shortcomings in the process.