Adoption scandal in Norway: »It was robbery. A business"

Uma Feed will probably never forget the names of her lost family members in this life. She has had it tattooed and wears it under the skin on her left forearm: that of her mother, her father, her brother - at least almost. The Korean names she first heard less than a year ago when she was 40 are wrong. The black characters go from left to right instead of top to bottom. It's the most harmless oversight in this entire story.

For four decades, Feed lived under the belief that he might be an orphan. For most of her life, she had no idea that her real mother had neither sold nor abandoned her. That at some point her own father convinced himself that she was long dead to numb the pain. That on the other side of the world there was a brother who swore never to have children himself in order to finally overcome the trauma of his parents. She didn't know that she had come from South Korea to Norway through sheer arbitrariness and was handed over to a family there like a better holiday souvenir.

Today the artist says: »It was robbery. A business. Because that's what it's called when you spend money to get something even if it doesn't belong to you."

She now knows that she is not the only one. She demands clarification. And above all, that it stops: She wants foreign adoptions to be banned internationally.

More adoptions than anywhere else

Norway is not the only country that has discussed its decades-long adoption practice in recent months. There have also been cases similar to Uma Feed and similar discussions in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. But nowhere is it possible to trace with such precision how the narrative behind the adoptions is currently losing its credibility.

In no other country were more children adopted from abroad in relation to the population than in Norway. Ten to 15 times more than in other industrialized countries, more than 20,000 in total.

Adoptions are an extraordinary process, perhaps it is the most far-reaching administrative act that is possible in a constitutional state: a person is brought from one country to another country, usually before he can even say his name, and receives new papers there different nationality, a new family, often a different name. An identity that begins with a trip around the world, with a transfer from a poor to a rich country.

It often only becomes clear decades later whether things went well and whether everything was carried out correctly and in accordance with the rule of law. Can a state even presume to do something like that?

In almost all Western countries there has been an increasing number of foreign adoptions since the middle of the 20th century, and Norway has always played a special role. For a long time it was itself a country of emigration, not an immigration society, nor a colonial power. Perhaps that is why the country was also a welcome partner in the Global South. Domestic adoptions to foreign families were rare. “Our own standards were too high for that,” says lawyer Kirsten Sandberg, former judge at the Supreme Court in Norway and chairwoman of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. »According to Norwegian tradition, children should grow up in their own family. The adoptions from abroad, however, seemed ideal to us. The Norwegians could afford the high costs, and it seemed like a humanitarian act.”

Today, Sandberg considers these assumptions to be an expression of arrogance. It is quite possible that life in Norway is better than in many other countries in the world. But does that mean it is best for a child to be brought to Norway?

Uma Feed today says she always felt different, even before she knew her real story. She describes the paradox of foreign adoptions as follows: “When your mother becomes a stranger and a stranger becomes your mother.”

She never doubted her parents' good will

The Norwegian couple who took her in in 1983 still call them “Papa” and “Mom.” Photos show her and her two siblings in Norwegian traditional costumes, on national holidays, in rustic living rooms and fishing in fjords. From her arrival as an infant until she was 19, she was called Anne. She should be a normal Norwegian woman. Her parents wanted to do everything right, and she never doubted that.

All she knew about her origins was that she was probably given up for adoption as an orphan. Her siblings, also adopted children, told her: Be happy to be here. Feed said: Send me back, I want to understand my origins.

The only other non-white people in town were the Vietnamese boat refugees, Feed remembers.

Today her relationship with her adoptive parents is strained; she keeps contact primarily for her own children. Feed is now a mother of two herself.

How many such fates there are only became clear in the recent past. Journalists from the daily newspaper “Verdens Gang” have been reporting on this for almost a year and a half. Initially it was just a matter of picking up similar reports from the Swedish sister newspaper. Then, while the first text was being researched, more than 200 adoptees responded. "I've never experienced anything like this," says Martin Folkvord, investigative journalist at VG. »Usually we have to dig for a long time to find those affected. This story came rolling towards us like a wave.«

Since then, he and his colleagues have revealed, for example, that it became known in the 1980s how favors were provided for adoptions in Ecuador and how many adoptees are still waiting for answers today. Since then, a multi-part podcast has been published, and television reports regularly.

There were clues early on

The number of adoptees seeking help from counseling centers has tripled within a year. The government initially insisted it had no knowledge of possible violations. It is now clear that there were at least 88 indications of irregularities from the 1970s to 2022 alone.

It was about monetary payments or about children who were brought into the country without papers and were still allowed to stay. Experts assume that the Norwegian willingness to help may have led to a local search for children who could be sent abroad. A South Korean-Danish investigative report last year found that not a single case out of 1,000 reviewed was free of irregularities. The processing is laborious. Where no documents were created 50 years ago, it is now difficult to determine the truth.

An investigative commission is now conducting research. Until it is ready, the responsible supervisory authority Bufdir recommends banning all further foreign adoptions for at least two years.

It would probably be the end for the three Norwegian adoption agencies; their business model has been shaky for years. The largest, “Adopsjonsforum,” still resides in a villa in the diplomatic quarter next to the Chilean embassy. Of the 25 employees, only five are still there, and the Ikea furniture looks worn out. The managing director says that if nothing changes, we will be bankrupt in a few months.

Helge Solberg also fears something similar, even if there is no ban. He works for “Verdens Barn”, translating Children of the World.

Solberg's agency had been placing children with Norwegian families since the 1960s. He likes to talk about his own, his wife is also an adopted child and the children are also from abroad. For others, however, Verdens Barn rarely organizes adoptions; the authorities have removed more and more countries from the list of possible countries of origin in recent years. Currently most of the children come from South Africa.

The agency was originally founded as an association that supports Korean War orphans. It saw itself as a child protection organization. It must have seemed like a win-win situation to everyone involved. The then poor and authoritarian ruled Asian country got rid of orphans, illegitimate children and supposed soldiers' children. In Europe and North America, people were happy to be able to help in an uncomplicated manner. Not just for Koreans, but also for couples who want to have children. Suddenly there were a lot of abandoned babies and orphans. A few sheets of paper and three stamps were often enough for an adoption. Back then, hardly anyone asked too critical questions. The procedure became standard, also in other countries.

At times, say those affected who researched their family history, the children were brought to Europe like hand luggage by stewardesses. Uma Feed also came to her parents this way.

Helge Solberg appears tense as he tells his side of things. He's not fighting for his life, but for his life's work

.

The question is whether this concern makes clarification easier. The agencies are accused of not doing enough. Solberg says: "You can't blame us today for what wasn't wrong back then."

Is that enough of an explanation when thousands of people miss their roots and there is talk of human trafficking?

South Korea has already sent a truth commission to Northern Europe

Interest in international adoptions had been declining long before the revelations, and not just in Norway. Demand, according to everyone involved, has shrunk. But above all the offer. Medical care is better around the world today, there are fewer orphans and unplanned pregnancies. Countries like India would prefer not to have foreign adoptions at all; South Korea has already sent a truth commission to Northern Europe to clarify the consequences of its own past there, at the other end of the world.

The state also offers reunifications for former adopted children and parents. This was the only way Uma Feed found out about her biological family last year, through a South Korean DNA comparison. She received the decisive call on May 3, 2023 in the toilet.

Less than four weeks later she was on the plane. She had downloaded a translation app on her iPhone.

Uma Feed says she now knows what happened back then. Her mother had to give her up for care because she became ill. When she returned, the daughter was gone. When it was said in Norway that she had been given away, no one asked for her mother's signature. In South Korea, they didn't even explain much about what had happened. A child had disappeared. Not the first.

Feed says today that her parents have been waiting for her for 40 years. They go to the temple regularly. The father brought dollar bills as offerings and the mother prayed for them. Her older brother says that as a child he looked for his sister in the village every afternoon for years. On their first visit, they showed Uma how to pray in a Buddhist way. They talked about their shame at having lost their daughter and sister.

The brother said he decided as a young adult that he would never want to start a family of his own. The fear of experiencing something similar was too great.

In the end they all said: Please never forgive us for our sins.

She knows there is no way back

In her apartment in Oslo, there are now a few Asian foods and a Korean cookbook next to the coffee machine. There are pieces of paper on the wall with clumsy attempts to draw your own birth name. In her father's face, Feed says, she recognized her own features on a person for the first time. She was 40 then.

Feed often says she doesn't want to present a victim story. Don't be an object again. She's just trying to understand her previous life in a new way.

It seems clear to her that there is no way back. On her first visit to the small village in the mountains of South Korea, she thought her family smelled of fish and seafood. Conversely, her cousin said: Uma, you smell like milk. The mother said: With the tattoos you look like a North Korean. If you want, we can pay you to have your eyelids corrected.

Feed says she doesn't want plastic surgery or pity.

"I want this system to be abolished."

Feed has now become a kind of mouthpiece for adoptees in Norway. She recently received a human rights award for her work. An acquaintance who comes from Brazil, a native South Korean and a friend from the Philippines sit together at dinner. "As a migrant you are different, but at least you have a community," says the woman. "As an Asian child who is told that she is Norwegian, you have nothing." For years she was unable to communicate with anyone. Today she is doing therapy. “The worst thing was the denial that I was different,” says the South Korean. He grew up on an island as the son of a Norwegian fisherman. He still has the feeling that he has disappointed his adoptive father.

What does it mean when things are opaque even in a welfare state like Norway?

Social scientist Kjersti Grinde Satish has been researching how adopted children fare in Norway since 2014. At the time, she was looking for cases as part of her doctorate. She says she was amazed at how little research there was on this. Even then, dozens came forward within a few weeks. At 26, Grinde Satish had conversations lasting several hours. Almost everyone reported adjustment problems, loneliness and, in some cases, suicidal thoughts.

Many adopted children in Norway would experience racism. Some paid for being different with their lives. At least three murder cases are known. “What does that mean for the basic idea if adoptions have such consequences even in a rich welfare state like Norway?” asks Satish. The legendary Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland once declared: "It is typically Norwegian to be good." Satish says: "We all believed that a little too much."

Can international adoptions even be fair? In the USA, open adoptions have been standard for several years, in which giving and receiving parents meet. Since then, interest has dropped significantly, agencies say.

Last year only 45 children were placed

The responsible department head, Kristin Ugstad Steinrem, at the supervisory authority in Oslo says: "The risk of illegal practices is real; from our point of view, the documentation is not good enough in many cases." Without complete documents and proven need, they would no longer allow foreign adoptions. The authorities are currently processing 23 cases that are already well advanced. After that, you would be happy not to have to accept any more cases. Last year, the three agencies placed a total of 45 children. Strictly speaking, this system is probably already over.

In Denmark, the responsible supervisory authority recently banned the only remaining adoption agency from placing children from South Africa. The agency announced its own end shortly afterwards. Similar discussions have been going on for a long time in Sweden and the Netherlands, and politicians are calling for a general stop to the practice. Things could be similar in Oslo; adoptions from Madagascar, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines have already been stopped. The family minister would have to make a final decision.

Uma Feed is now planning a film about her story. She has a camerawoman accompany her when she visits the Family Ministry in Oslo or speaks to her caseworker. She wants to leave traces and document how the adoption system is collapsing. She now has more tattoos on her skin. There is an anchor underneath and a Buddhist symbol. Plus the names of her children on her right forearm. A quiet family reunion. But in Latin letters.

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