COPENHAGEN: Eight South Korean-born adoptees are suing Denmark for its role in their illegal adoptions decades ago, demanding the state admit responsibility for covering up their origins.

Sofie Randel was three years old when she arrived in Denmark with her younger brother in 1977, during a period of authoritarian rule in South Korea.

A lively, talkative little girl, she spoke fluent Korean at the time, and her adoptive father recorded her on a cassette that then sat gathering dust for years.

In 2023, Randel gave the recording to a journalist who would follow her in her quest to discover her origins.

Little by little, through her childish chatter retracing her arrival in Denmark and some research done in South Korea, Randel uncovered a different story from the one in her Danish adoption papers.

Based on those, she had thought that she had been abandoned in the street, her brother swaddled on her back with their names and ages pinned to their clothes.

But instead, she learned that their mother had entrusted them to an orphanage while the family dealt with financial difficulties.

Instead of being cared for in the orphanage, the two children were adopted together in Denmark, like tens of thousands of others sent overseas in a state-sanctioned practice that lasted decades.

In South Korea, their three older brothers and sister always hoped to see them again. She and her brother finally met their siblings there in 2023.

"They were looking for us for 45 years," Randel, now 52, told AFP, wiping away tears.

She and her brother had not known anyone was looking for them.

She believes Danish authorities, for their part, tried "to keep the story hidden" by telling them that they had been abandoned.

ADOPTION ENQUIRY

South Korea sent more than 140,000 children overseas for adoption between 1955 and 1999, according to an official enquiry in the country.

In October 2025, Seoul apologised for the first time for state-sanctioned malpractices, saying "unjust human rights violations" were committed.

Between 1970 and 1989, 7,220 South Korean children were adopted in Denmark, almost all of whom were told they were street orphans.

Enquiries have proven otherwise, indicating that South Korean children in orphanages were given away for adoption without their families' consent.

A 2024 report by the National Social Appeals Board showed that Denmark's state-run adoption age...