Movie 'Broker' Becomes Reality... Newborn Sold for 3 Million Won

The Reality of Illegal Adoption Revealed Online
"Foreign Children Must Also Be Protected Through a 'Universal Birth Registration System'"

Illegal adoption brokers who take babies and sell them. The reality of illegal newborn adoption, a key event driving the movie 'Broker,' has also been revealed in real life. A woman in her 20s was prosecuted after buying a newborn from a single mother for 980,000 won and reselling the baby for 3 million won. As the issue of unregistered births of infants grows, the political sphere has prepared alternatives such as the birth notification system, but civic groups argue that broader alternatives are needed to ensure the birth registration rights of all children, including migrant children.

On the 22nd, the Incheon District Prosecutors' Office recently arrested and indicted a woman in her 20s, identified as A, on charges of child trafficking under the Child Welfare Act.

The difference between A's case and the movie is that she did not take the child from a baby box but purchased the child from the biological mother. In the movie 'Broker,' 'Sang-hyun' (played by Song Kang-ho) and 'Dong-soo' (played by Gang Dong-won) secretly take the baby 'Woosung,' whom 'So-young' (played by Lee Ji-eun) left in a baby box, to illegally adopt him.

However, the route through which A approached the single mother and received the child was 'online.' In July 2019, A contacted the biological mother B, who had posted online, "I got pregnant with my boyfriend, but I am not capable of raising the child. Is there a good way?" A lied, saying, "My husband has azoospermia and cannot have children. I want to register the birth and raise the child."

Two months later, on August 24, 2019, at around 9:57 a.m., A visited the hospital where B was admitted, paid 980,000 won for the hospital bill on her behalf, and received the six-day-old baby. Then, just two hours later, at around 11:34 a.m. the same day, she sold the baby to a woman in her 50s at a cafe in Incheon for 3 million won. The baby abandoned in the baby box was adopted elsewhere and has been confirmed to be safe.

[Image source=Pixabay]

The exposure of such illegal adoption was triggered by a recent full investigation by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and local governments into unregistered births. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, a full survey of 2,123 unregistered children born between 2015 and 2022 revealed that 249 had died.

As the issue of unregistered newborns grew, the National Assembly urgently passed the birth notification system at the plenary session at the end of June. This law mandates that medical institutions where children are born must report the birth to local governments on their own. Until now, the obligation to report births was limited to parents, but this duty has now been extended to medical institutions as well.

However, there are criticisms that the full investigation into unregistered children did not cover all blind spots.

This full investigation targeted infants born between 2015 and 2022 who were assigned temporary newborn numbers for vaccinations but whose births were not registered. It did not include children born before 2014, foreign children who cannot be registered domestically, or children born outside hospitals.

Because of this, some civic groups argue that a 'universal birth registration system' should be introduced to ensure that all children born in Korea have their births registered. They emphasize that the right to birth registration should be guaranteed regardless of the parents' nationality or the environment in which the child was born.

On the 17th, 56 organizations including the international child rights NGOs Save the Children and UNICEF Korea Committee, as well as the Korea Single Mothers Families Association, held a press conference regarding the 'birth notification system.' They said, "It is significant in that it publicly acknowledges the existence of children and strengthens the state's responsibility for birth registration," but also stressed, "Legal and institutional improvements are needed to guarantee the birth registration rights of all children, including unregistered migrant children."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.