Day care owner gets 6-year jail term for baby trafficking

The Supreme Court on Sunday upheld a lower court’s six-year prison sentence for a day care owner who tried to sell a baby, born to an unwed, single mother, for illegal adoption online.

The woman, surnamed Kim, brought the baby girl to her center in July of last year, after the biological mother reportedly gave up custody of the child shortly after giving birth at a Busan-based hospital.

Soon after the infant arrived at her center in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, Kim tried to sell the child for 650 million won ($550,000) to an individual surnamed Jeong whom she met online. Jeong, who posted a false online post saying she was desperately interested in adopting a child even if it meant going through an illegal broker, was in fact an undercover reporter for a TV program who was researching the situation of child trafficking.  

The writer eventually reported Kim to the police. The baby showed a number of signs of abuse when found by the authorities. She was suffering from a skin disease and weighed only 2.62 kilograms, much less than her birth weight of 3.37 kilograms.

During the trial, Kim argued that she never actually sold the baby, as the writer was not interested in being a parent, and therefore she never committed a crime. The court, however, upheld her “guilty” verdict.

South Korea remains one of the largest exporters of overseas adoptees in the world, having sent about 200,000 children abroad over the past six decades. About 90 percent of Korean adoptees are born to unwed mothers who have few resourses to raise their children alone and are vulnerable to social stigmatization. Many of them are forced to give up their children even to this day.

 By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)