Two decades ago, when Tobias Hubinette began publishing research papers on the dark history of Korea’s overseas adoption program, his work was dismissed as radical, even extremist. Now, the Swedish adoptee — born in Korea as Lee Sam-dol — is seeing both Seoul and Stockholm acknowledge what he has long maintained. Earlier this year, state-run commissions in both countries found widespread human rights violations in intercountry adoptions from the 1960s to 1990s, when the adoption of Korean babies to the West was at its peak. “I’m very happy about the development that is happening, both in the receiving countries and in the countries of origin,” Hubinette said in an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul Monday. Adopted to Sweden in 1972 when he was just 7 months old, Hubinette became active in the Korean adoptee community in the 1990s. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Korean studies from Stockholm University and is now a senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University. Hubinette’s early research uncovered alleged irregularities in intercountry adoption records a
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