Source: International Business Times
BTS members Jungkook (L) and Jimin (R) salute after their release from South Korean mandatory military service AFP K-pop megaband BTS is back from military service, and their international fandom -- long known for its progressive activism -- is celebrating by rallying behind a cause: adoptees from South Korea. Now Asia's fourth-largest economy and a global cultural powerhouse, the idols' native South Korea remains one of the biggest exporters of adopted babies in the world, having sent more than 140,000 children overseas between 1955 and 1999. The country only recently acknowledged, after years of activism by adult adoptees, that the government was responsible for abuse in some such adoptions of local children, including record fabrication and inadequate consent from birth parents.
