Court approves 'full adoption' of stepdaughter

A recent civil court ruling granted a South Korean man the right to fully adopt his China-born stepdaughter, changing her family name and place of family origin to avoid possible discrimination and confusion on the child's part.

The Korea Legal Aid Corp. said Monday that the Cheongju District Court ruled in favor of a plaintiff who sought to give his surname to his stepdaughter. His wife, a North Korean defector, had given birth to the girl with a Chinese man during her time in China before moving to South Korea and marrying the plaintiff.

Despite the daughter fully accepting the plaintiff as the father, she reportedly faced confusion after entering elementary school and noticing that she, unlike her classmates, had a different last name from her father. The father requested help from the KLAC, which represented him in the civil case.

The court ruled that it is reasonable for the girl to be fully adopted for her emotional stability and well-being. It acknowledged the KLAC's claim that the child is satisfied with her current life, and that the family does not know her biological father's whereabouts or whether he is even alive.

Full adoption, as it is known in the law, was incorporated into the Civil Act and came into effect in 2008 under a revision to Articles 908-2 through 908-8. It terminates all family relations and inheritance rights related to an adoptee's biological parent and establishes a complete familial relationship with the adoptive parent.

The main change is that an adopted child is granted the same legal status as a biological child. Korea's adoption laws state that an adopted child is to maintain the biological father's family name and place of registration -- referring to the biological family's place of origin -- but these are changed to those of the adopted father upon full adoption.

Under Article 781 of the Civil Act, children in Korea take the father's family name and place of registration unless the parents agreed at the time of marriage to have the child take the mother's name and place or when the biological father is unknown. Changes to a surname or place of registration can be granted by a court.

To be granted full adoption, a child has to be a legal minor on the date of the court's ruling, and the parents must have been married for at least three years. Full adoption by a single parent had been impossible in the past, but the National Assembly in 2022 revised the law to allow single parents aged at least 25 to fully adopt a child.

The biological parent must consent to the full adoption unless their whereabouts are unknown or their parental rights have been terminated by a court ruling.

The system of full adoption was implemented to prevent adopted children from facing discrimination in matters of inheritance and broader societal prejudice.

Surveys indicate that there remains significant prejudice against those who are adopted. A July 2024 survey by local outlet Hankook Research on 1,000 adults showed that 26 percent of respondents felt some discomfort with the idea of an adoptee marrying their child, with 14 percent saying they are uncomfortable with an adoptee befriending their child.

Half of the respondents said they feel neither positively nor negatively toward adoption, with 42 percent saying they have positive feelings toward it. Although less than 10 percent said they personally have bad feelings toward adoption, 37 percent said they think Korean society as a whole does harbor negative feelings toward adoptees and adopted families.