Global Briefs: Korea’s adoption-racket reckoning

South Korea

Han Tae-soon, 70, sued the South Korean government, adoption agency Holt Children’s Services, and Jechon Children’s Home on Oct. 7 over her daughter’s wrongful adoption to the United States. In 1975, Han reported to Korean police that her then 4-year-old daughter Shin Gyeong-ha had gone missing, but because of police negligence, the kidnapped child was placed at an orphanage and later sent to the U.S. instead of returned home. Han and her daughter, now named Laurie Bender, finally reunited in 2019 after finding each other through DNA testing. In the 1970s and ’80s, South Korea sent thousands of children to the West annually, an operation that reduced the country’s welfare spending and brought millions of dollars into its economy. A recent Associated Press investigation confirmed widespread adoption fraud involving South Korea’s government, Western nations, and adoption agencies. —Joyce Wu

Mexico

More than 30 Protestant families were awaiting an expected return to their homes in Hidalgo state, Mexico, by mid-October after more than five months of living in displacement. Local villagers had assaulted the evangelicals in April for their refusal to participate in indigenous and Roman Catholic rituals, forcing them to seek refuge at the municipal ­capital of Huejutla de Reyes. Government officials brokered a deal in September calling indigenous communities to practice religious tolerance within their autonomous territories. According to Pablo Vargas, the Mexico national director for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the evangelicals’ planned Oct. 8 return was delayed while they awaited specific safety guarantees. Religious persecution in Hidalgo started in 2015 as Protestant churches grew more widespread there. —Carlos Páez

Chagos Islands

After 13 rounds of negotiations, Britain announced Oct. 3 it would hand over more than 60 Indian Ocean islands to Mauritius pending a finalized treaty. Control of the Chagos Islands has been in dispute since the 1960s, when Mauritius gained independence from the U.K. At the time, Britain removed the atolls’ population so the U.S. could build a military base there as part of a British-American nuclear missile deal. Now former residents will be able to move back—but not to the largest island, Diego Garcia, which will be under a 99-year lease to the U.S. The islands’ location south of the Maldives enabled the U.S. to engage in long-range bombing during the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars. —Amy Lewis

Romania

The European Court of Justice ruled Oct. 4 that countries across the EU must recognize the name change and gender transition of those who have legally “acquired” a new gender in a different country. The case involved Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi, a 32-year-old British-Romanian citizen who was born female but obtained legal recognition of a male gender identity in 2020 while living in the U.K. Mirzarafie-Ahi asked authorities in Romania to issue new documents reflecting a name change, but Romanian authorities refused. The Court of Justice said that the fact that the legal recognition occurred in the U.K., a country no longer part of the EU, is immaterial. Activists are likely to use the ruling to push for broadened transgender privileges in the more socially conservative members of the bloc, such as Poland or Hungary. —Jenny Lind Schmitt

Pakistan

Police tear-gassed, beat, and arrested hundreds of supporters and leaders of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, as they gathered in several major cities in early October to call for Khan’s release and the establishment of an independent judiciary. In Jamrud, an initially peaceful crowd responded to officers’ escalation by throwing rocks, and three protesters reportedly died in the clashes. The Pakistani government also labeled the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), which advocates for the rights of ethnic Pashtuns, a terrorist group and arrested hundreds of its members. The Oct. 6 ban came just ahead of the PTM’s three-day national gathering to challenge military abuses against Pashtuns, but the government permitted the event to go on as planned. —Elizabeth Russell

Tunisia

The North African country appears primed to slide further into authoritarianism after President Kais Saied won reelection Oct. 6. News outlets called Saied’s victory a “landslide,” despite only 29 percent of eligible voters participating. Saied, a retired law professor, first won the presidency in 2019 as an independent who opposed corruption and promised a new era in Tunisian politics. But in 2021 he suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, and pushed through a new constitution giving him nearly unlimited power. Tunisia had previously established democratic and religious-freedom reforms, but Saied’s constitution established Islamic law as a basis for legal practice. Evangelism remains dangerous, and persecution of Christians persists. Saied’s second term is expected to further erode religious freedom. —Elisa Palumbo