2. Adoption 1) Current situation 47. The Government's policy on adoption has not led to a substantial increase in national adoption, despite the Government's actions to protect the rights of the adopted children, improve the public awareness about adoption and support the adoptive families. In particular, the "Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption" has not been ratified by the Korean Government, because the relevant legislation and institutions, including the adoption permit system and a dedicated state agency are not established yet. 48. In spite of the Government's effort to promote national adoption, inter-country adoption still takes up a large majority of the total adoption cases. Almost all of the children with disabilities who are to be adopted are sent for inter-country adoption. A report by the Ministry of Health and Welfare shows that, during the years of 1995~2008, children with disabilities accounted for 0.5% (362 persons) in the total cases of national adoption (whereas children without disabilities accounted for 99.5%) and 24.0% (38,613 persons) in the total cases of intercountry adoption (whereas children without disabilities accounted for 76.0%). 49. As regards the adoption procedures, the children aged 15 or older should have a chance to give their consent to adoption, and an adoption may be dissolved by the agreement between the parties or by the court decision, in accordance with the Civil Code. The special law on promotion of adoption and the procedures of adoption does not have any provision on the dissolution of adoption and, therefore, there are many cases where adoption is dissolved simply by the agreement between the parties. According to the Justice Yearbooks published by the Supreme Court of Korea, the numbers of adoptions dissolved by agreement were 659 in 2005 and 729 in 2006, while those of adoptions dissolved by the court decision were 40 in 2005 and 33 in 2006. 50. The data on adoption is not managed in a systematic way. Since the individual adoption agencies do not exchange or share their data and information with each other, there exists a discrepancy in the information concerning the children to be adopted and those who want to adopt a child. Furthermore, as adopted children do not have easy access to their pre-adoption information, they have difficulty in finding their biological parents. In a bid to address these problems, the Government set up the Korean Central Adoption Resources in 2009. It is feared, however, that this agency may not function properly, given the lack of the legal foundation for its operation and the organizational and budgetary instability. - 13 -