South Korea: more than 700 newborn deaths in ten years

According to South Korean regulator BAI, more than 2,000 cases of unregistered newborns with birth certificates were discovered between 2015 and 2022. Many of the unregistered children are considered ‘missing’, as reported by the Korean newspaper ‘The Chosun Daily’.

During a random inspection by the regulator, officials were informed of several cases of dead babies: one of them was found dead in a refrigerator, while in another case a newborn baby was left in a forest. According to the authority, there have also been cases of children dying due to malnutrition.

According to the Korean newspaper, the authority’s investigation revealed a total of 249 cases of newborn deaths between 2015 and 2022. This means that the mortality rate for unregistered babies during this period is 11.7 percent, 50 times higher than the mortality rate for registered newborns in 2021 (0.24 percent). The newspaper reports that the abuse and systematic neglect of unregistered babies has now reached the general public in South Korea.

According to “The Chosung Dailys,” poor national systems and indifferent hospitals are to blame for the many deaths. Parents who do not register their children would therefore only have to pay a fine of 50,000 won (about 34 euros). In other countries, such as the US or Germany, if a child is not registered, hospitals should contact the relevant authorities within a few days to avoid an increased risk of abuse and neglect in unregistered children.

In South Korea there is only a formal obligation to register the child within one month; if this does not happen, the government has no obligation to ensure or monitor the well-being of the child.

Parents who do not register their newborn children often sell some or, in extreme cases, even kill them. Unregistered children are often sold on the black market to third parties – according to Chosun Daily, reports of child sales could still be openly found on social platforms such as Telegram until 2022.

In the meantime, the government has tried to change the law to prevent child abuse of unregistered babies. However, a 2022 law providing for a birth notification system in hospitals failed due to opposition from doctors in the national parliament.

Doctors and medical staff have accused the government of trying to shift the costs and labor burden of birth registration to medical facilities. The doctors and hospital staff also argued that mandatory vaccination data for newborns should be passed on to the authorities, claiming that the government already had the necessary information – such as temporary identification numbers for newborns – and had nevertheless remained inactive.

Since October last year, the Korean parliament has passed a government-initiated law to protect anonymized births. According to The Chosun Daily, if such a law had been introduced earlier, numerous deaths of unregistered babies could have been prevented.

According to new research by the Korean government, more than 9,000 cases of unregistered babies were discovered between 2010 and 2014, of which 469 were reported to have died. A total of 718 cases of unregistered baby deaths have been reported between 2010 and 2022.