Penalties for the Agencies If Domestic Adoption Efforts Not Made

This is in the news in several newspapers in Korea today.  The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) has warned the three adoption agencies that it will order the agencies the work shutdown penalty from 7 - 15 days if the agencies do not comply with the mandates of the special adoption law to give priority for domestic adoption over intercountry adoption.

This came about during the audit of an agency, where in 15% of the cases there was no adequate efforts to place the children domestically first (that means in 85% of the cases the agency clearly showed that there were efforts to find homes domestically). 

While the agencies have kept the records of their efforts to place the children domestically and this record was shown in the audit, the MOHW faulted the agency in their failure to work with the central adoption database created by the Korea Adoption Services (KAS), where the children's information could be shared with another agency, which in turn might be able to find a home through its network.  In other words, if Holt has a child they are having some difficulty in placing within Korea, Holt is to share that child's data through KAS' database, so another agency like Eastern or SWS may try to find a home within Korea.  Whether this effort is in addition to the five-months holding period or that this is to be done within the five-months period, I'm not sure.  I would think that this should be done within the five-months holding period.

Apparently this component of the domestic placement effort wasn't being done to the satisfaction of the MOHW.  The special adoption law requires this, and this process of working through the database is still a work in progress between the agencies and the KAS. By instituting the penalty of closing down the agency for 7 to 15 days, the MOHW is squeezing the necks of the agencies to comply quicker.

As for the family court, I hear that the judges will be taking vacations from July 20th to August 10th. Not all of them will take the vacation at the same time. However, it does not mean that the other judges will take over the cases assigned to the vacationing judges.