By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter

The government is moving to offer more support to single mothers as part of efforts to encourage them to keep their own babies, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) said Thursday.

The body also plans to help adoptees find their biological parents by improving systems and documentation, a spokesman said.

"Once the recommendations are accepted, more single mothers can keep their children through subsidies," he said.

The commission advised related ministries, including the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Justice, to offer subsidies so that single parents can find a place to raise their babies.

The revisions are subject to the approval of the National Assembly.

So far, single mothers have received no state benefits. They can seek help from private or government-subsidized facilities but they have to leave the centers a few months after delivery.

Many single parents tend to give up their infants for that reason, leading to an increasing number of domestic and overseas adoptions.

As of 2008, 80.9 percent of 1,306 children adopted here and 89.1 percent of 1,250 adopted abroad were born to single mothers.

The agency also proposed that women giving birth to a child alone be given more time to consider whether or not to let a baby go with the help of professional consultants, as well as the chance to cancel their decision.

As part of efforts to encourage domestic adoptions, especially of disabled children, the commission suggested increasing allowances for adopting families.

Currently, those adopting a child aged 13 or younger are given 100,000 won (about $85) per month and families adopting disabled children receive 551,000 won every month and an additional 2.5 million won for medical treatment per year.

The ACRC also proposed establishing a governmental organization to manage adoption and computerize related documents in a more systematic way.

People adopted abroad have had difficulty finding their biological parents because many private adoption agencies do not keep birth certificates and adoption-related documents.

Between 1982 and 2007, a total of 46,043 overseas adoptees visited their motherland to find their biological parents and learn Korean culture.

In 2007, 1,618 people requested that the government and adoption agencies find their biological parents but only 404 of them met long-lost ones.

Korea was once disgracefully nicknamed as the world's biggest baby-exporting country because more than 200,000 babies had been adopted abroad by 2000.

The number of overseas adoptions has gone down but still more than 1,000 children are sent to foreign countries every year, according to government statistics.

ksy@koreatimes.co.kr