Alongside the film’s Peabody and Emmy Award nominations, the film won the 2025 RFK Human Rights International Print Award and the 2025 Asia Society Osborn Elliot Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia. Additionally, the film received two citations by the Overseas Press Club for “The Peter Jennings Award” honoring the best in television, video and documentary about international affairs, as well as “The Joe and Laurie Dine Award” honoring the best international reporting on human rights in any medium. 
 
Directed by FRONTLINE filmmaker Lora Moftah (of Maxine Productions, a part of Sony Pictures Television), South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning examines how South Korea’s leaders promoted an adoption boom despite decades of warnings about problems, how Western governments turned a blind eye, and how the consequences are still playing out today.

The film draws on years of reporting, thousands of pages of documents — some of which had never been made public before — and interviews with those who worked in adoption agencies, officials from South Korea and abroad, and more than 80 adoptees who gave powerful firsthand accounts.
“What do you do when you find out your origin story is marked with grievous injustice?” one adoptee asks in the film.