South Korean President Lee Jae Myung apologized on Thursday for poorly managed foreign adoption programs after a truth commission earlier found the government bore responsibility.  

The truth commission found that the programs had seen perpepual fraud and abuses, with court rulings confirming that some human rights abuses had been committed too.

In a Facebook post, President Lee said offered his "heartfelt apology and words of comfort" on behalf of the country to both South Koreans adopted abroad and their adoptive and birth families.

He went on to add that the government had failed to play its role in preventing the abuses from having taken place.

What abuses were found in South Korean adoptions?

For years the widespread fraud and abuse that haunted its adoption programs had been under scrutiny, particularly in regards to adoptions during the 1970s and 1980s, when South Korea allowed thousands of children to be adopted every year.

Many adoptees had discovered their records were falsified to portray them as abandoned orphans, with many removed or stolen from their birth families.

A landmark report in March by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that it was the government who bore responsibility for allowing the adoption programs as a way to reduce welfare costs.

The report was written after an almost three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States and Australia. That report called on the South Korean government to put an official apology over the adoptions.  

After a number of years, South Korea ratified the Hague Adoption Convention in July, which is the international treaty meant to safeguard international adoptions. The treaty officially took effect in South Korea on Wednesday.

Edited by: Wesley Dockery