Korean couple given suspended sentences for abandoning two infants who they said ‘looked like foreigners’

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - According to The Korea Herald, the mother received an 18‑month sentence suspended for three years, while the father was given a one‑year sentence, also suspended for three years, for violating the Child Welfare Act. — Pexels pic

By Malay Mail

First Published: Monday, 13 Jul 2026 5:05 PM MYT

UIJEONGBU (South Korea), July 13 — A Korean couple who abandoned two infants in separate incidents almost two decades apart — both because the babies “looked like foreigners” — have been handed suspended jail terms, the Uijeongbu District Court said over the weekend.

According to The Korea Herald, the mother received an 18‑month sentence suspended for three years, while the father was given a one‑year sentence, also suspended for three years, for violating the Child Welfare Act. 
According to the court, the pair left their first newborn at the doorstep of an orphanage in northern Gyeonggi Province in 2005 after the man realised the child was biracial and believed the baby was not his.

The couple reunited in 2008 and later legally married. The woman gave birth to a second child in 2009, again fathered by a foreign man. 
After raising the baby for about a year, the man concluded the child was not biologically his. The woman fled the home, and the man abandoned the child at the same orphanage.

The cases went undetected for more than a decade until a nationwide review of birth registrations uncovered the unregistered children. 
The court noted that both children were confirmed to have grown up safely and that the couple admitted to the offences, factors that contributed to the suspended sentences.