A South Korean court has absolved the government and an adoption agency from responsibility in a legal case involving a 49-year-old man’s traumatic experience with adoption. The man, Adam Crapser, had a difficult childhood in the United States, followed by his deportation to South Korea in 2016 due to legal issues.
The Seoul High Court overturned a previous ruling that ordered the adoption agency, Holt Children’s Services, to compensate Crapser with 100 million won ($68,600). The court found that while Holt should have advised Crapser’s adoptive parents on securing his citizenship after his adoption, the government was not deemed responsible for his situation.
The full text of the Seoul High Court’s ruling wasn’t immediately available. Crapser didn’t attend the ruling.
Crapser, now a married father of two, endured abuse and neglect from two sets of adoptive parents who failed to complete his citizenship paperwork. He faced legal troubles, including a burglary incident at his adoptive parents’ home, leading to his deportation as he lacked U.S. citizenship.
In their defense against the accusations of malfeasance raised by Crapser, the government and Holt both cited a 1970s adoption law established under a military dictatorship that was designed to speed up adoptions.
The law, enacted in January 1977, eased adoption agencies’ obligations to check on the citizenship status of the children they sent overseas and removed judicial oversight of foreign adoptions, as part of various steps to empower agencies to process adoptions faster.
The government and Holt, which facilitated Crapser’s adoption to Michigan in 1979, both invoked the law to argue they had no legal responsibility to ensure that he received his citizenship.
Critics say the law enabled careless and fraudulent practices that helped fuel what’s believed to be the largest international adoption program in history. From the 1960s to 1980s, South Korea was ruled by a succession of military leaders who prioritized economic growth and promoted adoptions as a way to get rid of mouths to feed and establish closer ties with the West.
Crapser’s lawyer didn’t immediately say whether he would appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court. The Justice Ministry, which represents the government in lawsuits, and Holt didn’t immediately comment on the ruling.
More than 4,000 Korean children were sent abroad in 1979, the year Crapser was sent to a family in Michigan at age 3. He became the first Korean adoptee to sue the South Korean government and an adoption agency for damages in 2019.
The government and Holt were also sued last year by a Korean birth mother who said they were responsible for her daughter’s adoption to the United States in 1976, months after the child was kidnapped at age 4.
The lawsuits, combined with an ongoing fact-finding investigation into complaints from hundreds of adoptees who suspect their origins were falsified or obscured, have put pressure on the South Korean government to address the widespread fraud and questionable practices of the past.
Crapser’s lawsuit accused Holt of manipulating his paperwork to describe him as an orphan despite the existence of a known birth mother, exposing him to abusive adoptive parents by botching background checks and not following up on whether he obtained U.S. citizenship.
It said government officials should also be held accountable for failing to protect Crapser’s constitutional rights as a South Korean child, poorly monitoring an agency they licensed to handle foreign adoptions and not verifying whether his adoption was based on proper consent or whether his adoptive families were qualified to be decent parents.
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