South Korean court clears government, adoption agency of liability in adoptee's deportation from US

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court on Wednesday cleared the government and an adoption agency of all liability in a lawsuit filed by a 49-year-old Korean man whose traumatic adoption journey led to an abusive childhood in the United States and ultimately his deportation to South Korea in 2016 after legal troubles.

In exonerating the South Korean government over the case of Adam Crapser, whose U.S. adoptive parents never secured his citizenship, the Seoul High Court overturned a 2023 lower court ruling that ordered his adoption agency, Holt Children's Services, to pay him 100 million won ($68,600) in damages. The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Holt should have informed his adoptive parents that they needed to take additional steps to secure his citizenship after his adoption was finalized in their state court, but didn't find the government at fault for Crapser's plight.

The full text of the Seoul High Court's ruling wasn't immediately available. Crapser didn't attend the ruling.

Crapser, a married father of two, says he was abused and abandoned by two different adoptive families who never filed his citizenship papers. He got into trouble with the law — once for breaking into his adoptive parents' home to retrieve the Bible that came with him from the orphanage — and was deported because he was not a U.S. citizen.

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.