Adoptee deported from the US over lack of citizenship criticizes South Korea and agency

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Adam Crapser, an adoptee who was deported to South Korea in 2016 because his American parents never secured his citizenship, delivered a scathing denunciation of the Korean government and his adoption agency in a Seoul appeals court on Wednesday.

The 49-year-old’s yearslong legal battle highlights the systemic failures by both governments to secure citizenship for potentially thousands of Korean children adopted into U.S. homes over the past decades.

Crapser, who was adopted by a family in Michigan in 1979, became the first Korean adoptee to sue the Korean government and an adoption agency for damages in 2019.

The government and Crapser’s agency, Holt Children’s Services, were also sued earlier this month by a Korean birth mother who sees them as responsible for her daughter’s adoption to the United States in 1976, months after the child was kidnapped at age 4.

The lawsuits, along with an ongoing fact-finding investigation into grievances reported by hundreds of adoptees who suspect their origins were falsified or obscured, have increased pressure on the Korean government to address the widespread fraud and dubious practices that tarnished its historic adoption program.

Crapser accuses Holt and the Korean government of “malfeasance” that contributed to his traumatic adoption experience in the U.S. He says he was abused and abandoned by two different pairs of adoptive parents who never filed his citizenship papers. He ran into legal troubles as an adult that resulted in his deportation in 2016.

“I did not get the choice of whether or not I could grow up in my country. I did not get the choice to know my language, Korean, or the choice to know my culture. And I did not get the choice to grow up with