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

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — 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