Han Tae-soon is 70 years old. She says that in 1976, her four-year-old daughter was wrongfully sent to the United States for adoption.She is now suing the Holt Adoption agency as well as the government of South Korea.
Per the Associated Press article, this is the “first known case of a Korean birth parent suing for damages against the government and an adoption agency over the wrongful adoption of their child.”
From the article: “Han accuses Holt Children’s Services, South Korea’s biggest adoption agency, of facilitating (her daughter Laurie) Bender’s adoption without checking her background. Her lawyers said the Jechon Children’s Home made no effort to find the parents after Bender was placed at the facility by police in May 1975, a day after Han reported her as missing.
In her adoption papers, Bender, named Shin Gyeong-ha at birth, is described as an abandoned orphan with no known parents. Under a new Korean name made by the orphanage, Baik Kyong Hwa, she was sent to the United States in February 1976.
“For 44 years, I wandered and searched for my child, but the joy of meeting her was only momentary and now I am in so much pain because we can’t communicate in the same language,” Han said, fighting back tears.
“It turns out they didn’t make an effort to find her clearly existing parents and instead disguised her as an orphan for adoption abroad. I want the government and Holt to explain to us how this happened.”
The AP article notes that “In 2019, Adam Crapser became the first Korean adoptee to sue the South Korean government and an adoption agency for damages, accusing them of mishandling his adoption to the United States, where he faced legal troubles after surviving an abusive childhood before being deported in 2016.
After four years of hearings, the Seoul Central District Court last year ordered Crapser’s adoption agency, Holt, to pay him 100 million won ($74,000) in damages for failing to inform his adopters they needed to take separate steps to obtain his citizenship after his adoption was approved by a state court.
However, the court dismissed Crapser’s accusations against the Korean government over alleged monitoring and due diligence failures. The case is now with the Seoul High Court after both Crapser and Holt appealed.”
Lawsuits like these in Korea and elsewhere can take a long time to work their way through the system. I hope that Adam Crapser, Han Tae-soon, and her daughter find justice.