Seoul, South Korea – A 72 -year -old mother has filed a lawsuit against the Government of South Korea and her largest adoption agency, claiming systematic failures in her forced separation from her young son who was sent to Norway without her consent.
Choi Young-Ja desperately sought his son for almost five decades before his emotional meeting in 2023.
The claim of damage to Choi, whose history was part of An Associated Press investigation also documented by Frontline (PBS)It occurs when South Korea faces a growing pressure to address the extensive fraud and abuse that contaminated what is considered the largest foreign adoption program in history.
In a historical report in March, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea concluded that the The Government is responsible to facilitate an aggressive and freely regulated foreign adoption program that separated or unnecessarily separated thousands of children from their families for multiple generations.
He discovered that the country’s previous military governments were driven by efforts to reduce well -being costs and private agencies trained to accelerate adoptions, while giving a blind eye to generalized practices that often Background and origins for manipulated childrenwhich led to an explosion in the adoptions that reached its maximum point in the 1970s and 1980s.
Children who had live parents, including those who were simply missing or kidnapped, were often falsely documented as abandoned orphans to increase their possibilities of being adopted in Western countries, which have taken in around 200,000 Corean children in the last seven decades.
Choi’s demand follows a similar case presented in October by another woman in her 70s, Have tae-soon, Who also demanded the Government and Holt’s children’s services for the adoption of his daughter who was sent to the United States in 1976, months after she was kidnapped at 4 years.
Choi says that his son, who was three years old at that time, was left without his home in Seoul in July 1975 to pursue a cloud of insecticides sprinkled with a fumigation truck while playing with friends, and never returned. She and her late husband spent years looking for him, touring police stations in Seoul and her surroundings, and regularly bringing posters with her name and photo to Holt, the largest adoption agency in South Korea. They were repeatedly told that there were no information.
After decades of search in vain, Choi made a final effort by presenting his DNA to a police unit that helps bring those adopted with biological families. In 2023, he learned that his son had been adopted to Norway in December 1975, only five months after he disappeared, and that Holt had prosecuted adoption, the agency he had visited innumerable times, under a new name and photo.
Enraged, Choi faced Holt, who did not respond to multiple requests for comments from Associated Press. Since then, he has worked with lawyers to prepare a lawsuit against the agency, the Government of South Korea and an orphanage in the city of Suwon, where his son stayed before being transferred to Holt. His 52 -year -old son, who traveled to South Korea in 2023 to meet her, refused to comment on the story.
The civil lawsuit won ($ 403,000) civil recently filed before the Central District Court of Seoul alleges that the Government failed in its legal duty to identify Choi’s son after reaching an orphanage, despite its immediate police report, and verify its guardianship as it was processed through a foreign adoption system controlled by the State.
The orphanage and Holt could not verify the child’s status or notify their parents, despite the fact that Choi’s son was enough to speak and showed obvious signs of having a family. In particular, Holt falsified records to describe him as an abandoned orphan, although Choi had visited the agency looking for him while he was in his custody, before the flight to Norway, according to Jeon Min Kyeong, one of Choi’s lawyers.
The South Korean government and Holt did not respond immediately to the AP request to comment on the case of Choi.
Choi and Han are the first biological parents known to sue the South Korean government and an adoption agency on the supposedly illegal adoptions of their children.
In 2019, Adam Craser He became the first Korean adopter to sue the Korean government and an adoption agency, Holt, accusing them of eviling their adoption to the United States, where he suffered an abusive childhood, faced legal problems and was finally deported in 2016. But the Superior Court of Seoul In January, he eliminated both the Government and Holt of all responsibility, annulling a ruling from the lower court that had ordered the agency to pay damage not to inform their adoptive parents of the need to take additional measures to ensure their US citizenship.
The findings of the Truth Commission, published in March, could possibly inspire more adopted or biological parents to seek damage against the government and adoption agencies. However, Some adopted criticized the reported with cautious writtenarguing that he should have recognized the complicity of the government with more force and offered more concrete recommendations for repairs for victims of illegal adoption.
During the March press conference, the president of the commission, Park Sun Young, responded to a plea of Yooree Kimwho was sent to a couple in France at 11 by Holt without the consent of their biological parents, promising to strengthen the recommendations. However, the Commission did not follow up before the final version of the report was delivered to those adopted last week.
The investigation deadline for the Commission expired on Monday, after confirming human rights violations in only 56 of the 367 complaints filed by those adopted since 2022. suspended his adoption research In April, after internal disputes between progressive and conservative commissioners on which the cases justified recognition as problematic.
The destination of the remaining 311 cases, deferred or reviewed incompletely, now depends on whether legislators will establish a new truth commission through the legislation during the next Seoul government, which assumes the position after the presidential elections on June 3.
The Government, which has never recognized the direct responsibility of past adoption problems, has so far ignored the recommendation of the commission to issue an official apology to the adopted.
