South Korean court orders agency to compensate adoptee over his mishandled adoption to US

By KIM TONG-HYUNG
Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court has ordered the country’s biggest adoption agency to pay $74,700 in damages to a 48-year-old man for mishandling his adoption as a child to the United States. However, the Seoul court dismissed Adam Crapser’s accusation that South Korea’s government was responsible for creating a profit-driven industry that carelessly removed thousands of children from their families in the 1970s and ‘80s. The case is the first in which a South Korean adoptee sued the government and a domestic adoption agency over fraudulent paperwork and screening failures. Crapser in an earlier AP interview described being abused and abandoned by two sets of U.S. parents and being deported in 2016. He now lives in Mexico and wasn’t in court Tuesday.