International child abduction in South Korea

International child abduction in South Korea refers to the illegal removal of children from their country of habitual residence by an acquaintance or family member to South Korea, or their illegal retention in South Korea (officially referred to as the Republic of Korea, or ROK). This issue overlaps with related practices within the South Korean family law system (and culture), such as the lack of meaningful protection against domestic abductions and visitation interference, combined with the default expectation of sole custody (according to NGO FindMyParent). Many of these practices also undermine South Korea's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Despite enacting legislation to address the problem in response to pressure from other countries, in particular the US, South Korea continues to face criticism for its handling of international child abduction cases.

The Hague Child Abduction Convention
South Korea became a party to the Hague Child Abduction Convention in December 2012. Its domestic implementation law entered into force on March 1, 2013. The implementation act designates the Ministry of Justice as the Central Authority for both incoming and outgoing cases, and assigns exclusive jurisdiction over Hague child return cases to Seoul Family Court. The first decision to return a child to a foreign country (Japan) was reached in 2016.

Compliance failures
Each year, the US State Department Office of Children's Issues publishes compliance reports assessing how well other countries are handling the abduction issue. In its 2022 Annual Report on International Child Abduction, and then again in the 2023 Annual Report, the State Department cited South Korea as demonstrating a pattern of non-compliance with its Hague Convention treaty obligations. Problems were noted with judicial delays: "...cases were generally pending with the Korean judicial authorities for over one year. Additionally, while courts in the Republic of Korea ordered the return of children in Convention cases, the need for multiple enforcement proceedings resulted in delays."

Of additional note was the lack of enforcement of finalized return decisions: "Specifically, Korean law enforcement authorities regularly failed to enforce return orders in abduction cases. As a result of this failure, 50 percent of requests for the return of abducted children under the Convention remained unresolved for more than 12 months. On average, these cases were unresolved for two years and ten months.…While courts in the Republic of Korea ordered the return of children under the Convention, decisions for return were generally not enforced, including one case that was pending for more than three years as of December 31, 2022. There were two cases (accounting for 100 percent of the unresolved cases) that have been pending for more than 12 months in which law enforcement has failed to enforce a return order. Additionally, left-behind parents can spend months in legal proceedings seeking to enforce the return order, resulting in delays to return. Unless the taking parent voluntarily complied with a return order under the Convention, judicial decisions in Convention cases in the Republic of Korea were generally not enforced, which contributed to a pattern of noncompliance."

Protests and US diplomatic action
In response to the Hague compliance failures, affected parents from the United States launched protests both within South Korea and in the US.

In December 2022, the US State Department sent its Special Adviser for Children's Issues to Seoul to raise the issue directly with Korean government counterparts. The Special Advisor also published an opinion piece in one of the main newspapers in Korea, the JoongAng Ilbo:

"When I meet with left-behind parents who have had their children abducted to the ROK, I hear their stories of pain and hope. These parents spend years in multiple legal proceedings, compounding their misery and draining their resources. Courts and other authorities in both the ROK and United States agree: it is time to secure the prompt return of these children to their habitual residence."

Additional high-level talks took place on an ongoing basis, as detailed in the 2022 and 2023 Action Reports on International Child Abduction from the US State Department.

These talks led to the creation of a task force team within the Korean government to address the issue.

Enactment of reforms and continued criticism
As a result of the task force team work, in January 2024, the Supreme Court of Korea announced new enforcement regulations scheduled to go into effect on April 1, 2024. However, limitations in the scope of the reforms leave doubts about whether they will be sufficient to resolve the non-compliance issue. Despite the introduction of the new regulations, a number of abduction cases still remained unresolved, leading to Korea being cited again for its non-compliance. According to the action report published by the Department of State of the United States, the US government has engaged with the Korean government on multiple levels to raise concerns over the lack of enforcement of Convention return orders. This includes the communication with the ROK president Yoon Suk Yeol, through his secretary, or Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State's direct communication with the Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Notable pre-Hague cases
Before the Hague Abduction Convention went into effect in South Korea, the only options for left-behind parents were to either pursue criminal charges, or to try to recover their children via self-help attempts, assuming they were unable to establish custody rights through the Korean courts. This led to a number of very high-profile cases covered in news media worldwide:


 * New York, USA: The Tiffany Rubin Story was a successful self-help attempt by a mother from New York, whose son was abducted by his Korean father
 * California, USA: an immigrant South Korean mother fled from alleged abuse by the California father, and was later arrested on entry to Hawaii, leading to protest campaigns on her behalf
 * New Jersey, USA: in a somewhat similar case, a violinist Korean mother alleged abuse against one of her children by their New Jersey father, also a violinist, while they lived together in Korea.  After disappearing with the children, she was later arrested on entry to Guam.  Once the father recovered the children, he was granted sole custody, with the mother able to have limited parenting time with them after her release.
 * Vietnam: a Vietnamese mother abducted her child from South Korea to Vietnam, and later on re-entry to Korea, stood trial for abduction. She was found non-guilty all the way up to the Korean Supreme Court, which ruled that the abduction was not a crime since the child's welfare had not been harmed.
 * France: a Korean father abducted his daughter from Paris to South Korea.  After five and a half years of court proceedings, the mother was finally able to recover their daughter.  In doing so, she established a criminal precedent within the South Korean legal system, with the father's conviction on charges of parental kidnapping being upheld by the Korean Supreme Court.  The distinction from the previous Vietnam precedent was that the abduction was found to have harmed the daughter's welfare in a number of different ways, including the complete loss of the French language.