Bryan Sung, now 7, was only 3 years old when his mother, Min Jung Cho, 42, allegedly spirited him away to her native South Korea in June 2019.
Bryan’s father Dr. Jay Sung, 43, says he won court battles in both the U.S. and overseas but remains cut off from his son, whom he has now not been able to see for more than half of the child’s life.
“Korea did nothing to protect [Bryan],” the orthodontist told Fox News Digital. “They should send the U.S. citizen back to his home, where law can be enforced, and he can be protected.”
While Sung was initially granted full custody, the judge overseeing their divorce allowed each parent to take Bryan to Korea for up to three weeks a year.
Cho took Bryan to South Korea and, on the last day of the scheduled trip, her attorney contacted Sung and said the boy would not be returned to the United States, he said.
Sung, who had no confirmation at the time of his son’s actual whereabouts, filed a missing person report in Redmond, Washington.
South Korean police eventually located Bryan at his maternal grandmother’s house – but Sung says they told him the case needed to be resolved in civil court.
Sung was born in South Korea but spent much of his childhood in Ohio.
He served in the South Korean military and returned to the U.S. to study dentistry at UCLA. He is now an orthodontist in Washington – and he and his son are U.S. citizens.
Cho is not, and her permanent residency was revoked after she failed to return for more than a year, Sung said.
A Washington state warrant for Cho’s arrest has been in effect since April 20, 2020, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Sung filed a petition under the Hague Convention, which governs international child abductions, trafficking, and adoptions in 2019, he said.
During a years-long process, the court ruled in his favor, and Cho subsequently exhausted her appeals. But she refused to hand the boy over, the father said.
Sung filed a petition under the Hague Convention, which governs international child abductions, trafficking, and adoptions in 2019, he said.
While Korean courts have repeatedly sided with Sung, he said the country’s law has a compliance loophole that prevents law enforcement from seizing a child by force.
Now, Sung says he is the only legal guardian recognized by either country but is helpless as Korean authorities have declined to enforce a court’s demand that the child be sent home to his dad.
They even arrested Cho twice and fined her, he said – but did not return his son.
Sung has launched a social media campaign demanding the South Korean government do more to return his son and conducted a one-man protest outside the Korean consulate in Seattle.
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