Please help me bring back my child

Hi, my name is Jay Sung and I'm the dad of Bryan Sung. If you reached this page, you might have seen some of the news articles about me and my son. Maybe you saw the short film titled "Do You Remember Dad?". Or you may have come across my posting asking for help.

No matter what brought you here, I'm already thankful checking out this page.

In case you are new to my story, I'd like to give a brief introduction of my situation.

My son was kidnapped to Korea by his mother almost 5years ago. I have numerous court orders from both US and Korea that Bryan has to be returned and I'm the sole custodian; the child's mother who abducted him is charged for Custodial interference of 1st degree by WA state, and for International Parental Kidnapping by the Federal government.

The courts of both countries (U.S. and Korea) ordered that the child has to be returned to his home. Just in Korea I got 10 court orders, including the Korean Supreme court order.

The main reason why my son cannot come back is because of Korea not making any meaningful effort to enforce their own court orders. Something that is so obvious to people who live in America - that your kidnapped child should be returned immediately - is an endless battle in Korea and I don't even know when or if I will be able to see my son again. This is a serious violation of the treaty Korea signed with the Unites States called Hague convention.

Some people ask if I can just fly to Korea and pick up my son. I actually flew to Korea, but the mother did not let me see Bryan. I went to the childcare center and they didn't give me any information about how my child is doing. Recently I tried to enforce the court order and when the kidnapper's family hid the child away, the police didn't tell me where the child was. In fact, I asked the police where my child goes for school and they still wouldn't let me know. Basically no government official listened to the court orders. What is mind blowing is, I am the legal custodian in both United States and Korea, and I don't even know what kind of medical treatment he is getting, even if he takes psychological drugs or schedules a surgery.

The United States court clearly stated that the mother has serious concerns of mental health issues, and the Parentinf evaluator testified that this is child abuse. FBI tried to rescue my son after Korean court made the return order. However Korean government stopped them from flying over to Korea saying this is a civil matter and the dad will have to go through proper steps to get his son back (proper steps = try everything that doesn't work until hopefully the dad gives up). That's the background behind Congresswoman Kim Schrier's public statement that "This is not a civil matter. This is a gross injustice and a disregard for Bryan's welfare and the US justice system."

I usually don't like asking people for help. Even when I had to pay for the enormous amount of money in both countries for the unending litigations for nearly 5 years, I just worked twice as hard as other people to pay for this. However, I am realizing that the amount of resource that is needed for the public awareness campaign and hiring experts such as child experts who can give guidance is making me a bit overwhelmed. I even had to get a therapist arranged just to prove the Korean court that everything is ready for Bryan's return. There were expenses needed for making an award-winning film about my son, and each time I went out for public protests, I had to spend money to make flyers.

Legal process in general is not cheap. Fighting against an entire country's legal system and educating the public and the Korean government workers is even more costly.

If you can resonate with my story, I'd like to humbly ask you to help just a small amount to give me some extra power to continue this fight. Based on how expensive this fight was so far, I will still have to use a lot of my money until Bryan is back, but your donation will be extremely helpful to make sure that I bring this long journey to an end and ultimately return the kidnapped American boy.

Thank you.

Jay Sung, Bryan's Dad