Rubio announces U.S. visa restrictions for noncompliance in parental child abduction cases 

WASHINGTON — Korea may come under the scope of new U.S. visa restrictions aimed at foreign officials, judges and law enforcement personnel who stand in the way of resolving international parental child abduction cases.

Washington has listed Seoul for years as showing “a pattern of noncompliance” with relevant international convention.

“Today, I am announcing a new policy to restrict visa issuance to individuals responsible for, or complicit in, impeding the prompt resolution of international parental child abduction cases, as well as their immediate family members,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement on Monday.

“When foreign government officials, judges, judicial administrators, law enforcement officials and others intentionally obstruct the prompt resolution of these cases, they prolong family separations and block the return of children to the United States.”

Rubio noted that the new policy gives the department “a new accountability tool to press noncompliant countries to meet their obligations.”

At issue is The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which both Korea and the United States have joined. Under the convention, a child wrongfully taken to or retained in another member country by one parent is generally to be returned to the country where the child habitually lived.

“The policy includes individuals who intentionally fail to implement or comply with laws, policies or court orders to resolve these cases and return children to their country of habitual residence,” Rubio stated.

The State Department noted in its latest 2026 report that Korea has been cited in its annual reports for demonstrating a pattern of noncompliance since 2022.

“ROK competent authorities failed to locate or undertake serious efforts to locate the abducted child in one case that has been pending for more than 12 months,” the report reads, referring to Korea by the initialism of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

The report attributed Korea’s noncompliance to judicial enforcement.

“ROK judicial authorities contributed to some delay in processing cases during 2025,” the report said. “Unless the taking parent voluntarily complied with a return order under the Convention, ROK judicial decisions in Convention cases were generally not enforced, which contributed to a pattern of noncompliance.”

The State Department has repeatedly pressed Korea over international child abduction cases. In July last year, the U.S. Embassy’s consul general in Seoul discussed the longest-running unresolved case with Korea’s Foreign Ministry officials. U.S. officials revisited the issue with Korea’s central authority in December of last year after a seventh attempt to enforce a return order failed.

In March, the State Department’s special adviser for children’s issues raised the enforcement failures directly with a Korean delegation and expressed concern that Korea had failed to carry out child return orders under the Hague Convention.

John Sichi, an American whose Korean spouse took their two children to Korea in 2019 and did not return, turned to Korean courts under the Hague Convention. He won at every level, including the Supreme Court, but the order to return his children was not enforced for years.

Sichi became known as the “treadmill dad” after staging a one-man protest on a treadmill in central Seoul, where his endless steps represented his inability to reach his children. He was finally reunited with them in April 2024 and returned to the United States.

BY YOO JEE-HYE [[email protected]]