Holt International Children's Services history

• 1957 – HAP began processing domestic adoptions in Korea.

• 1961 – The Holt Ilsan center, built by Harry himself, was established in the town of Ilsan, located Northwest of Seoul.

Their operation began to follow standard professional procedures, hired social worker John Adams as its Executive Director in 1962, and gradually evolved into a typical adoption agency.

• 1963 – Holt Ilsan was approved by the Korean government as a facility for the disabled.

• 1964 – Harry Holt suffered a heart attack while escorting children from HAP’s Seoul office to Ilsan, and passed away a few hours later at Ilsan.

Bertha Holt with Vice-President Hubert Humphrey at the American Mother of the Year presentation, 1966

• 1972 – HAP, Inc. was renamed Holt Children’s Services, Incorporated (HCSI).

If you were adopted after 1976, your United States agency may or may not have been Holt International.

• 1977 – Holt Children’s Services of Korea (Holt Korea) was established as a separate agency and Holt International Children’s Services was formed.

As has been widely reported,5 by 1991 self-styled Romanian adoption “facilitators” were soliciting children directly from birthfamilies in hospitals, on the street, in poor neighborhoods, even in their homes, sometimes haggling over prices while shocked Westerners stood by.

That climb increased dramatically after 1992, when China opened its orphanages and let Westerners adopt some of the thousands of daughters abandoned because of a radical and historically unique social experiment: the one-child policy.

Currently, the numbers of international adoptions are plummeting from their peak in 2004, when 22,990 children came to the United States3 from other countries in adoption, and 45,2884 changed countries around the world.

4 Peter Selman, “Intercountry Adoption in the Twenty-First Century,” 2007, Proceedings of the First International Korean Adoption Studies Research Symposium, Seoul, South Korea.

And in 2008, Guatemala—formerly a major adoption source for the United States— closed its doors to adoption to try to root out systemic corruption.

"The Seamier Side of International Adoption," The New York Times Opinion Blog, May 10, 2009.

"Preventing Adoption Disasters," The Boston Globe, April 17, 2010.