In 1955, timber magnate Harry Holt flew to war-ravaged Korea to adopt eight babies who'd been fathered by U.S. servicemen. Driven by a belief in the superiority of Christian American homes—and amid intense national media attention—he returned to Oregon with the children. Together with his wife, Bertha, Holt launched what would later become Holt International, an agency that facilitated the placement of thousands of Korean children in the decades that followed. Some were abandoned or orphaned, but many were separated from families due to poverty, coercion, and, in some cases, outright abduction. Many children were also gravely ill—some dying en route to the United States.
Half a century later, in Iowa City, Steve Sueppel—a churchgoing bank vice president—murdered his wife and their four Korean-born children, all adopted through the Holt Agency, before taking his own life. To those around them, the Sueppels had been a model family.
In WHAT THEY STOLE: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption (Iowa University Press; May 26, 2026), Paige Towers weaves together these histories to examine the system that connects them: an intercountry adoption industry shaped by Cold War politics, evangelical networks, and racial hierarchy. Drawing on archival research and original reporting, she traces how early Korean adoptees navigated life in the United States long after public attention faded—and asks what was gained, what was lost, and who ultimately bore the cost.
A work of history, true crime, and social analysis, What They Stole challenges the feel-good narrative of adoption, exposing how power, faith, and global inequality shaped one of the most influential American humanitarian movements of the twentieth century.
You can learn more in this interview.
In WHAT THEY STOLE, you examine the troubled history of U.S. adoptions from Korea and in particular the case of Steven Sueppel, who murdered his wife and 4 adopted Korean children in 2008. How does that one horrific incident shed light on the broader history of abuse within Korean American adoptions?
The Sueppel case is so extreme that, both in 2008 and in the years since, it was largely treated as an isolated incident. But what drew me to this familicide was not just the violence itself—or the fact that the murders happened in my hometown of Iowa City—but how it illuminates the broader history of America’s system of adoption from South Korea.
In the aftermath of the Korean War, this system prioritized speed, volume, and Western demand over transparency and accountability. Children’s records were routinely altered or obscured, agencies operated with limited oversight, and adoption was framed as an unquestionably benevolent act. Within this structure, adoptive families’ abuse—which was perpetrated more frequently than people realize—was difficult to detect, easy to minimize, and rarely traced back to systemic causes.
The Sueppel familicide exposes the cracks in the narrative. It forces us to confront how religious zeal, white saviorism, colorblindness, inadequate post-adoption support, and privatized child welfare can converge behind closed doors. Rather than being an anomaly, we ought to view the case as the rupture of a flawed system, one that reveals danger that’s otherwise hidden.
Harry Holt, a wealthy, evangelical businessman, helped pioneer the mass adoption of Korean children by American families after the Korean War. Many of these children were orphans, abandoned, or facing starvation, and some were placed with loving families. However, Holt relocated many children without consent from parents and to families unprepared to care for them, sometimes with devastating consequences including numerous deaths. What are the legacies of Harry Holt and international adoption more broadly?
Depending on who’s telling the story, Harry Holt appears as a humanitarian—or the reckless architect of a system that prioritized religious zeal over the rights of Korean families and the safety of their children.
Harry Holt was an anti-unionist, conservative, born-again Christian farmer and businessman with no background in child welfare. Yet after adopting eight young children from Korea in 1955, he and his wife Bertha founded an agency that shaped the modern adoption system, opening pathways for hundreds of thousands of children to be placed abroad.
Many adoptees entered loving and stable homes. But Holt’s legacy is inseparable from the methods he pioneered: mass child placements with minimal regulation, adoption framed as rescue, the creation of “paper orphans” (children whose biological families were alive but erased from the record), and the removal of children without consent. His model transformed intercountry adoption into a multi-million-dollar global industry whose consequences continue across generations.
The history of Korean-American adoption is inseparable from the influences of imperialism and racism. How do men like Holt reflect these broader dynamics in the 20th century? And how did racism on both sides affect how and which children were removed and where they were ultimately placed?
Even when framed as Christian charity, the mid-century adoption boom was deeply embedded in Cold War hierarchies. After the Korean War, the US positioned itself as both a military power and humanitarian savior in South Korea, with adoption serving as a private extension of that role.
Agencies such as Holt operated on the belief that white, Christian, nuclear families offered the only path to safety and morality. Children were treated as “blank slates” and stripped of their identities for the purpose of assimilation. Meanwhile, under the authoritarian leadership of Syngman Rhee, the Korean government encouraged these adoptions to export a perceived social threat: mixed race children. Fathered by American servicemen and born to Korean women, multiracial children were disproportionately targeted for adoption under the guise of rescue, leaving many mothers, especially those with Korean Black babies, with no real choice. Ultimately, these political decisions and structural conditions led to an unnecessary tragedy: mass family separations.
Religious zealotry has long shaped international American adoption, as many adoptive parents are driven by the belief that they’re saving children by giving them Christian homes. How has this impacted adoptees and their outcomes?
Christian agencies and leaders have often framed adoption as a moral and spiritual imperative, and many evangelical families understood adoption as a mandate to “save” children by bringing them into Christian homes. This presumption of goodness on the part of adoptive families too often replaced rigorous screening, or any screening at all. Holt International, for instance, often prioritized spiritual standing over psychological readiness, education, or financial stability, contributing in some cases to abuse, abandonment, neglect, and even murder.
This rescue narrative can also shape adoptees’ inner lives. Many describe carrying a burden of gratitude, like an expectation to prove they were worthy of being saved. At the same time, their grief is often minimized. People report feeling pressure to suppress the emotions tied to the loss of family, language, culture, and homeland to maintain harmony within their adopted families. When you add in colorblindness and discrimination, these dynamics can have lasting effects on identity, belonging, and mental health.
How did the Holt agency fail the Sueppel children? Although the murders occurred decades after Holt's most harmful actions in Korea, did aspects of its early approach contribute to the tragedy in Iowa?
Although the murders of the Sueppel children occurred in 2008, well after the “Wild West” era of 1950s proxy adoptions, Holt’s early philosophy remained influential. Holt International long emphasized that a child needed little more than a good Christian home, creating a lasting bias in how prospective parents were evaluated. By these standards, Steven Sueppel appeared to be an ideal candidate. A successful banker and active church member, he embodied the traits the agency valued, leaving underlying pressures and instabilities unexamined. And families like the Sueppels were permitted to adopt four children, including two children with disabilities, despite significant financial strain.
Even by the 2010s, these adoptions still occurred by proxy, with children placed sight unseen, a practice critics likened to “mail-order” placements. At the same time, post-adoption oversight was minimal, leaving children without advocates when crises escalated. This model—prioritizing faith and status over rigorous evaluation and with limited follow-up—allowed risks to go undetected, showing how systemic gaps created decades earlier still had tragic consequences for adoptees.
What does an ethical international adoption policy look like today? And what political and social action must occur for this to take place?
Intercountry adoption has shifted from a (highly profitable) model of charitable rescue to one increasingly grounded in human rights and family preservation. Adoptee-led advocacy has reshaped the field, challenging the rescue narrative and centering trauma and identity. Ethical policy now emphasizes exhausting all alternatives: whenever possible, children should remain with their biological families or within their home countries. Agencies are expected to obtain informed, uncoerced consent, verify children’s backgrounds, and provide post-placement support, including access to original records and medical histories. International legislation like the Hague Adoption Convention have also helped curb bribery, competition, and the creation of “paper orphans.”
Yet significant challenges remain. Thousands of Korean and other intercountry adoptees lack US citizenship, leaving some vulnerable to deportation as adults—especially as ICE arrests have surged dramatically under the second Trump administration. Private faith-based adoption agencies also require stronger vetting, and federal oversight remains inconsistent.
At the same time, we need to stay vigilant. In times of war, migration, and political instability, vulnerable families always remain at risk of separation.
Paige Towers is author of The Sound of Undoing: A Memoir in Essays. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, McSweeney’s, and Harvard Review. Originally from Iowa, Towers now lives along the Washington coast.
