In various locations across South Korea’s capital, John Sichi has been walking miles on a treadmill in a desperate effort to draw attention to the abduction of his two young children, who he claims were taken from their home in San Francisco and brought to Seoul by their mother over three years ago.
Sichi has been staging a one-man treadmill protest since October 2022, along with flyers and life-size posters of his children with the words “I miss my children so much” written in Korean.
For Sichi, who is “walking but going nowhere,” the endless walks symbolize his ongoing struggle with South Korea’s legal system, which has failed to reunite him with his children.
The father of two also hopes to communicate his situation with the public despite language barriers.
“When I first started the protest, I thought people would laugh at me or ignore me, just walk on by. That’s not what happened. So many people were curious, wanted to understand what was happening,” Sichi tells NextShark.
This international child abduction case began in November 2019.
At the time, Sichi was living with his wife and their two children in San Francisco. Due to marital issues, his wife reportedly flew to Seoul with their children in what was supposed to be a month-long “cooling-off visit” with her family.
But according to Sichi, she and the children never returned.
He said he visited Seoul in December 2019 and January 2020 to persuade his wife to come home with their children. She initially agreed to return, but by the end of February 2020 she had changed her mind, canceled the return flight tickets and withheld the children’s passports, according to reports.
Sichi then decided to take his case to the San Francisco County Superior Court, and after a months-long trial, the court finally determined in August 2020 that the children should be returned to California. During the trial, Sichi had limited access to his children through video chat.
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