South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun was scheduled to travel to Washington today amid fallout from the raid last Friday NZT. <\/p>\n
The Foreign Ministry said Cho would work toward the \u201cvoluntary departure\u201d, rather than deportation, of all South Korean citizens so that they can be repatriated on chartered flights as soon as possible. <\/p>\n
The employees are expected to return to South Korea as early as this week.<\/p>\n
There is broader alarm in the country about what the actions mean for South Korean companies that have invested in the US, drawn in large part by Washington\u2019s efforts to boost economic co-operation between the two nations as a strategy to counter China\u2019s growing economic dominance.<\/p>\n
And there is frustration at \u201cAmerica First\u201d sentiments that say South Korean companies are taking part in a \u201cbait-and-switch\u201d, promising jobs for Americans but illegally hiring their own nationals instead \u2013 an allegation made by Tori Branum, a Georgia Republican running for Congress in 2026.<\/p>\n
South Korean media has focused on Branum, who describes herself as an \u201cAmerica First\u201d candidate. <\/p>\n
She claims to have tipped off immigration authorities about the battery plant and talked to an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement about her concerns over the legal status and treatment of workers there.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer justification of \u2018protecting American jobs\u2019 rings hollow when her actions sabotage Georgia\u2019s long-term prosperity,\u201d wrote one South Korean business publication, CEO News, saying Branum was using the issue to gain a political advantage in her campaign.<\/p>\n
Some analysts, using a shorthand for Trump\u2019s base that rallies around his \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d slogan, or Maga, said they are concerned that his supporters may be fomenting negative attitudes towards South Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at the behaviour of the Maga camp and its politicians, it\u2019s clear that \u2026 the US has changed dramatically,\u201d Kim Jong Dae, a former lawmaker, said in a radio interview. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a deeply worrying trend within the Maga camp \u2013 not only leading to a crackdown on South Korean workers, but also in fact fostering antipathy toward South Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n
South Korean companies such as Hyundai and LG, which jointly operate the plant in Georgia, ramped up their investments in the US under President Joe Biden\u2019s Administration, which offered incentives for semiconductor and electrical vehicle production.<\/p>\n
Then, as part of a recently agreed trade deal with the Trump Administration, South Korea agreed to invest US$350 billion ($590b) in the US to help revitalise American manufacturing \u2013 which Trump has welcomed with open arms. <\/p>\n
In March, Trump called Hyundai\u2019s investments in the US \u2013 including the Georgia project \u2013 \u201cbeautiful\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the images of South Korean workers shackled during the raid say otherwise, their compatriots say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are there to help boost up American industries \u2026 and once they are set up, there will be good infrastructure for increasing American employment,\u201d said Choi, the former vice-foreign minister. \u201cBut what we saw was those Koreans chained with handcuffs and treated as if they were terrorists or a bunch of thugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The raid comes during a rocky period between Washington and Seoul, during which Trump eventually settled on a 15% blanket tariff for South Korea in response to its US$66b trade deficit with the US.<\/p>\n
But tensions seemed to be easing last month, when South Korea\u2019s left-leaning President, Lee Jae Myung, held a chummy summit with Trump in Washington, the two of them touting co-operation and the strength of the bilateral relationship.<\/p>\n
The raid came as a rude awakening. South Korean politicians and media outlets did not mince their words, criticising the immigration raid as politically targeted against South Korea, perhaps for Trump to gain an edge among his supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should the world watch South Koreans who go overseas for work get dragged off in handcuffs and with shackles on their hands and feet?\u201d conservative lawmaker Shin Dong-Wook said, amid broader claims that the country\u2019s businesses were \u201cgripped by fear\u201d after the raid.<\/p>\n
Chosun Ilbo, South Korea\u2019s largest daily newspaper, raised concerns about what the raid would mean for future investments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy target South Korean factories when Taiwan and others are also building plants in the US?\u201d the conservative paper wrote in an editorial. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Seoul] should convey domestic concerns – such as, \u2018Should we continue investing in the US?\u2019 – to US authorities and demand strong guarantees to prevent recurrence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hankyoreh, a left-leaning news outlet, criticised Washington for damaging ties between the two allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US\u2019 double-dealing behaviour of demanding massive infusions of capital from Korea, only to use immigration raids to intimidate the companies making these investments, is extremely regrettable,\u201d Hankyoreh wrote.<\/p>\n
Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in Georgia and Alabama, said in a news briefing last week that some of the workers had entered the country illegally, some were working in violation of their visas, and some had overstayed their visas. He said the arrests were part of an ongoing, months-long investigation.<\/p>\n
South Korean politicians and corporate leaders are calling for clearer visa guidelines from Washington.<\/p>\n
It is unclear what type of visa the detained workers used. For more than a year, South Korean businesses have faced challenges navigating the US visa process given the cap on specialised work visas, such as the H-1B, and they have used other short-term visas that left the workers in a \u201cgrey zone\u201d, said James Kim, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea.<\/p>\n
That meant engineers helping establish plants like the Hyundai-LG factory would enter on a visa waiver called the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation or on a B-1 business visa. <\/p>\n
Both allow visitors to carry out certain business activities, like attending conferences or business meetings, but they are not intended for paid employment in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are sending people for factories involving semiconductors or electric batteries, you need people on the floor who know what they\u2019re doing. And because this is still relatively a new industry, it\u2019s not that easy finding those people,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n
That practice became the norm \u2013 particularly for subcontractors, who don\u2019t have the same resources as major conglomerates to navigate visa issues. <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t an issue under the Biden Administration, which did not have the same focus on immigration enforcement as Trump, Kim said. But the tide has now turned.<\/p>\n
The latest incident is a \u201chiccup\u201d in the decades-long relationship between the two nations, but it\u2019s an opportunity to clarify uncertainties around these visa issues, especially for the companies that want to continue to invest in the US, Kim said.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun was scheduled to travel to Washington today amid fallout from the raid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2840,13735,13738,8239,806,1975,6081,138,13736,13741,13742,13740,917,185,13734,13739,5829,111,139,69,1118,11923,8481,10534,13743,13744,1240,13737,13672,223,61,3040,13745],"class_list":["post-11225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-across","tag-actions","tag-alliance","tag-american","tag-as","tag-at","tag-battery","tag-business","tag-counter","tag-factory","tag-georgia","tag-hyundailg","tag-immigration","tag-is","tag-korea","tag-largescale","tag-many","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-raid","tag-reeling","tag-see","tag-sent","tag-shock","tag-south","tag-spirit","tag-state","tag-the","tag-to","tag-us","tag-waves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}