The United States has for years pressured South Korea to invest billions of dollars in American industry, a push that has only increased over the last few months.
That made it all the more shocking for South Koreans when they learned that U.S. immigration officials had raided the construction site of a major Hyundai-LG plant in Georgia on Thursday, arresting hundreds of South Korean citizens.
U.S. officials said they had arrested 475 people during the raid, in Ellabell, Ga., because they were in the country illegally or working unlawfully. Most of them were South Korean nationals who had been sent to help finish building an electric-car battery factory, according to industry officials familiar with the project. Most, they said, were subcontractors working for the carmaker Hyundai and the battery maker LG Energy Solution, South Korean companies that share ownership of the plant.
The raid came at a sensitive time in trade relations, unsettling South Korean businesses investing in the United States. Those companies face a unique problem under President Trump. While encouraging them to invest in the United States, his administration has also imposed heavy tariffs and drastically tightened visa allocations, making it more difficult and costly for them to ship components and find technicians to build their factories.
The arrests left officials in Seoul reeling. Just last month, President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea met with Mr. Trump, and the two men reaffirmed their countries’ seven-decade-old alliance. They also agreed to a new broad-stroke trade deal. But officials from both sides remain engaged in tense negotiationsover details of the deal, which was first announced in late July.
That uncertainty was reflected in South Korea’s shocked but subdued reaction to the raid.
The country was closely monitoring the case for clues on how the Trump administration’s immigration policy would affect the operations of South Korean industrial giants like Hyundai and LG. Those companies have been pouring billions of dollars into building new factories in the United States under the encouragement of both governments, which seek to expand their alliance beyond military cooperation into global supply chains.
Both Hyundai and LG said little about the raid, except that they had started their own investigations, including into the practices of their subcontractors. But the unease was highlighted when South Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued an unusual statement on Friday, conveying its “concern and regrets” to Washington.
The ministry did not elaborate, but its language appeared to reflect South Korea’s frustration with the U.S. government’s treatment of South Korean investors.
“The economic activities of our investment companies and the rights and interests of our citizens must not be unjustly violated during U.S. law enforcement proceedings,” it said.
An editorial carried on Saturday by Dong-A Ilbo, a mass-circulation South Korean daily, called the raid a “shock.” “It will put a chilling effect on the activities of our businesses in the United States,” it said.
The Seoul-based Maeil Business Newspaper carried a cartoon criticizing the Trump administration for the raid, contrasting the government’s push for more investment with its treatment of some foreign nationals.
Both the South Korean government and the businesses involved in the Georgia construction project moved frantically to figure out what prompted the raid. The Foreign Ministry said it had dispatched diplomats to the site. Hyundai said that none of its employees were among the detained, while LG said some of its employees were.
When they were arrested, the LG employees were on business trips with various visas or under a visa waiver program to provide technical guidance for building the battery factory, according to industry officials familiar with the project. Other detained South Korean workers had been hired by construction subcontractors, they said.
Steven Schrank, a special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations for Georgia, said at a news conference on Friday that there was “a network of subcontractors and subcontractors for the subcontractors there.”
“So the employees worked for a variety of different companies that were on the site,” he said.
Mr. Schrank said that the 475 people who had been detained “were illegally present in the United States or in violation of their presence in the United States, working unlawfully.” Some illegally crossed the border into the United States, he said. Others came in through a visa waiver and were prohibited from working, he added, or they had overstayed their visas.
Hyundai and LG declined to comment on the findings, pending investigations, but both said they were prioritizing the safety of their workers.
The Hyundai-LG factory, which was scheduled to start operating next year, was the kind of large-scale, job-creating investment that the United States had sought from South Korea. When Mr. Trump agreed to lower his tariffs on South Korea’s exports, like Samsung phones and Hyundai cars, to 15 percent, he secured a $350 billion investment package from the country. How to create and invest the fund is a key part of ongoing negotiations between the two nations.
When Mr. Lee traveled to Washington last month, South Korean business leaders who accompanied him committed another $150 billion in direct investments in the United States.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
The post Immigration Raid on Hyundai-LG Plant in Georgia Rattles South Korea appeared first on New York Times.
