A chartered flight carrying hundreds of South Korean workers arrested in a major United States immigration raid has landed in Incheon, ending a weeklong saga that rattled Seoul and cast a dark shadow over its ties with key ally Washington.
Television footage showed a Korean Air Boeing 747-8I touching down at Incheon International Airport on Friday with more than 310 passengers who had been arrested in the US state of Georgia.
The workers made up the bulk of the 475 people swept up during a raid at a Hyundai-LG battery plant construction site – the largest single-site immigration operation since US President Donald Trump resumed office and pledged to intensify crackdowns.
“Everything at Atlanta went smoothly,” a South Korean Foreign Ministry official told the AFP news agency, confirming the flight left as scheduled.
Images of workers in handcuffs and chains during the arrests caused deep outrage in South Korea, where anger has spread over what many see as a betrayal of an ally.
At the airport, protesters held placards mocking Trump in an ICE uniform and accusing Washington of luring investment only to criminalise workers. One man’s sign read: “You told us to invest, only to arrest us! Is this how you treat an ally?”
Rare political unity in South Korea
President Lee Jae-mMyung called the raid “bewildering” and warned it could deter future investment. He said Seoul was pressing Washington “to ensure that visa issuance for investment-related purposes operates normally”.
Al Jazeera’s Jack Barton, reporting from Incheon airport, said US officials had insisted “right up until the last moment that they were going to be deported and that there would be restrictions … on re-entry for at least the next five years”.
But, Barton noted, “the South Korean government was able to negotiate with the Trump administration … and they were allowed in the end to [make] a voluntary return, and … there will be no visa restrictions or re-entry restrictions.”
Barton said the raid had caused rare political unity in South Korea. “This is the only issue I’ve seen them really sort of on the same page,” he reported, with politicians from across the spectrum condemning images of workers “having their ankles and hands chained together, and then doing that sort of perp walk onto the bus”.
He added that polls showed at least 60 percent of South Koreans disapproved of the raid, warning the fallout could damage future investments.
Industry executives said the arrests would delay construction at the $4.3bn Georgia facility.
Labour groups in Seoul demanded accountability. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions urged Trump to apologise, accusing his administration of “a clear violation of human rights” and calling on South Korea to suspend US investments.
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