Anger in Seoul as Trump calls detained South Korea workers 'illegal aliens'

[IcyPeas]

Making friends everywhere.

Foreign Minister Cho Hyun says he is ‘deeply concerned’ over detention of 300 South Koreans, while opposition calls it a ‘grave matter’.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has ordered all-out efforts to respond to the arrests of hundreds of the country’s citizens in an immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor-LG car battery factory in the United States.

Thursday’s arrest of some 475 workers – more than 300 of them South Korean nationals – at the plant near Savannah in the southern US state of Georgia was the largest single-site enforcement operation carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of the US Department of Homeland Security.

More:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/6/anger-in-seoul-as-trump-calls-detained-south-korea-workers-illegal-aliens

[everyonematters]

1. One question in all of this should be - what are they paying the workers.

[travelingthrulife]

2. So he's managed to piss off both North AND South Korea's leadership in one week.

Perhaps this is one of his 5011th 4D chess moves to promote peace in Korea...Nobel for sure!

[SickOfTheOnePct]

3. So, the foreign minister is...

..."deeply concerned"...I'm assuming then that South Korea allows foreign nationals to work illegally in South Korea?

[travelingthrulife]

5. We don't know whether they have been working illegally.

Seems like a lot of these arrests are people who have their work visas and have been checking in like they were told to do. Big headline over hundreds arrested, no comment on those released without charge later.

[RandomNumbers]

6. See my post #4 .... and you should know ....

I am one of the LAST people on this site you will find defending illegal immigration (or, "legal" immigration when it really does undercut American workers ... i.e. much of how H1B is actually applied)

[RandomNumbers]

4. Trump is an ass ... but here is some USEFUL information about the raid

Key points:

* to the extent the allegations are true, many detained WERE here "illegally" but not in the way the rabid wrong-wing would normally think of it - more minor violation stuff
* at least a few, according to their lawyers, were NOT in violation of their visas, and are wrongly detained
* few if any worked directly for Hyundai. If a significant % of the allegations turn out to be true, Hyundai DOES need to overhaul the HR department that is responsible for hiring of contractors and subcontractors, and probably outright fire at least one contracting agency.
* ... see highlighted section below ...

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/06/us/georgia-hyundai-plant-raid-timeline

Georgia immigration attorney Charles Kuck told CNN two of his clients were detained at the raid after having arrived from South Korea under a visa waiver program which allows them to travel for tourism or business for up to 90 days.

One client arrived in the US last week, and the other arrived several weeks ago, he said.

“They were authorized to work in the US under a visa waiver,” Kuck said. “Each was pursuing activities consistent with the visa waiver program.”

The clients, both engineers, came to the US “to advise briefly on the work” and were planning to return to South Korea shortly, according to Kuck.

OH WAIT ... reading further, do we perhaps see the REAL reason behind this raid? (is TSF really on the outs with Muskrat ... still ... or ever? or it was all a smokescreen? or doesn't matter because there are other beneficiaries in the mix?)

In 2022, Hyundai announced an agreement with the state of Georgia to build Hyundai’s “first dedicated fully electrified vehicle and battery manufacturing facilities in the United States” in Bryan County, the company said. The sprawling, 2,900-acre Hyundai Metaplant has two parts: a Hyundai electric vehicle manufacturing site, and an EV battery plant which is a joint venture between Hyundai and LG. The plant was projected to employ up to 8,500 people when complete.

The raid halted construction of the EV battery plant, The Associated Press reported.

[niyad]

7. And there we have it!

[IcyPeas]

8. Just read yesterday that musk will soon be the first trillionaire

Trump is an evil fuck.

[Girard442]

11. Welcome to life under a dictator.

[Martin Eden]

22. Krasnov wants to shut down every green energy project

He is on a jihad against the HOAX of global warming.

[dalton99a]

24. +1

[haele]

9. Tori Branam, running for a Congressional seat in GA, claims she called ICE on the plant

She claims on her Facebook she did it for "Humanitarian Reasons", because a friend knows "a Union Guy" who works at the main factory who told that friend that Mexicans and Koreans and their families were being trafficked and living in slavery conditions at the new plant being built.
Yes, she's a good "Christian" blond lady who apparently is now putting up pics of her with an AR-15 to deal with all the haters upset she was trying to save all those "poor immigrants desperate to come to the US illegally looking for a better life..."

Especially engineers and lower level managers from South Korea?

[leftstreet]

12. This all seems very fishy n/t

[dalton99a]

28. +1

[orangecrush]

10. CLOSE THE FUCKING PLANT

[niyad]

17. why?

[orangecrush]

19. Because it's not safe for other countries to run businesses here anymore.

Let Wall Street get the message.

[niyad]

20. Understood, and thank you for explaining.

[orangecrush]

21. Most welcome.

[Tetrachloride]

13. the devil went down to georgia

if they knew ice was coming, where was the mint julep?

no nascar ?

how about a gun raffle?

kimchi makes fewer friends than a bbq

[Martin68]

14. This could prove interesting. Trump is a bull in a China shop.

[70sEraVet]

15. Forget for a minute about the legal/illegal status of South Korean workers....

In Putin's war against Ukraine, he has become dependent on North Korean soldiers to fill the battlefields. To get those soldiers, he must give the North Korean leader something HE wants -- like a diplomatic disaster that erodes the alliance between South Korea and the US.
Putin gives orders to trump.
ICE is trump's personal army.

[RandomNumbers]

16. Excellent point ...

between that and it being an EV battery plant ... OF COURSE it was raided. (whether or not there wer rampant immigration violations ... I'm going with NOT.)

[niyad]

18. Why does that not even surprise me?

[UTUSN]

23. K&R

[EndlessWire]

25. In the face of this raid

would you build a car plant here to beat the tariffs? Or would you pivot to work with other, more reasonable countries? Rumpy claims that hundreds of car companies are now building plants here. I don't believe him, but regardless of what happened with all the South Koreans, here legally or not, would you chance having hundreds of your Nationals subjected to ICE conditions and deported to gawd knows where?

ETTD in action. I doubt rump even cares about SK's anger, as long as it doesn't get in front of his golf game. Look for our ambassadors getting expelled from SK.

[Irish_Dem]

26. Trump breaking up the international democracy alliance for Putin and Xi.

Trump is better than any Russian and Chinese agent on the payroll.

[dalton99a]

27. +1. Putin chose well.

[Prairie Gates]

29. The overlooked part of the story here is that Hyundai did not think they could find

adequate employees in rural Georgia, either because the wages they wanted were too high, or they lacked motivation, or they lacked education, or the population was too low and/or nobody who was qualified for these jobs in the US was willing to resettle to this place.

It's actually the biggest element of the story, since Trump's entire economic plan is premised on some mythical revival of the manufacturing sector in places like rural Georgie, and this Hyundai mega-manufacturing zone is presumably one of the biggest successes of the idea (though it is primarily a Georgia initiative that precedes Trump). They will be "incentivized" to hire American workers by force!

It's curiously a point of absolute cohesion in the otherwise incoherent and contradictory MAGA ideology: we will force the revival of manufacturing through tariffs, and then enforce that American workers are hired through immigration action!* Imagine believing that you're a free-market absolutist and these two interlocking policies are the centerpiece of your policy portfolio.

* Notice that this second part doesn't solve the problems of compensation, education, motivation, population, or relocation.

[RandomNumbers]

30. "the wages they wanted were too high" - how high were they?

by chance do you have that data?

I'm not totally hostile to your points, but I think you have a tough sell generally, even with many Democrats, when you argue from the perspective that "a company must bring in foreign workers because American workers want too much pay". That is EXACTLY the point of raising the price of foreign goods to help American businesses compete with American labor. (not that I agree with Trump approach on tariffs - this thinking is WAY too simplistic - but simple is how many people need it and you will not win the argument by actually admitting that the goal is to undercut the pay of Americans.)

Your other points might get some more traction, although I somewhat question that candidates lack motivation or education. I give a lot more credit to the idea that the plant was located in a place where it is hard to find enough candidates to be appropriately selective.

Also note that some of the people they detained were here only temporary, to oversee or review some specific part of the job. Your argument is not applicable to them - these are not tasks that would go to on site workers anyway.