The United States has put South Korea under pressure for years to invest billions from dollars to the American industry, which has only increased in recent months.
This made it all the more shocking for South Koreans when they learned that the US immigration officers had searched the building location of a large Hyundai LG plant in Georgia on Thursday and arrested hundreds of South Korean citizens.
US officials said they had arrested 475 people during the raid in Ellabell, GA, because they were illegal in the country or worked illegally. Most of them were South Korean citizens who had been sent to build an electric car battery factory, according to the industry officials familiar with the project. Most, they said, were subcontractors who worked for the automobile manufacturer Hyundai and the Battery Maker LG Energy Solution, South Korean companies that share ownership on the facility.
The attack came in a sensitive time in trade relationships and worried South Korean companies that invested in the United States. These companies have a unique problem under President Trump. While he encouraged them to invest in the United States, his administration also imposed heavy tariffs and drastically tightened the visa assignments, which makes it more difficult and more expensive for them to send components and find technicians to build their factories.
The officers left the arrests in Seoul Reeling. Only last month President Lee Jae myung from South Korea met with Mr. Trump, and the two men confirmed the seven decades-old alliance of her countries. They also agreed to a new trade agreement. However, officials on both sides continue to be involved in tense negotiations on details of the deal, which was announced for the first time at the end of July.
This uncertainty was reflected in South Korea shocked but subdued reaction to the attack.
The country monitored the case exactly on indications of how the immigration policy of the Trump government would affect the business activity of South Korean industrial lines such as Hyundai and LG. These companies have cast billions of dollars into building new factories in the United States under the encouragement of both governments that try to expand their alliances beyond military cooperation into global supply chains.
Both Hyundai and LG said little about the attack, except that they had started their own investigations, including the practices of their subcontractors. However, the discomfort was emphasized when the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs made an unusual explanation on Friday in which Washington conveyed his “concern and regret”.
The Ministry has not worked out, but the frustration of South Korea about the treatment of South Korean investors by the US government seemed to reflect its language.
“The economic activities of our investment societies and the rights and interests of our citizens may not be wrongly violated during the US criminal trial procedure,” says the US criminal investigation authorities.
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun repeated the feeling of his office on Saturday in an emergency assembly and said that he was “seriously concerned about the attack”. He said that Seoul has already communicated with the US government through diplomatic channels, but he would fly to Washington to tackle the matter if necessary.
An editorial that was taken over by Dong-A Ilbo on Saturday, a South Korean mass circle daily, named the RAID as a “shock”. “It will affect the activities of our business in the United States,” it said.
The Maeil Business Newspaper based in Seoul wore a cartoon in which the Trump government criticized for the robbery and contrasted the government's endeavors to treat some foreign nationals.
Both the South Korean government and the companies involved in the Georgia Construction Project desperately changed to find out what the raid prompted. The Foreign Ministry said it sent diplomats to the website. Hyundai said that none of his employees was one of the detainees while LG said that 47 of his employees were.
In their arrest, the LG employees were on business trips with various visas or as part of a Visa reference program in order to obtain technical guidelines for building the battery factory, according to the industry officials familiar with the project. Other imprisoned South Korean workers were hired by construction companies, they said.
Steven Schrank, a special agent who is responsible for the investigation of the home protection for Georgia, said on Friday at a press conference that “there is a network of subcontractors and subcontractors for the subcontractors”.
“So the employees worked for a large number of different companies that were on the website,” he said.
Mr. Schrank said that the 475 people who had been arrested “were illegally present in the United States or had illegally worked against their presence in the United States”. Some illegally crossed the border to the United States, he said. Others came through a waiver of visa and it took him to work, he added, or they had surpassed their visas.
Hyundai and LG refused to comment on the knowledge, but both said they said they had prioritized the security of their employees.
On Saturday, LG said that its employees ordered on business trips in the USA to stay in their accommodations or to return home immediately. It also banned employees to travel to the USA in the shop, with the exception of customer discussions and other purposes specially designated by the company.
The Hyundai LG factory, which was to start operating next year, was the kind of large-scale investments that the United States had been looking for from South Korea. When Mr. Trump agreed to reduce his tariffs to South Korea's exports such as Samsung's phone and Hyundai cars to 15 percent, he secured an investment package of 350 billion US dollars from the country. How to create and invest the fund is an essential part of the ongoing negotiations between the two nations.
When Mr. Lee traveled to Washington last month, South Korean managing directors who accompanied him began another 150 billion US dollars in direct investments in the United States.
