Big news coming out of the US: more than 300 South Korean workers who were detained in a raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia are set to be released and sent home.
The arrests happened last Thursday at a Hyundai-LG battery facility, where footage showed workers handcuffed and with chains around their ankles being loaded onto buses. The raid, carried out in the town of Ellabell, is reportedly the largest single-site immigration crackdown under President Trump’s anti-migrant policies. South Korean officials say it caught them off guard.
South Korea’s presidential chief of staff, Kang Hoon-sik, said on Sunday that negotiations to secure the workers’ release have concluded. “Only administrative procedures remain. Once these are done, a chartered flight will bring our citizens home,” he explained.
LG Energy Solution, the electric vehicle battery company involved, confirmed that 47 of its employees were among those arrested—46 South Koreans and one Indonesian. Another 250 or so detainees were believed to be contractors, most of them South Korean. In response, LG sent a senior executive, Kim Ki-soo, to Georgia to help speed up their release. “Our immediate priority is getting our employees and those of our partner firms back safely,” he said.
The incident has sparked concern in Seoul, which has promised to assist its nationals caught up in the raid. For now, everyone is waiting on the final administrative steps before the workers can return home. Photo by User: Anonyme, Wikimedia commons.
