By: Shim Jae Hoon
With children screaming and housewives wiping away tears, the arrival lounge at Incheon International Airport on September 12 felt like a dockside crowd welcoming their kin returning home from some foreign war front.
A chartered Korean Air flight was bringing 316 South Korean technicians and engineers released from a week-long detention by US immigration authorities at a new Korean-financed plant at Allabell, Georgia for Hyundai Motors and LG Energy Solutions. On the same flight were 14 others working at the same site from Japan, China, and Indonesia.
The Georgia crackdown occurs in the middle of the maelstrom that is US immigration policy and which leaves neither side looking very good. Washington’s take-no-prisoners immigration situation under US President Donald Trump occurs as the US also seeks foreign direct investment, while South Korea willingly flaunts immigration rules.
The US$4.3 billion joint venture battery facility, among the largest projects in Georgia and expected to create 8,500 jobs, was scheduled for completion later this year to supply battery cells to Hyundai’s nearby EV factory, Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America LLC (HMGMA). It is now endangered.
The scenes of helmeted ICE agents in full battle gear invading the peaceful worksite and rounding up workers at gunpoint, chaining and shackling them – repeatedly shown on Korean TV news – so outraged Korean viewers at home that it triggered waves of outrage and denunciation, calling for a new look at relations with the US, Seoul’s most important ally. It also caused high embarrassment for the new Lee Jae Myung administration, which has been under suspicion of harboring people with anti-American backgrounds.
Apparently sensing the danger to the plant’s future, Christopher Landau, a senior US state department official, on Sunday expressed regret over the recent mass detention and vowed to prevent similar occurrences. Landau visited Seoul for a meeting with South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo to convey his “deep regrets.”
That was cold comfort for the workers, who arrived unshaven and looking dazed, showing lingering shock from the treatment they received, being iron-chained and shackled most of the time.
“We have had to have our meals next to a toilet stool,” said one Korean worker, shaking his head. “We were taken under gunpoint and then chained like big-time criminals,” said another man who refused to give his name.
The hapless returnees were abruptly freed following intense negotiations at the White House with the South Korean foreign minister and a top presidential security adviser from Seoul hurrying to Washington for high-level talks, which apparently saved the Korean workers the fate of being carted off to some unknown distant nation south of the US border.
In the end, it was talks with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that saved the Korean workers from internment for working without proper visas. With the Trump administration expecting to have large numbers of Korean workers come to build more factories, including shipyards for American warships, it appeared Washington saw no point in convicting all of those detained.
Korean news reports said US President Donald Trump at first thought of forgiving the Georgia workers, but the Koreans were presumably too stunned to stay on.
In the wake of the Georgia debacle, reports in Seoul say the US and South Korea will agree on a new special work visa arrangement to be applied to Koreans coming to the US for work on projects involving Korea’s investment. But in Seoul, questions are being raised about whether such a new system can help heal the impact of the shock.
While the workers have been spared prosecution and lengthy imprisonment, their return and exclusion from criminal charges doesn’t obscure the reputation of Koreans in the United States and elsewhere, breaking visa rules, overstaying or working without proper visa requirements. Many Koreans enter the United States under the so-called ESTA program, an electronic system for travel authorization allowing visitors to the US for simple, non-business trips.
And yet, quite a few Korean companies have broken visa rules by sending home-office people on company projects or sales missions. As in the case of the Georgia plant where engineers and technicians worked at their subsidiary plants or factories for quick project implementation, Koreans have often been accused of being scofflaws.
“It is known we are all guilty of (breaking immigration laws) in the name of quick project implementation,” one retired construction worker told Asia Sentinel, explaining that worksite projects and deadlines have often been used as an excuse for breaking visa rules.
That certainly was the case of the 300-plus technicians illegally working at the Georgia plant. The surprise was why ICE officials had taken so long to secure a court order to invade the plant and stage what appeared to be a combat operation with fully armored vehicles.
Calling the Georgia immigration agency’s action “extremely disconcerting,” President Lee, carefully choosing his words, told a news conference marking his hundred days in office: “it could have a considerable impact on direct investment in the US,” adding “Korean companies are bound to be very hesitant about investing directly.”
Lee has ample reason to be apprehensive. His three-month-old administration is now under relentless pressure from the Trump administration to sign a new trade accord accepting a 15 percent tariff in exchange for a promise of investments totaling US$350 billion. No formal agreement has yet been signed, but in the midst of the Georgia frisson, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has openly called on Seoul to implement the investment accord or face a 25 percent tariff as initially slapped by Trump.
In principle at least, Seoul’s large business community, mainly consisting of family-owned chaebol groups such as Hyundai Motors, Samsung Electronics, and LG Group, are in agreement to increase their investment in the US, which remains their largest export market. Not only in manufactured goods but also in high technology, the two countries are inextricably linked in many ways, so that corporations like Samsung and Hyundai have become household names in the United States.
But there is a significant difference as to how that investment figure should be composed, and how soon these investments would have to be carried out. Reports so far indicate a significant degree of disagreement as to how and when these investments should be carried out.
According to reports in Seoul, Korean corporations hope to raise all or a significant amount of potential investment from the US, while the Trump administration officials have said they prefer Koreans raising investment capital elsewhere. The aggregate US$350 billion reportedly committed by South Korean businesses also appears to be an object of speculation, as the figure simply means adding up various oral statements given by individual business groups.
Whatever is true, the amount appears overly high for South Korea’s economic size. The promised investment figure represents something like 80 percent of foreign exchange holdings (amounting to US$480 billion).
So far, reports indicate that the Trump administration hopes the Korean business community will raise much of these funds outside the US. Although these projects will be carried out in separate stages, informal responses being bantered about in Washington appear hardly encouraging.
“We’re trying to make the US understand how important it is for us to raise $350 billion without sending shocks through our foreign exchange market,” said Kim Yong Beom, as quoted in a recent CNBC report. Kim knows what he is talking about as he is President Lee’s chief of staff for policy. “
Nor is that the only issue complicating potential investment. Washington and Seoul are also at loggerheads as to how profits accruing from potential Korean investments should be shared. Senior US officials have recently been quoted as saying that the US should claim 90 percent of profit from Korea-invested projects as they occur in the United States with US labor content.
Not surprisingly, reaction in Seoul has been muffled but negative. “Why the hell should we accept that kind of a deal?” was a response from one Korean business leader as quoted anonymously in a Seoul newspaper. It looks like the two erstwhile strong security allies are about to enter a long tunnel on business and other issues.
Every single one of those Koreans broke American immigration laws. They were all caught breaking those laws. The American Government decided to treat these criminals relatively leniently and allow them to go home and avoid prosecution and punishment. If Koreans - or anyone else- are angry about what the Americans have done, screw 'em.