September 8, 2025
SEOUL – South Korea has concluded negotiations for the release of more than 300 nationals detained in a US immigration raid at a battery construction plant in Georgia, and will bring them back home via a chartered flight, a senior presidential official said Sunday.
President Lee Jae Myung’s chief of staff, Kang Hoon-sik, made the announcement some 48 hours after an immigration raid on Thursday at the construction site of a battery plant in Georgia, built by a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution.
Under Lee’s directive, the South Korean government has mounted an all-out response, including consular assistance for the detained Koreans, after estimating that more than 300 of the 475 people arrested in the raid were its nationals.
“Negotiations for the release of the detained workers have been concluded as a result of the swift, united response by the government’s ministries, business associations and companies,” Kang said.
Kang’s announcement was issued during a high-level policy coordination meeting between the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and the government held at the prime minister’s residence in Jongno-gu district, central Seoul.
“Still, administrative procedures remain, and a chartered flight will depart to bring our citizens home once administrative procedures are completed,” Kang said, without sharing further details.
“The government will respond responsibly while remaining vigilant until our citizens return safely,” he added.
During the meeting, Kang also pledged to take action to prevent a recurrence of the detention of Korean workers.
“In cooperation with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and related companies, we will pursue measures to review and improve the residency status and visa system of business travelers to the United States to prevent such cases from recurring,” Kang said.
“The government will firmly carry out all necessary measures to secure the swift release of the detained nationals and to ensure the project proceeds without disruption.”
Thursday’s raid marked the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the US Department of Homeland Security, rattling Korean society and bringing the issue of the current visa system to the surface .
Most of the detained Korean workers reportedly were granted non-immigrant short-term business B-1 visas or Electronic System for Travel Authorization ESTA permits, typically used for brief business visits. To work legally in the US, however, they would need to obtain an H-1B specialty occupation visa.
Some observers cite the US failure to raise the H-1B visa quota for South Koreans as a key factor, despite growing investment in the country.
In 2023, South Korea became the largest investor in the US, with commitments totaling $21.5 billion. However, institutional protections for its investments remain lacking. Each year, about 2,000 South Koreans obtain H-1B visas — mostly in fields such as IT, engineering and accounting — out of roughly 85,000 issued.
As a result, Korean companies have often relied on short-term business visas such as B-1 or ESTA. Critics argue that this practice was tacitly accepted by successive US administrations, except during Trump’s second term.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it has been pursuing measures such as increasing the limited number of H-1B visas through consultations between Seoul and Washington.
“The H-1B visa, a nonimmigrant employment visa for foreign professionals, is essentially allocated by lottery,” the unnamed Foreign Ministry official said. “Accordingly, since 2012, the Foreign Ministry has continued outreach to the US government and Congress for the enactment of the Partner with Korea Act (PWKA), which would establish a separate visa quota (E-4 visa) for Korean professionals.”
Tension was high following Thursday’s immigration raid, which marked an unprecedented scale of South Korean workers detained in the US, especially at a critical juncture following the first sitdown between President Lee and US President Donald Trump on Aug. 25 in Washington.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is preparing an urgent trip to Washington to facilitate the release of the South Koreans detained in the immigration raid, a diplomatic source told The Korea Herald on Sunday on condition of anonymity.
South Korean and US diplomatic authorities have been in consultations for Cho to make a trip to Washington this week, the source added.
In Seoul, criticism has arisen over the detention of South Koreans in the raid, with some linking it to political pressure from the Trump administration over a pending $350 billion investment deal reached during the Lee-Trump summit, which is yet to be finalized.
However, when asked about possible links, the unnamed Foreign Ministry official in Seoul stopped short of acknowledging a connection but admitted differences between Seoul and Washington over the detention of more than 300 Korean nationals.
“The US administration’s position is that the operation was carried out under a court-issued warrant for the purpose of cracking down on illegal employment and preventing the exploitation of undocumented workers,” the official said in response to the question.
“Our government’s position is that economic activities of our investment companies in the United States and the rights and interests of our nationals must not be unfairly infringed upon in the course of US law enforcement,” the Seoul official added.
dagyumji@heraldcorp.com