More than 300 South Korea workers detained in a migration raid in the United States last week were returned to the house on a rented plane and were reunited with their loved ones on Friday.
They were among the 475 people detained during the Migration raid on September 4 at a battery factory under construction on the campus of the sprawling car factory in Hyundai, west of Savana, Georgia.
Their round and release in the video caused the video, which shows some Korean workers who were classified with chains around their hands, ankles and waist in public anger and a sense of treason in South Korea, a major American ally.
A Korean Air Force plane carrying the workers detained in the immigration raid at the Georgia factory leaves Hartsfeld Jackson International Airport, on Thursday, September 11, 2025.
AP Photo/George Walker IV
After a rented plane, a Boeing 747-8i plane of Korean air, landed at Inchon International Airport, near Seoul, they appeared in an arrival hall with senior officials, including the Chief of Staff, Kang Hun Sick.
Kang said: “We feel sorry that we failed to return them to the house early, but we did our best,” Kang said.
Hundreds of journalists gathered at the airport to cover their arrival, as many ordinary citizens scream, “Welcome!” One of the demonstrators canceled a huge banner with a picture of US President Donald Trump and a message criticizing the immigration campaign before security officials convinced him to stop. The South Korea Foreign Ministry asked the media to blur the workers’ faces in the videos and photos taken at the airport, citing the requests of workers who worried about their privacy.
The plane carried 330 people detained in the Georgia -316 raid of them, including South Koreans, including a pregnant woman, and the rest of the Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian workers. They were detained at the Volkston Immigration Center, 285 miles (460 km) southeast of Atlanta.
On the journey of returning to the homeland, Kang said that the workers applauded and shouted with joy.
Relatives feel comfortable after their loved ones were released
Families eagerly waited in a multi -level parking lot near the airport station. When I opened the gates of the elevator, each group of workers went out to embrace their relatives.
Huang said in the song, brother of a worker, to the Associated Press that he was unable to reach his brother until midnight on Thursday, when he finally received a text message from his brother, saying he was safe. And last week he said, “The most difficult time” for their family.
“We asked him if he was well healthy, and he said he was in good health. We could not speak much because he was about to board the plane.”
Choi Yun Joe, 64 -year -old mother, told another worker that her son’s detention was “incredible and amazing.” But she said that her son finally made a short phone call to their family after midnight on Thursday.
“He didn’t say much about how he was, he just says he is fine and tells us not to worry too much.”
Trump stopped the workers’ departure process
South Korea said on Sunday that it had reached an agreement with the United States for Korean workers’ publications.
The South Korean government was originally sought to return them to their homes on Thursday, but it said that the plan had been suspended due to a reason that includes the American team. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry later said Trump stopped leaving to hear it from South Korea about whether Koreans should be allowed to stay to continue their work and help train American workers or should be sent to South Korea.
South Korea officials said that a South Korean citizen has relatives in the United States ultimately chose to stay in the United States
The batteries factory, a joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, is one of the more than 20 major industrial sites currently by South Korean companies in the United States.
Speaking at the airport, Kim Dong Meong, CEO of LG Energy Solution, reduces fears that the raid will lead to a great delay in launching the Georgia factory, saying that the disturbances “will be within a level we can manage.”
South Korea calls for a change in American visa systems
The American authorities said that some of the Korean workers detained illegally crossed the American border, while others entered legally, but they have finished implementing visas or entered into exemptions from the visa that prevent them from working. But South Korean officials and experts accused the United States of failing to act at its long -term request to improve the visa system to accommodate skilled Korean workers as the United States wants South Korea to expand US industrial investments.
In fact, South Korean companies mostly rely on short -term visas or electronic system for traveling permission to send workers needed to launch manufacturing sites and deal with other preparation tasks, a practice that has been largely tolerated for years.
South Korean Foreign Minister Zhou Hyun, who traveled to Washington to negotiate the release of workers, said that US officials agreed to allow them to return later to end their work on the Georgia site. The two countries also agreed to create a bilateral working group to create a new visa category to facilitate South Korean companies to send their employees to work in the United States, according to the Ministry of Chu.
“We will discuss all measures, including creating a new visa category, creating a new stake, and different steps to make obtaining an easier visa,” Zhu told reporters on South Korea on Friday. He said that most of the detained workers have short-term B-1 or B-2 and Estas visas.
South Korean President Lee Jay Meong on Thursday warned that South Korean companies would likely hesitate to make more investments in the United States unless the visa system improves.
The raid was the latest in a series of workplace raids that were conducted as part of the Trump administration’s collective deportation agenda. But many South Koreans were stunned because the raid came about two weeks after a summit between Lee and Trump, and a little more than a month after South Korea’s announcement of an investment plan worth $ 350 billion in the United States for the average US tariff.
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