SEOUL, South Korea — For a week now, the video has been aired practically on loop on channels across South Korea: hundreds of South Korean workers in chains, detained in an immigration raid at a Georgia facility where they were helping the United States catch up on crucial technology.
While more than 300 South Korean nationals were finally on the way home Thursday, these images had already left a searing impression in this key U.S. ally. It is the latest example of the turbulence that South Korea has experienced under President Donald Trump, along with new tariffs on its goods and a sudden strict adherence to visa rules that has left companies in South Korea, one of the largest U.S. investors, confused and uncertain.
Seeing their compatriots shackled at the wrists and ankles during the raid at the Hyundai facility last week jolted a population that typically views the U.S. very favorably.
For many, such treatment would have been unthinkable from a close security and trading partner that has been their formal ally for more than 70 years.
“I was very surprised, and I felt like this wasn’t something that would happen in the America we knew,” said Kwon Yongu, a reporter in Seoul.
“Our people didn’t commit serious crimes, yet seeing them with their wrists and ankles bound, lined up and seemingly having their human rights suppressed — that sight was shocking,” Kwon told NBC News in an interview Wednesday near the U.S. Embassy.
The issue has also highlighted a long-standing South Korean concern: the murky rules surrounding work visas. The government is seeking improvements to the U.S. visa system, which presents challenges to companies that send skilled workers on a temporary basis to help set up factories and train Americans.
After being held for a week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the South Korean workers were released and departed Atlanta for Seoul on Thursday, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said.
They are among 475 people detained by U.S. immigration and other federal agents in the Sept. 4 raid on a construction site in the town of Ellabell, where the South Korean companies Hyundai and LG Energy Solution are jointly building an electric vehicle battery plant.
U.S. officials say those arrested were working or living in the country illegally.
South Korean companies faced with U.S. bureaucratic delays and murky regulations have long sent employees to the U.S. under various short-term visa programs, and many view it as unfair that this practice — an open secret for more than a decade — is only now being cracked down on.
President Lee Jae Myung said Thursday that the raid could hurt his country’s business ties with the U.S., where his country has pledged $500 billion in investment as part of tariff negotiations, including $26 billion from Hyundai, South Korea’s largest automaker.
“Companies will inevitably worry: ‘If setting up factories in the U.S. brings endless restrictions and difficulties, should we even proceed?’” he said at a news conference in Seoul marking his 100th day in office.
'Gray area' visas
The plane sent by the South Korean government to retrieve the detained workers left Atlanta around noon ET on Thursday and is scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Friday around 3:30 p.m. local time (2:30 a.m. ET).
South Korean officials had originally hoped the workers would leave Atlanta as early as Wednesday afternoon, but the Foreign Ministry said Trump had ordered the repatriation delayed in order to discuss whether detained nationals should remain in the U.S. to continue working.
In a meeting in Washington on Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it would be better for them to return home first and then re-enter the U.S. “since these individuals were already in shock and are exhausted,” a South Korean government official said.
The official said that the U.S. agreed to repatriate the South Koreans and that Trump had instructed that they be transported to the airport without physical restraints such as handcuffs, in a departure from standard U.S. practice.
That was an important condition for the South Korean government, along with assurances that the detained workers will not face obstacles returning to the U.S. in the future.
“They’re not there to take American jobs away,” said James Kim, chairman and chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. “Semiconductors, electric batteries — there’s not that much domain expertise in the U.S. right now.”
Most Koreans, especially those who work for major companies like Hyundai and LG, “want to follow the law,” Kim told NBC News.
The problem is that “a lot of these different visa types have a lot of gray area to it,” he said.
With the Visa Waiver Program, for example — which allows tourism or business stays of up to 90 days and is also known as ESTA — “they really don’t know 100% what you can and cannot do with it,” he added.
South Korean companies and business groups are urging their government to use the issue as an opportunity to improve U.S. visa procedures for employees.
At a meeting in Washington on Tuesday, companies including Hyundai and LG, told Cho that U.S. and South Korean officials should work together to make South Koreans eligible for the same E-4 visas already available to other U.S. free trade agreement partners such as Mexico, Canada, Singapore and Australia. Legislation that would do exactly that has long been stuck in Congress.
They also asked for higher approval rates for the E-2 visa for employees of South Korean companies investing in the U.S., and a clarification of U.S. government guidelines regarding the short-term B-1 visa that is commonly used for business trips.
Consistent application of the rules “would help reduce uncertainty for companies and facilitate more active investment activities in the United States,” they said, according to a statement from the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
The ministry says it has held dozens of meetings with U.S. government officials trying to draw attention to these issues.
The immigration crackdown comes as Trump has also created uncertainty with tariffs, which in South Korea's case have been set at 15%.
South Korean companies are “highly afraid of unpredictability in the market, especially on the policy side,” said Kim Tae-hwang, an international trade professor at Myongji University in Seoul.
The priority, he said, should be to prevent incidents like the one in Georgia from happening again in the future.
“Korean companies have nothing against American government policies,” Kim said. “But in my opinion, you can find some kind of a solution.”
Though the Georgia raid was a “wake-up call” for South Korean companies, Kim from AmCham Korea said he didn’t think it would ultimately hurt U.S. investment.
He said he hoped that the detained South Korean workers, if they are found to have done nothing wrong, will be able to go back to Georgia, “do what they were supposed to do, train the U.S. workers and return when that job is done.”
Janis Mackey Frayer and Ed Flanagan reported from Seoul, Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong and Stella Kim from Los Angeles.
