SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States has agreed to allow South Korean workers on short-term visas or a visa waiver program to help build industrial sites in America, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
The announcement came weeks after South Korea flew home more than 300 of its nationals who had been detained in a massive immigration raid at a battery factory being built on Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant campus near Savannah, Georgia.
The roundup, along with U.S. video footage showing Korean workers shackled at the hands, ankles and waist, fueled public outrage and a sense of betrayal in South Korea — a key U.S. ally that had pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. investments just weeks earlier in hopes of avoiding the Trump administration’s steepest tariffs.
The incident also triggered pent-up frustrations in Seoul over Washington’s failure to act on its long-standing request to improve the visa system for skilled Korean workers, even as the United States presses its ally to expand industrial investments.
South Korean companies have been mostly relying on short-term visas or a visa waiver program called the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, to send workers needed to launch manufacturing sites and handle other setup tasks, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years.