South Korea’s president said Thursday that Korean companies will likely hesitate to maintain or make direct investments in the United States unless Washington improves its visa system for Korean workers, citing a recent immigration raid in Georgia that detained more than 300 people.
Speaking at a news conference marking 100 days in office, President Lee tied the government’s appeal for a new or expanded work-visa pathway to the Sept. 4 raid at a battery plant under construction on the site of Hyundai’s sprawling auto complex in Georgia. He said the detained workers are to be flown home on Friday on a charter plane after negotiations with U.S. officials.
The roundup and U.S. authorities’ release of video footage showing some workers handcuffed and taken away provoked widespread anger in South Korea and accusations of heavy-handed treatment. The operation occurred fewer than two weeks after a summit between President Lee and U.S. President Donald Trump and weeks after a July agreement that spared South Korea from the administration’s highest tariffs following Seoul’s pledge of $350 billion in new U.S. investments.
U.S. immigration officials said some of the detained workers had crossed the U.S. border illegally, while others entered legally but had expired visas or were admitted under visa-waiver programs that prohibit employment. South Korean officials and experts, however, said Washington has not acted on long-standing Seoul requests for a visa framework to accommodate short-term skilled workers needed to set up and launch industrial facilities.
"It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a facility or install equipment at a plant, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work," Lee said. He warned that without an appropriate visa channel, Korean firms "can’t help hesitating a lot" about investing directly in the U.S. and could reconsider planned projects.
South Korean companies have commonly relied on short-term visitor visas or the Electronic System for Travel Authorization to send specialists who handle initial site setup and equipment installation, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years. Lee said the Georgia arrests underscored what he described as a "cultural difference" in how the two countries handle immigration enforcement, and he urged cooperative measures to prevent similar incidents.
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, who met U.S. officials in Washington this week, said negotiations produced an agreement to allow the detained workers to return later to finish their jobs at the Georgia site. Cho also said Seoul and Washington agreed to form a joint working group to discuss creating a new visa category to make it easier for South Korean firms to send staff for industrial and training purposes.
The Georgia battery plant is among more than 20 major industrial projects South Korean companies are building in the United States, officials said. Those projects include additional battery facilities in Georgia and other states, a semiconductor plant in Texas and a shipbuilding project near Philadelphia.
Min Jeonghun, a professor at South Korea’s National Diplomatic Academy, said the onus is largely on the United States to resolve the issue, either through legislation or administrative steps to expand short-term work visas for training and technical setup. He warned that failing to update visa policies could delay construction and production activities and ultimately hurt both South Korean firms and U.S. economic interests.
Lawmakers from both President Lee’s liberal Democratic Party and the conservative opposition criticized the Georgia detentions as excessive. South Korea’s largest newspaper likened the operation to a "rabbit hunt," reflecting domestic outrage over the images and the timing of the arrests. Seoul has not released an estimate of how many additional Korean workers in the United States might be vulnerable to future crackdowns, Foreign Minister Cho said.
U.S. and South Korean officials said the joint working group will study possible visa solutions and procedural safeguards, but they did not provide a timeline for changes. The discussions come as Seoul seeks to ensure that its industrial investments in the United States—part of broader economic and diplomatic cooperation—can proceed without repeated disruptions caused by immigration enforcement actions.
The dispute highlights the intersection of immigration policy and international economic commitments, as Seoul has pledged large-scale investment in the United States while pressing for easier temporary movement of skilled personnel to support that expansion. Absent concrete U.S. action on visas, South Korean officials say, companies may delay or reconsider projects that require technicians and other short-term specialists to be present during facility construction and commissioning.