Seoul promises to help hundreds of Korean workers arrested in US in Ice raid

Source: The Guardian

Sat 6 Sep 2025 06.10 EDT
First published on Fri 5 Sep 2025 09.22 EDT


South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, has ordered “all-out efforts” to respond to the arrest of hundreds of its citizens by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during a raid at a factory being built in Georgia to manufacture car batteries.

Cho Hyun, the foreign minister, said the government had set up a taskforce following the arrest of 300 South Korean nationals. He would travel to Washington if necessary and felt a “heavy responsibility” over the arrests, he added.

The raid, in which US immigration officials said Ice arrested about 475 workers, also sent alarm bells ringing for South Korea’s LG Energy Solution (LGES), which suspended its employees’ business travel to the US after 47 of its employees were detained. The factory manufactures batteries to power Hyundai, Kia and Genesis electric vehicles.

The company asked those currently on business there to return to Korea immediately and said its executive would travel to the US on Sunday in response to the arrest of its staff. The raid is the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was created in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US in New York and Washington DC.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/05/immigration-ice-raid-hyundai-georgia