Photo: Hyundai plant in Georgia. Credit: Yonhap News.
South Koreans’ opinion of the United States was already at a low point, even before headline news showed shocking footage of hundreds of Korean engineers and tradesmen being dragged in shackles at the Hyundai electric vehicle plant in Georgia. (See previous coverage, “Ishiba More Popular than Trump.”) Media outlets in Korea have shown a rare bipartisanship in their uniform condemnation of the US for abusing Korean workers shortly after Lee Jae-myung visited Washington to pledge USD 350b in new investment. (See previous coverage, “Tariff Deal an Uncertain New Chapter.”)
Officially, the government and the corporations are keeping a low profile. Lee has refrained from publicly commenting on the incident, instead having Foreign Minister Jo Hyeon 조현 외교부장관 be the point person and quickly arranging for the detained Koreans to return.
Korean corporations are likewise keeping mum, partly because they had been persistently sending workers on short-term visitor visas - a move that, even if necessitated by slow US visa processing, nonetheless put them on the wrong side of the law. Meanwhile, construction on the 22 Korean factories being built in the United States has been halted after Korean companies withdrew their workers in the wake of the raid.
