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EP 36: Cultural black eye in Georgia - when ICE raided Hyundai
31 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of The Auto Ethnographer, host John Stech explores the cultural and diplomatic shockwaves following a U.S. immigration raid at a Korean-run EV battery plant in Georgia. Nearly 500 Korean nationals - engineers, technicians, and students - were detained despite holding valid visas. The raid triggered not only legal action but also a deep rupture in trust between South Korea and the United States.
John examines the human toll, the Korean cultural concept of chemyeon (face), and how public humiliation abroad reverberates through Korean society. He connects the incident to South Korea’s escape from an authoritarian past and highlights how the raid was framed as a moral and diplomatic crisis. With Korean firms reevaluating U.S. investments and a class-action lawsuit now underway, this episode asks: What happens when dignity is violated in a global business partnership?
This is not just a story about immigration enforcement—it’s about cultural diplomacy, strategic clarity, and the fragile nature of trust between allies. Tune in for a sobering look at how global mobility intersects culture and politics, and why symbolic repair may be the only path forward.
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Transcript
Introduction: Shifting Trust in US-South Korea Relations
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trust something that's been almost automatic for decades between these two countries, the United States and South Korea, is now somewhat conditional.
Focus on Culture and Auto Industry
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Hello and welcome to the Auto Ethnographer. I'm John Steck, your host on this journey. We travel the globe to bring you stories about culture and the global automotive industry. Fasten your seatbelt and let's get started.
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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the autoethnographer, where culture meets mobility and stories drive change. This week, there's even a small tinge of politics that has caused massive cultural ripples.
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I'm going to bring
Political Tensions and Immigration Raids
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this one up. Normally, I don't discuss politics here. I really only want to look at this one from the cultural perspective. What am I talking about?
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I'm talking about the friction between the United States and South Korea following those immigration raids that happened in the state of Georgia about two months ago.
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So just picture this. It's a crisp early September morning in Georgia, state in the United States. Inside, a broad, sprawling battery plant, Korean engineers are fine-tuning robotic arms, calibrating assembly lines, and preparing for a big electric vehicle rollout, specifically in the battery production location.
Impact on US-South Korea Relations
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Then, without warning, immigration agents, ICE agents, storm the facility. Dozens of Korean nationals, engineers, technicians, even students are shackled, marched out and detained. 475 of them in total.
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They hold valid business visas, but we'll circle back on that visa topic a little bit later. They're not fugitives, they're professionals. But in that moment, they were treated like criminals.
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This isn't the scene from a dystopian drama from something you see on Netflix. This is real. And it shook the foundation of the U S South Korea relationship.
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Let's take a look ah at the human toll of this. There's some stories from that raid. Let's talk about some of the people. There was a 42-year-old automation engineer from Ulsan.
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He'd been in Georgia for about two weeks. What was his job? Calibrating robotic arms. His wife told Korean media after the raid that he was shackled at the waist and ankles and treated like a criminal.
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A group of Korean university students on a supervised field trip were swept up in the raid. One student said, we were just taking notes. Then we were told to sit down and not move.
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Ten women were among those detained. One, a mechanical engineer from India. LG Energy Solution reportedly broke down in tears. She'd been training local staff for three months.
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Her story became a symbol of emotional trauma and national shame. These weren't just visa violations, they were dignity violations.
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And this is a bedrock value in Korean culture. There's a big cultural cost in humiliation and different cultures treat it differently and they have different words for it.
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In the Korean culture, champion or face is sacred. It's not just about pride, but it goes deeper. It's about dignity, reputation, and collective identity.
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To be publicly humiliated abroad, especially in a country considered an ally, is a deep, deep cutting wound. And when that humiliation is inflicted by state agents, it goes beyond and becomes a diplomatic crisis.
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In Korea, shame spreads. It moves from the individual to the company to the nation. And this time, it spread fast through headlines, social media, and public discourse.
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Photos of shackled South Korean citizens circulated wildly and quickly. They were shocking images that came back from the United States.
Business Reliability and Diplomatic Crisis
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But why was this something that cut so deep into the into the soul of the country? Well, some of it is the not so distant history of South Korea itself.
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Let's take a look at their internal authoritarian memories. So South Korea knows what state overreach looks like.
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They lived through it. The history of the country is complicated, as are the country's politics, but one can argue that the country did not become a true democracy until 1987. That's not very long ago.
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I was studying at the university at that time.
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Under Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-won, Koreans were surveilled, detained, and silenced. The ICE raid with its militarized tactics and indiscriminate detentions, it triggered memories of those eras.
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Something that the Koreans had moved beyond. They had moved fast. In fact, less than a year ago, when one of the prime ministers in Korea declared martial law, there were mass protests like about going backwards and backsliding on democracy.
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Korean media didn't just report the facts. They framed the raid as an aggression, a reminder that even democracies can forget dignity.
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And this is, again, based on something that they themselves had experienced less than a year before with their own prime minister. This historical lens, it matters. It shapes how Koreans interpret state behavior.
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And in this case, it turned out that what could have just been a visa enforcement action, it turned into a moral indictment, something that was far bigger than the actual action that it represented.
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Strategically, long term, there's a big impact. because trust is on the line. The Korean government responded swiftly by dispatching consular teams, issuing formal protests and demanding accountability.
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But the damage was already done. Knowledge that the detained workers were in the United States under a variety of different visas, and this is important,
00:07:48
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Some were not authorized to work long-term in the United States. It did help to cool the situation knowing that, well, that perhaps not all was done fully legally visa wise to work on the Hyundai facility.
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But this didn't address the overarching question of trust. Hyundai and LG had invested billions in US manufacturing.
00:08:20
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Georgia officials had promised a welcoming environment, and until then it had been. The raid ended up embarrassing those officials and to cast doubt on America's reliability as a business partner.
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The possible outcome? Korean firms are now asking themselves, is the US safe for expansion? Will our engineers be respected?
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Will our visas be honored? Those aren't necessarily questions of policy. They're questions of trust. And once trust is broken, it's extremely hard to rebuild.
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Now we move forward on the question of cultural diplomacy. What do South Koreans expect now? Their expectations are pretty clear from a cultural perspective.
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They want acknowledgement, not just from ICE, but from the highest levels of U.S. leadership.
Testing Relations and Legal Actions
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They want reassurance that Korean professionals will be treated with dignity, that visa processes, which are confusing, will be clarified, and that allies won't be mistaken for intruders and treated it as such.
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They want symbolic repair. In Korean diplomacy, gestures matter. a public apology, a moment of empathy, a reaffirmation of mutual respect.
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And they want strategic clarity, no more ambiguity, and certainly no more surprises. Fast forward, less than two months after this ICE raid,
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the American president, Donald Trump, visited South Korea. This was, I would say, litmus test for dignity to see how the relationship can be salvaged.
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Trump's recent visit to South Korea was framed as a bit of a diplomatic reset. But for many Koreans, it was also ah test.
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Now, to be clear, no society is homogeneous. Every society has different factions. And yes, in South Korea, that's true as well, where you have some factions which are more understanding of Donald Trump, and then you have others who are less understanding of Donald Trump.
00:11:12
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and And that played itself out on the ground where you had actual protesters and protests lining the streets not far from where the meetings took place. But the question was, would the US acknowledge the ICE raid as a misstep, as a type of cultural double cross?
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Would Trump end up reaffirming the US as a safe and respectful destination for Korean business and talent? He did express regret.
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He said that skilled foreign workers are welcome in the US, but he then also added that they're expected to return home eventually.
00:11:59
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So it was kind of a ah mixed message. It was part an olive branch, but there was still ah bit of a warning tone in the message. Behind closed doors, US officials reportedly agreed to explore new visa programs, which were tailored to Korean engineers.
00:12:20
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This was where a lot of the problems started, and that is that there is and and until now was, no visa that was proper for having longer-term workers in the U.S. to train Americans to use and to develop the technology in these Korean factories.
00:12:43
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The people are there for months at a time to train, but there was no visa that aligned with this type of business activity.
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But while those discussions on visas were happening behind the scenes, out on the tarmac, the mood was, I would say, a little bit more cautious. when When you watch the the footage, you could see that the handshake, it was firm, but there was a bit of warmth missing.
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But that isn't the end of the story. And even though I've been thinking of this story, to be honest, since it started over two months ago, and and I've been debating, when do I talk about it? When do I talk about these cultural implications?
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It was this week that I decided to finish my notes and to talk about it. Why is that? Because the wounds have not healed.
00:13:41
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the sight of South Koreans in shackles, how they were treated, um that wound is is still open and that wound is still sore.
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What happened that reignited my interest on this topic recently? Well, now nearly 200 Korean nationals are taking legal action.
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They've gone to file a class action lawsuit against the US government. They are alleging unlawful detention, racial profiling, and excessive use of force.
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Their claims include being shackled without cause, denied legal counsel, and detained despite holding valid visas.
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The plaintiffs include engineers, technicians, and yes, remember those students? Many were in the US to help launch a $4.3 billion dollar facility.
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Now, they're plaintiffs in a case that could reshape how immigration enforcement intersects with global business and how that overlaps with cultural interfaces.
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This is where all of these things come together, business and culture, and unfortunately also politics. The legal team, it's a coalition of civil rights attorneys and Korean American advocates.
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They're not just seeking financial compensation, but they're also looking for policy reform and oversight so that this doesn't happen again.
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It isn't just a lawsuit. It's also ah statement that dignity matters, even in detention, especially in detention.
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This is a case of using American legal means to right cultural wrongs. Again, it's an overlap between two cultures and how they tend to resolve differences.
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Well, things have certainly cooled since the initial uproar and outrage several months ago. But where does that leave us now?
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As I said, the initial outrage, it's it's cooled. The headlines have have faded. It's not in the daily discussion anymore. But the wound remains as as long as things resurface in the news. Now, for example, this this lawsuit.
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But there could be longer term ramifications as well. Korean firms are still hesitant. Investment plans are being reevaluated. Trust, something that's been almost automatic for decades between these two countries, the United States and South Korea, is now somewhat conditional.
00:16:54
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And beneath the surface, there's there's still a simmering anger, not to cross the whole country, across certain segments, certainly among the the groups that were most directly affected.
00:17:07
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it's It's a quiet distrust that still lingers. And there's a sense that the United States, once seen as an unquestioned partner,
00:17:20
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maybe has forgotten what partnership looks like. I learned from a conversation with a Korean friend recently that there is a proverb, the acts of faith stamps on the top of the foot.
Conclusion and Cultural Reflections
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It's interesting. It refers to when a person is betrayed by a trusted friend. That's how many Koreans feel today.
00:17:51
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Their foot hurts by that proverbial ax that struck their foot on September 4th.
00:18:01
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I don't normally talk about politics on this channel and it's not my intention to do so. I i really want to focus on culture and how that overlaps and impacts international business.
00:18:13
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But I think in this case, the shadow of politics kind of came over the automotive project and the cultures that were working together to bring that project to reality.
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And there was a ah deep impact caused by this. And I think that was worth exploring. So thank you for joining this week's episode of the auto ethnographer.
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I'm John Stecht, your host, and I'll see you next time. Until then, keep on driving.
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Thank you for joining us on today's journey. Please remember to like and subscribe to The Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment. For more information, visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com.
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