Incheon, South Korea – an aircraft bearing more than 300 South Korean workers released after days of retention in Georgia landed on Friday in South Korea.
Television shots showed a charter aircraft, Boeing 747-8i from Korean air, on Friday, landing at the Intel Internian Airport, west of Seoul. The shots later showed that workers, some wearing masks, pass through the arrival hall, with higher officials clapping hands.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry asked the media to blur the faces of workers in the video and photographs at the airport and quote the requests of workers who were worried about their privacy.
They were among about 475 people detained during the 4th September Immigration raid. September under the construction of a battery under construction on a campus in a large Hyundai automobile plant west of Savannah.
The American edition of a video showing that some Korean workers are set chains around their hands, ankles and passports have caused public outrage and betrayal in South Korea, a key American ally.
South Korea later stated that it had reached an agreement with the United States to release Korean workers.
The workers were held in the immigration retention center in Folkston, 285 miles southeast of Atlanta. After being released from the detention center, they were hit in Atlanta to enter the charter aircraft.
The South Korean government had previously tried to bring back home on Thursday, but said the plan was postponed because of the US party. The South Korean Foreign Ministry later said that President Donald Trump stopped the departure process to hear from South Korea to see if Koreans should be able to continue their work and help train US workers or be sent back to South Korea.
“President Trump ordered to be allowed to return home freely and those who did not want to go,” said South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at a press conference on Thursday. “We have been told that because of this instruction, the process was suspended and the administrative procedures were adequately changed.”
Lee said one South Korean national who has relatives in the US eventually decided to stay in the US
The battery plant, the joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, is one of the more than 20 main industrial sites that South Korean companies currently build in the United States. They include other batteries in Georgia and several other countries, a semiconductor race in Texas and the project of boat construction in Philadelphia, Trump’s sector often emphasized in relation to South Korea.
The US authorities said some of the detained Korean workers illegally exceeded the US border, while others entered legally, but expired visas or closed exceptions from the visas that forbid them to work. However, South Korean officials and experts have accused the US of not taking their long -term requests to improve the visa system to suit qualified Korean workers because the US wants South Korea to expand US industrial investments.
In fact, South Korean companies mostly rely on short -term visitors’ visas or electronic system for travel authorization to send workers who are needed to start production sites and process other settings, which was a large extent tolerated for years.
Hyung-Jin Kim reported from Seoul.
This article was generated from an automated news agency without text modifications.
(Tagstotranslate) South Korea
