‘Is this how you treat an ally?’: South Koreans back home after US raid ordeal

A specially chartered flight carrying hundreds of South Korean workers detained in a US immigration raid last week landed at Incheon International Airport on Friday.

South Korean workers accounted for most of the 475 people arrested at a Hyundai-LG battery factory site in the state of Georgia, triggering a delicate effort to resolve the thorny situation between close allies.

The Korean Air Boeing 747-8I, with more than 310 South Koreans on board, departed from Atlanta and touched down on the runway at South Korea’s main gateway in Incheon.

“Everything at Atlanta went smoothly,” a foreign ministry official said on Friday.

The Georgia raid was the largest single-site operation conducted since US President Donald Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown, a top political priority since he returned to office in January.

Experts say most of the detained South Korean workers were likely to have been on visas that do not permit hands-on construction work.