Delayed Release of Workers Detained in Georgia Raid Fuels Anger in Korea

Asia Pacific|​Anger Mounts in Korea as Release of Workers Detained in Georgia Is Delayed

The repatriation of hundreds of South Korean workers arrested in an immigration raid in the United States has been delayed, officials in Seoul said on Wednesday, as frustration and anger with the Trump administration here began to mount.

It was unclear when a chartered Korean Air flight, which was previously scheduled to fly from Atlanta on Wednesday, would take off. But the plane​’s departure was delayed because of issues on the American side, the South Korean foreign ministry said, without elaborating. ​

Last week’s images of ​armed U.S. agents dragging away South Korean workers in handcuffs and ankle chains from a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, Ga., outraged many in South Korea.​ Seoul has tried to prevent the raid from unsettling its decades-old alliance with Washington, a key to ​South Korea’s security. And it has scrambled to diffuse the tension by hurriedly negotiating the workers’ release and sending a plane to pick them up.

But the raid has ​been raising political hackles in a country where people are known to take to the streets in anti-​U.S. protests when they feel their national pride has been ​slighted by the ​Americans.

​In recent days, small groups of people have held rallies near the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, criticizing the way South Korean workers were treated.

“Why should we be treated like this when we are providing the United States with our technology, our money and our investments?” Kim Joon-hyung, an opposition lawmaker said during a parliamentary hearing on Monday.