Historically people have done it and a blind eye has been turned, but with the climate these days you want to be 100% in compliance of your Visa conditions.
From reading about what happened here it seems the South Koreans were on that visa waiver for their work trips. A lot of people claiming "it doesn't allow you to work" yet the visa waiver has a long long list of various types of work it does allow and it's pretty broad.
So it seems the ESTA isn't worth anything anymore. You can't go to the USA without a very very heavyweight working VISA. Ok. No more trade shows, conferences or general business trips.
There really isn’t much between a B-1 and an H1-B, so there isn’t much of a path forward here. That factory isn’t getting built until the USA re-instates previous exceptions.
I mean, there’s literally hundreds of countries, why would I go somewhere with the risk of being arbitrarily detained, if I can help it at all?
Yes there’s pre clearance in Canada. This would ease the border a bit. But there’s still a risk that something somewhere will go wrong.
The main reason I stoped routing thru the US 10 years ago wasn’t ICE. I didn’t like the way border agents were rude and disrespectful. I felt like I was being interrogated every time and didn’t feel welcomed there. So I decided to vote with my wallet and simply not fly thru.
Also that's not what happened. The ones responsible for the breach, IE Hyundai execs and management who took care of the visa waivers and asked their employees to setup production lines were not arrested, only the people who had little to say about capital allocation were. In a way, Hyundai investors would have been a better target than their workers since they choose the execs who chose to build in the USA.