Imperial Tyranny, Korean Humiliation | Hacker News Reader

Imperial Tyranny, Korean Humiliation

english.hani.co.kr

123 pointsanigbrowl74 comments

Clearly this is a huge deal for Korea, their news sites have been talking about it non-stop since it happened and they've zeroed in on the humiliation and treatment of their people. The workers arrested weren't just laborers they were skilled labor and engineers which is another point they keep coming to. I've seen stories point out how they were shackled and forced to lick water from plates. As a tech worker in manufacturing I know that the entire industry depends on cross-training and manufacturing with other countries, sending engineers to and from is everyday practice. If the administration keeps with their policies then manufacturing will be affected negatively.

Can you share the link to the 'plate licking' article? It's ok if it's in Korean.

It could be this one? (I used DeepL for translation)

> "With his hands and waist bound together, he had to lower his head and lap at the water..."

https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/1218653.... ("Not even a scrap of cloth in the toilet, not even a protest… What have we done wrong? / Human rights violations reported by detained workers")

Or possibly this adjacent one,

https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/1218738.... ("Spider carcass found in drinking water at Korean detention facility… Guard mocks inmate: ‘You'll be Spider-Man, won't you?’"

On time.com article is titled: 'Nobody Is Going to Stay and Work When It’s Like This’: South Koreans Reluctant to Return After Harrowing ICE Detention'

> weren't just laborers

I'm trying to read that in a charitable way: you're pointing out that, to a person who is fine with being cruel to laborers, they might not be comfortable with the cruelty and humiliation if it impacts people they might find deserving of respect and decency, yeah?

yes, this is korean culture (and other asian countries too)

we also expect white collar workers to be treated differently than blue collar workers. even if we agree that this particular treatment is unacceptable for both.

> we also expect white collar workers to be treated differently than blue collar workers.

How should we treat someone (a Korean in this particular case) who doesn't wear his collar ? "Sorry i struck you, but you didn't wear your white collar. Better luck next time". What if a blue collar worker wears a white collar ? Is he excepted from humiliation ?

Treating people like animals makes you an animal.

are you unfamiliar with the term blue collar/white collar, or are you being sarcastic? i don't mind the sarcasm, i just want to make sure i understand you correctly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_worker

you would not treat animals like that either, btw.

I'm roughly in the same camp and my take is: it's wrong when you're being cruel to migrant workers from poor countries willing to work for pennies.

It's also wrong, but not just that, it's wrong and stupid when you do the same thing to employees of a multi-national corporation building a factory that was going to be a major economic boost to your town.

No - Here is a charitable way to read it:

The Koreans are not responsible for the cruelty US immigration imposes on its victims- it’s not their country or fight.

It’s US internal affairs and laws, Korea is involved only in looking out for its own citizens.

The Hyundai workers were still working for and being paid Hyundai - so they didn’t “need” to skirt US immigration law.

My Korean colleagues have been asking me to explain this case to them, and I haven't been able to dig up enough reliable info to give much of an answer. I do think I can give a less inflammatory explanation for the shackling, though.

ICE sweeps mostly pick up undocumented laborers in the fields and factories. The people have nothing to lose by trying to run away, as they as just going to be deported anyway. So it stands to reason they would be restrained upon arrest. Documented workers on the other hand have a great deal to lose by further aggravating their situation. It is extremely unlikely that a documented worker would try to run away. However, I expect that ICE has to use the same procedures on all demographic groups to avoid charges racial discrimination.

Ah, ICE, so very sensitive to charges of racial discrimination.

Now that it's legal for ICE to racially discriminate do you think they will change their procedures? Or do you think ICE is more worried about the public perception of discrimination rather than the legality?

The press coverage has mostly focused on the pointless show of physical force, the shackles and the prison-like detention. That should be criticized, but it sometimes feels like a tacit acknowledgement that all the workers were unlawfully present, or at least in some kind of "grey zone" (and thus did need to leave, just more humanely).

I'm not sure that's true. The B-1 forbids most work, including "construction", but there's a special set of rules for installing equipment sold by your foreign employer:

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/BusinessVisa%20Pu...

Many of those detained were employees of Hyundai's equipment vendors. A lawyer for some of those employees is alleging they were in fact compliant for that reason:

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/lawyer-says...

If the DHS has evidence to the contrary, then it's had a week to disclose that and save some face. That they haven't may imply a significant fraction of those detained in these harsh conditions were in fact lawfully present.

If DHS had evidence to the contrary maybe in the many many steps between soliciting investment, campaigning on it, confirming the factory, and breaking ground on that factory, the elected officials should have said something.

"Saving face" is not an issue with the current US Regime.

They can just go in front of Congress and lie. Complete bold-faced lies.

There's no legal penalty for lying, the most Congress can do is frown upon them using the allowed forms of language.

They have no shame because they know they'll be protected from all sides.

ICE doesn't care. It's all for the quotas, the show and the cruelty. Many are hooligans. None want to be identified.

Beat up people first. Check later. Often a force without badges, badges without numbers, without ID, without faces and without warrants.

It's an imperial private army.

Don't expect better. If the courts turn their backs, expect more cruelty, more disdain for law and procedures, more groups swept up, until ...

All of the Proud Boys and other groups kinda just disappeared when ICE got more funding than most armies.

We all know who they're working for now.

The big question, and please don’t go ape on me, is were these workers actually here with proper visas, did corporate screw up, or was this willful action on the part of the individuals?

I’m tired of seeing stories with no real facts and similarly tired of comment sections discussing the issue without them either.

What actually happened here?

From what I can tell, the company did misuse the specific visa but it's generally a grey area that the US has historically turned a blind eye to. Given that Korea is a strong ally of the US and the project was done at the behest of Trump for reviving manufacturing, I feel like some leeway should've been given & more diplomatic means used rather than parading the Koreans around like gang members

A classic case of applying the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.

The number of human beings in the West who can discern the difference and use wisdom and intelligence appears to be declining.

Everything is now either black or white.

What does that tell you about Anglo Western Culture?

I have always seen people - the same people - being able to use arguments based on letter or spirit of the law depending on the situation. I'm not seeing a trend towards one or the other.

Some call it hypocrisy - and normally the same people are capable of displaying hypocrisy in other arguments too.

Usually when a company needs to send someone to another country to do training or some work for a week or two they just go as tourist because it’s incredibly expensive and time-consuming to get a proper work visa issued for them for one or two weeks. Especially if you need someone over right away to deal with an emergency so the world just sort of assumes you do that. It’s not the letter of the law but the system in place doesn’t allow for these sorts of situations.

> Usually when a company needs to send someone to another country to do training or some work for a week or two they just go as tourist

What?

You simply say you're traveling on business, you absolutely do not lie and say you're a tourist.

I have a friend in an amateur band, they wanted to do a US tour so they applied for a performers visa, paid thousands of dollars and got the application denied, so now he can't even go as a tourist. <shrug>

If you have ever had your visa denied, you are no longer eligible for VWP tourist visa as government finds it high risk of doing something incompatible with your visa.

It's easy to enter the US on business under the visa waiver program, but I think there are a lot of restrictions on what sort of business activities are acceptable. Thus it's fine to do market research or pitch your product to potential investors or distributors, but if you do work and collect a paycheck inside the US (even if it's at the office or factory of a Korean company) you need a proper work visa.

This case is additionally complicated as some of the construction work was being done by Latino workers who (like many construction workers) may not have had valid immigration paperwork.

B1/B2 visa allows some construction work: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/B-1%20perm...

In particular, worker training and equipment installation/setup. This seems to be exactly the case there.

In other guidance, "construction" is specifically excluded from the permission to "install equipment". That's not a very clear distinction, especially for large industrial machines, though I do see their general intent, to permit work requiring equipment-specific skills but exclude work that a locally-hired employee could do about as easily.

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/BusinessVisa%20Pu...

I don't think this greatly changes your general point. It's likely that many of those detained were in fact lawfully present.

But what is "construction"? If it means "building walls", sure.

But what about assembling and installing the battery presses? Or maybe setting up the electrical connections for them?

It is a genuinely ambiguous area, and I won't be surprised if Korean companies tried to push it a bit too far. This still doesn't excuse the ICE behavior a bit. They could have just revoked the visas and asked employees to leave.

It's also quite clear that the Korean companies were not flying engineers here to save on wages.

It's the letter of the law, it's a temporary business visa.

The USA calls it B-1.

https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

(I have no comment on the relevance of this to the article.)

ESTA should permit B-1 and B-2 type travel if you're from a VWP-eligible country (which South Korea is).

Those workers were on the B1 visa.

FT says it all: Korean companies admit cutting corners on US visas but say they have little choice. South Korean companies have routinely used unsuitable visas for workers sent to the US to build multibillion-dollar advanced manufacturing sites, according to Seoul-based executives and industry groups

https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...

> I’m tired of seeing stories with no real facts and similarly tired of comment sections discussing the issue without them either.

Major stories (NYT) have covered at least one person wrongly detained:

> Almost 500 people were detained during a raid of a Georgia battery plant owned by two South Korean manufacturers last week, the largest immigration enforcement operation at one location in the history of the Department of Homeland Security.

> But in at least one instance, officials admitted a worker was employed legally and forced him to leave the country anyway, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/business/economy/hyundai-...

Here’s a fact we know, South Koreans are eligible for the VWP. [1]

[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-...

Putting these people into chains was, as the linked article puts it: "Imperial Tyranny", and a completely unnecessary humiliation of the workers. Regardless of their visa status.

Yes. If the issue is the visas, revoke them, inform them, tell them to leave.

If they ignore you like 3 times, maybe escort them to a flight.

At least they weren't blackbagged and sent to Sudan without records.

The specifics of this depend on information that only ICE has, which they're being uncharacteristically circumspect about. This report has the most detail I've seen, though still not much: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/12/immigration-...

I have seen acknowledgements in the Korean press that there may have been some irregularity on the corporate end due to the administrative complexities involved. Given that SK is quite bureaucratic itself, that seems to me like a criticism they would be receptive towards. But the security measures like shackling all detainees and the bad detention conditions are landing with the public there (according to friends of mine as well as this editorial article) as an insult to Korean dignity which is really intolerable, eg leading respectable political figures there to muse openly about whether the time has come for SK to have an independent nuclear deterrent.

I think US policymakers often fail to realize that the US is an outlier among developed countries for the severity and indignity of its law enforcement practices. Most countries grant criminal defendants far more privacy pending conviction, in contrast to the publication of mugshots and home addresses that obtain in many US jurisdictions, and are far less inclined toward the use of physical restraints or harsh detention environments. South Korea in particular associates systematically harsh conditions with the autocratic regime of North Korea so they've been deeply startled to see such conditions inflicted upon their nationals by their main ally.

It doesn't matter if they were or weren't. Its a fucking civil offense at best.

This woman called ICE and they shackled these people up like it was the 1800s again.

I find it odd that people seem to sincerely not understand how much grey area there is regarding some of these issues. I'm pretty sure at least once in our careers most people have traveled internationally for business, but been told to say it's "personal". These cases could all potentially be violating visa laws, but most people don't think of themselves as "illegal immigrants" in these scenarios.

In this case the issue seem to be a debate around specifically what types of work these people were permitted to perform on their visas, with the union arguing, in their self-interest, that the work they were doing did not qualify.

I find it odd that you would expect the average HNer to understand complexities of international visas in the United States? This site is a bunch of young software engineers with some other interesting professions in the mix?

This is my understanding of the situation too from watching some news shows. During Biden's term, there was a need\interest in getting this factory running quickly. There wasn't a proper visa defined within our legal code. The US gov encouraged them to come with personal or tourist visas in order to expedite the process of getting the factory up and running. It seems like this understanding didn't quite transfer from Biden to Trump's administration and the deportation happened.

People have an emotional need to believe that the law is clear-cut and full of bright lines, because a) it makes it easier to say things like "they deserved it" to anyone who ended up on the wrong side of it and b) because it's scary to think that you can do everything "correctly" and end up in trouble anyway.

They literally don't believe you when you explain that this is false of the law in general, and especially false of immigration law, which is deliberately designed to have tons of ambiguity and discretion in it, to enable selective enforcement and keep guest workers afraid and exploitable in their ambiguous status.

I've been in CLE classes about immigration law with practising lawyers who are shocked and disoriented when a sitting immigration judge explains how that corner of the legal system works. Criminal defense lawyers in particular are taken aback by the discovery that many constitutional/procedural norms they've taken for granted their whole career simply don't apply.

> I'm pretty sure at least once in our careers most people have traveled internationally for business, but been told to say it's "personal". These cases could all potentially be violating visa laws

I've never done this, despite having worked abroad on a few occasions. When my visa ran out and I had to apply out of the country, I went home and applied and a few months later went back.

Back in 2016 when people were asking whether maybe Melania was working illegally when she first arrived, (yeah, remember when "Maybe his wife did something which may have been illegal" counted as news?) I pointed out to friends that roughly the same time she entered the US so did I, and I didn't have any real paperwork at all, in fact I turned up with a photocopy of somebody else's Amex to check in at my hotel.

If teenage me had been dragged aside and asked to prove I'm legal to work I have nothing. Where am I staying? Well I have a hotel reservation. OK, and how are you paying? Well here's a photocopy of my English boss' Amex that'll work right?

Everything was fine of course, as far as I know it was entirely legal, I was the foreign employee of a huge US firm, temporarily in the country to train people, by the time I left I had my own Amex and the hotel was paid with that, I was waved through both borders, no problem. But I had no proof of any sort, if you had wanted to detain me and insist you need documentation I had none. Maybe my bosses could have cleared it up? I just assumed it would be fine, and it was.

In 2025 I wouldn't recommend travelling to the US. A friend went, rich white guy with his very normal family, no doubt nothing seemed weird for them but if he'd asked me whether it's a good idea I'd say "No".

> I'm pretty sure at least once in our careers most people have traveled internationally for business, but been told to say it's "personal".

This seems less likely, because most places have some form of 'business' visa that's about as easy to get as a personal travel visa (the US's one is under the visa waiver program where available, say). The catch is that the definition of 'business' tends to be restrictive and unclear.

At least some of them were not on the correct visas, and it's possible some may have overstayed.

The most egregious violation was that they were using Korean contractors for construction and there is no visa for that.

Also if you are going on a business trip, your company organises your visa for you. You cant really refuse, it's part of your job. So I feel quite sorry for these workers becuase they've been caught in the crossfire.

CBP disagrees with you: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/B-1%20perm...

a leaked document shows that at least one person was recognized to have the appropriate visa and was coerced into leaving "voluntarily". no details on how prevalent this was have been released

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/hyundai-fact...

Who would need to be coerced? If I were in a foreign country and their paramilitary border force treated me like that, I'd GTFO, shake the dust off my feet, and never consider going back to such a crazy dangerous place - no matter how the legal nonsense was ultimately resolved.

The completely valid and sufficient reason to "go ape" on you is that there exists a process for determining these things, and no part of the process is shackling hundreds of people together half naked and forcing them to lick water from plates.

With all due respect, please provide respect of your own to me.

I’ve seen a dozen articles and discussions around this topic - none of which provide any facts, just vitriol such as yours. I genuinely want to hear the actual truth of the story. I’ve never heard of any plate watering stories or anything else. I’m not here making a case. I’m asking for facts I may have missed, facts that TFA lacks.

try google. it took 5 seconds

I’ve been reading this story since it came out, I’m actually from Savannah. It’s a very political story with bad coverage as a result. I have never read a story that wasn’t vague with no details which is why I asked.

i'm in atlanta. i used google. it took five seconds

Are you looking for information about the exact visa status of the workers, or information about conditions during their detention?

If the former, there's probably not much information to go on.

But what people are reacting to is the insane treatment of people.

If that's what you are looking for information about, how high standards of proof do you require?

I believe a lot of them were on B-1/B-2 business visas (or equivalent ESTA), which are typically intended for "business meetings", not for "work". However, because the US immigration system is completely broken. getting a real work visa such as an H-1B or an L-1 is a time consuming process. The historical equilibrium has been that some kinds of things classified as "work" are permissible on B-1/B-2 visas.

A similar activity that technically flouts the rules is responding to your work email while on a business trip. Or for software people, reviewing PRs on GitHub. Neither of those activities are business meetings, but both are generally tolerated.

Chesterton's fence is kind of important! The overall problem is that the world has become globalized but immigration policy just hasn't kept up.

None of this is to defend in any way the appalling conditions the workers were subjected to. But also, note that these conditions are not out of the ordinary. People get stuck in immigration detention for years.

> I believe a lot of them were on B-1/B-2 business visas (or equivalent ESTA), which are typically intended for "business meetings", not for "work".

B-1/B-2 does allow some work. Specifically setting up complex equipment and also training workers. Here's the CBP manual: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/B-1%20perm...

> If the contract of sale specifically requires the seller to provide these services or training, and you possess specialized knowledge essential to the seller's contractual obligation to perform the services or training it may be permissible for you to perform these services. In addition, the machinery or equipment must have been manufactured at a location outside of the United States and you may not receive compensation from a U.S. source.

Now the catch is that people on B1/B2 visas have NO recourse if _any_ border official decides that they violate the visa rules. And the rules themselves are really unclear.

Thanks. I guess it's even more complex than my understanding then, and a matter for lawyers aware of the case law to handle.

We should demand more transparency from our authorities - I don’t think they have been very forthcoming with the information

What was the point of making this big spectacle of it

It's a mix. Some had proper visas, some had "wrong" visas, depending on nuances of what you can or can't do under particular visas, which has a range of ambiguity, and and some had clearly wrong visas. (Or at least that's my understanding.)

That said, "willful action on the part of the individuals" is likely not the case - this is a large Korean conglomerate, all of them will have been doing what the company told them to do. This is part of why it's such a big deal to Koreans: workers who were doing what they were supposed to do correctly from a social perspective were treated like criminals, which is a major issue culturally.

And the company will probably have understood that the USA understood that for cases where no proper route, or only ambiguous routes, existed, everyone else will be part of cooperatively addressing ambiguity advantageously.

Typically with this sort of thing (not just in the US but other developed countries) -- you don't have the correct visa for the work that you're doing -- you're given 72/48/24 hours to leave the country and that's that. (If you don't leave, then there could be more serious consequences.) And usually this happens at the company level -- in other words, the company is responsible for its employees' visas, and told they need to get their people out within X time, or otherwise come into compliance immediately.

But the way that this was handled was completely out of hand, treating the employees (who have the paperwork handled by the company anyway) as common criminals, and to a country that's an ally (and one that you're trying to get to invest in your country), is completely ludicrous in a developed country, the type of action you might expect in the DRC or Myanmar.

And the fact that ICE said it took "months of preparation and coordination", means that they knew these people didn't have the proper visas and instead of warning the company to take its people home and/or come into compliance, they planned a high-profile military-style raid.

I'm not Korean but I can easily see how this would make Korean companies and their employees want nothing to do with the US.

Zeroing in on poor whites in the "rust belt" obscures the regimes base of support amongst affluent and propertied classes.

Regardless of the specifics of paperwork issues and letter of the law, people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It may be easy to turn a blind eye to the inhumane conditions in many immigration holding facilities when it feels like the victims are of a different class, or a different group of people. But if this doesn't rouse the empathy of other engineers I don't know what will.

The people who were detained here are just like the average hacker news user - educated professionals traveling for business. Please imagine what it would be like to travel - in good faith - to Germany, Japan, or South Korea for work only to be detained, chained like cattle in poor conditions, and paraded in front of television cameras like a prize. How would you feel about continuing to work with that country?

Here is the call to action - if these actions by the administration upset you, call your senators and representatives and demand that the leaders of ICE and the DHS be held accountable for this raid and the conditions of these detention centers. We are perfectly capable of enforcing our laws without abusing people.

What I find depressing is that so many of these cases lead to various authorities issuing a limited statement on behalf of just their particular in-group. We do see some wider condemnation going on. But like, the right thing for the Korean companies and government to do would be to issue a full-throated denunciation of the administration's entire immigration fiasco (if not the entire administration itself), rather than just "please don't do these specific things to this particular type of worker from this particular country".

If someone is firing a machine gun indiscriminately in all directions, it's naive to think you can survive by asking them to just please not point it towards you.

For those of you asking what the Koreans did wrong (in good faith), that question is framed poorly.

There is simply no visa that allows skilled labor to come to the US, work a temporary job for a multinational that's paying them in their home country, and leave.

The closest thing apparently is the "B-1 in lieu of H-1B"[1] and guess what? Another commenter posted this FT article that accuses them of abusing this B-1 visa [2].

Traveling for work is a huge pain in the ass, doubly so for this sort of temporary work assignment, and triply so if it's to the USA.

I've always been told to use a tourist or family reunification visa. For example, if China cracked down on this, they could easily put 10,000+ Americans in jail for a similar "visa abuse". They obviously would not bite the hand of foreign direct investment like this though.

I think it's informative to interpret the law - especially in the age of Congressional gridlock - as 300 years of terrible legacy code papered over the Herculean efforts of ops teams (the government bureaucracy). When that ops team starts arbitrarily treating the oceans of gray zones to their whims, to reward friends and punish enemies, you start the long trek to serfdom...

[1] https://www.wsmimmigration.com/us-immigration/temporary-work...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...

> There is simply no visa that allows skilled labor to come to the US, work a temporary job for a multinational that's paying them in their home country,

what about the L-1 transfer visa ?

> and leave.

You don’t even need a visa to leave

> and guess what? Another commenter posted this FT article that accuses them of abusing this B-1 visa

accusations that should be investigated - but in the last news I read it sounded like they would be allowed to stay somehow

L1 is primarily for management and execs.

> You don’t even need a visa to leave

Either unable to critically read or extraordinarily pedantic. Classic HN.

> MAGA represents a reactionary movement by white evangelical forces seeking to revert America to a time before the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Its core supporters are low-income, poorly educated white Americans and evangelical Protestants. Trump has become a voice amplifying the anxieties of these groups, whose societal status has been shaken by job losses due to globalization, deepening economic polarization, and a surge in immigration. Trump has incited them to channel their anger toward the established elite and “outsiders,” such as people of color, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims.

Neat and tidy summary of what MAGA is.

My theory is, corporate screwup. HR is responsible for tracking these things.

Yeah, it happens all the time. Someone sends the wrong form and just like that, half the dept is paraded in shackles on TV, haha, oopsie.

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