Detained South Korean Illegal Workers to Be Deported and Brought Back to Korea on Chartered Flight
It will be interesting to see if the personnel deported will be allowed back into the country again in the future with a proper work visa. With that said I am sure every Korean business is reviewing visa status of their workers now:
The Korean government said Sunday that talks with U.S. authorities to release more than 300 Korean workers detained in Georgia were finished, and that only administrative steps remained before a chartered plane would be dispatched to bring them home.
Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik announced the development at a high-level policy meeting in Seoul, saying the release as imminent thanks to swift cooperation among government ministries, business groups and companies.
You can read more at the link.
As the workers themselves might not have known, I can see the US being lenient; but the company that employed them needs some serious “counseling”…
Here is what a Korean diplomat told me yestetday.
The diplomat speculated:
There are two visa pathways. One allows work and one does not.
The visa that allows work requires much more paperwork. Many times, even when traveling to America on official government business, they just show up with their personal passport on essentially a tourist visa.
Once, when they were meeting with American customs and border patrol, they went through the additional steps to get the real visa using their diplomatic passports, but that was the exception and not the rule.
They speculated, out of expediency, the workers got the easy tourist visas even if the work visas would (probably) have been possible. The (wrong) assumption was that nobody would care… like private English teachers doing 90 day visa runs in Korea.
Now, for all trips to America, the new policy is all visas will be correct for Korean government workers… hence the speculation this is the situation.
I was told this super quickly as a side conversation while dealing with something else so there might be details that need clarification, but this was the basic idea.
I don’t see the confusion about it. When I worked in Korea, I had to go down to Uijongbue and get a work Visa before my tourist one expired. I all I needed was a Letter of Employment for myself and listing my dependents..
I wonder what KCTU would say if 450 Americans showed up to do a construction project in Seoul on a tourist visa?
I wonder what KCTU would say if 450 Americans showed up to do a construction project in Seoul on a tourist visa?
Why would Americans need a tourist visa when they can enter Korea, visa free and stay for 90 days?
And why would 450 Americans turn up for a construction project when, unlike in MAGA country, there’s already plenty of local manpower available?