By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack (.pdf)
September 15, 2025
By now, most readers are familiar with what happened in Georgia recently. On September 4, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted an immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG battery facility in Ellabell, Georgia. About 475 workers — more than 300 of them South Korean nationals — were accused of working in the U.S. illegally. Lawyers for the majority of workers have disputed this allegation.
Before I go on: Whenever I comment about something negative that happened to South Korean nationals, there is always a contingent of people who chime in to say well aaaaackshually… In this case, they pop up to say that South Koreans treat X, Y and Z poorly, so they got what they deserved. Two things can be true: it is possible to recognize that the United States fucked up, while also acknowledging that South Korea can do better in addressing its own immigrant policy. You don’t fix one issue by demonizing the other.
All the South Korean workers — with the exception of one, who chose to remain in the U.S. — are now back home, sharing allegations of human rights violations. Some recounted having guns pointed at them and being shackled in leg irons/chains/handcuffs. Perhaps even more egregiously, they were coerced into signing English documents that weren’t translated into Korean.
As if this wasn’t awful enough, there were rumors floating around on social media that some anti-fans were reporting K-pop members to ICE, falsely accusing them of being in the U.S. illegally for concerts.
To be perfectly clear, I haven’t seen anything about TXT’s Soobin reported by legitimate news outlets. (The group is currently in the United States on the North American leg of their tour.)
But with all the craziness going on, it appeared that it could be true. After all, the K-pop group Be:MAX had their visas inexplicably canceled on September 5, the day before they were supposed to perform in Minnesota.
Here’s the thing, there is no way of knowing whether this person actually filed a report with ICE, or if they just pretended to do so to gain social media traction and clout.
Bear in mind that in the South Korean legal system, a person can be prosecuted even if what they said was true, if the truth damages someone’s reputation. In fact, the number of defamation accusations has increased by 40 percent in the past 25 years. I am assuming that bangzsleuth doesn’t live in Korea. However, if a company worth billions of dollars chooses to take legal recourse, the anti-fan — like most of us — won’t have enough money or resources to fight them, even if they’re innocent. (And that person obviously isn’t in the right.)
Back in my childhood, bullying was more of an in-your-face event, which of course didn’t make it any more pleasant to be on the receiving end of a punch. But the bully also risked getting popped in the nose by a potential victim who’d had enough.
Ding-dong ditch was also prevalent. Of course, that wouldn’t work today since no one answers their doors anymore.
And Caller ID pretty much put an end to making crank calls, asking stupid questions like, “Is your refrigerator running? Well you better go catch it.” hyuck hyuck Those calls were annoying, but pretty harmless in the big picture.
Today, technology has made it much too easy for people to swat and dox each other. In the Netflix documentary “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish,” the film depicts how easy it was for the perpetrator to cyberbully and terrorize a pair of young teens for years — and how the police wasn’t set up to deal with cyber crimes.
Which is why so many people, hidden by the anonymity of being online, are so cruel to each other. Which is why that while it may not have been true, it is believable that some delulu fans could have reported a K-pop star to ICE.
Do I think these people truly want an idol to be detained and harmed? No. But the truth is that in today’s world, the unthinkable is a reality that can’t be underestimated.
NOTE: I am sharing a few anecdotes behind a paywall for my paid subscribers. If you’d care to read that portion, you may upgrade and read the rest of the article here.
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