Correction: Oct. 15, 12:30 p.m.: The story was updated to reflect Jazzlyn Javis’s position at Hyundai Glovis.
Sean Kim, a Georgia real estate agent who speaks Korean, moved to Pooler in 2023 to corner a niche market: finding temporary housing for the hundreds of workers helping to build Georgia’s largest economic development project.
For nearly two years, Kim arranged for the Korean construction workers, technicians, and engineers to sleep in dozens of mobile homes plopped on rural plots of land, rented rooms in owner-occupied homes, and even a makeshift bed and breakfast, all within an easy drive of the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America site in Bryan County.
But, that golden period ended in September when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security raided the Ellabell electric vehicle factory and detained more than 300 Korean workers. Just like construction on the EV battery plant where many of these specialized employees had worked, Kim’s business has come to a halt.
And he’s not the only local business suffering. The ripple effects of the federal raid have spread to at least a half dozen small businesses in the counties surrounding the metaplant, according to an investigation by The Current GA.
Owners and employees have said that they are facing double-digit percentage drops in revenue after their reliable customers were handcuffed and taken away. Some entrepreneurs, who like Kim had seen a growth opportunity with the arrival of so many Koreans to the area, are now facing bankruptcy.
In the wake of the federal raid, Hyundai Motor Group’s leadership has said they are committed to expanding production and work opportunities at the metaplant, even as others concede that it will be a struggle to increase output in the short term.
It’s unclear in the interim how small businesses who relied on the Korean customers from the plant would get through the uncertainty. When asked for a statement about disruptions to local businesses after the ICE raid, Bianca Johnson, HMGMA manager of public relations, declined to comment.
Georgia and southeast coastal counties are subsidizing Hyundai and its suppliers in the form of $2.1 billion in tax breaks, construction costs, discount land and other perks, a deal that Gov. Brian Kemp announced it would produce “good-paying jobs for hard-working Georgians.”
The largesse comes with conditions. Hyundai Metaplant, the LG joint-venture battery facility, and five affiliated Hyundai suppliers must together invest $5.545 billion and hire at least 8,500 workers by 2031 at an average annual yearly salary of $58,105. Those jobs must be retained until 2048.
Outside of those gains, Georgia entrepreneurs found opportunity.
Chip Johnson, chief executive of the Turnstone Group in midtown Atlanta, decided to invest in the only hotel at the I-16 exit leading to the Hyundai plant. During a two-year construction of the facility, he expected Hyundai workers to be a steady stream of customers for his extended-stay hotel. Since he opened in July 2025, he said there has only been one booking from a metaplant worker.
Local investors wanted into the promise of expansion as well. Last year, the owners of Savannah’s Viet Huong grocery store bought the old Piggly Wiggly in Ellabell across the highway from the Hyundai plant. Their sole intention was to stock goods that met the demand from the burgeoning Korean workforce.
For close to a year, business was brisk. The store became a preferred meeting spot for Koreans, who would buy ice cream, snacks and eat lunch in the parking lot before going back to work. In the evening, regular customers from the plant would return to get groceries for dinner.
After the federal raid, the store’s customer base has dropped to a trickle of people each day. Local Bryan County residents aren’t interested in Korean food, and the owners have little cash flow to restock their shelves.
A few miles away in Pooler, a restaurant owned and operated by a Korean American has a similar problem. Inventory he had stocked prior to the raid has spoiled, because the tables of visiting Korean engineers and managers dried up overnight.
The owner, who requested anonymity due to fears of an anti-immigrant backlash after the raid, said by the end of September his weekly income had dropped by 18%. The businessman, who first came to Georgia as a Hyundai worker before following his dream of opening his Korean restaurant, is not sure how long he can keep his doors open.
“Not only did people from the raid get detained, but people that were scared from the raid went back home to Korea, too,” he said. “And no one from Korea is willing to come here anymore.”
At a second Pooler restaurant, the owner said he used to host parties of 20 to 30 Korean workers seven days a week. Now, he’s lucky to see groups larger than five.
“Food is being provided, but no one is eating it, so it goes to waste,” he said.
It’s not just a lack of Koreans coming to eat, but Hispanic families, too, he said. Construction workers and their families used to come in regularly, but those customers have stopped too, probably due to fear caused by the raid, he said.
One of his employees, a Hispanic woman, was left shaken after a traffic stop in which police asked her for immigration documents, he said.
Hyundai has announced its goal of growing production at the metaplant from its original target of 300,000 vehicles each year to 500,000. Yet output amounts to only one shift per day. The battery plant, meanwhile, won’t be open until next year, at the earliest, as the Korean companies work to find qualified people to finish the build out of the high-tech production line.
The construction companies that partnered with Hyundai are struggling to replace specialized Korean labor with local hires, Kim said, something that a site manager at one of the supplier companies confirmed. The battery plant has no Plan B for completing construction, that manager said.
Reuters journalists in Seoul reported on Oct. 1 that the U.S. has agreed to allow South Korean workers with existing temporary visas to work on equipment at U.S. investment sites, such as the Hyundai metaplant.
The Korean suppliers, meanwhile, are working to improve its reputation for compliance with U.S. labor laws and environmental requirements, according to that site manager. The Current has previously reported that multiple Korean suppliers and their subcontractors failed to report workplace accidents at their section of the metaplant in violation of U.S. law.
Last week (Oct. 8), Chris Susock, Hyundai Motor North America’s chief manufacturing officer, suggested the creation of a steering committee to the Joint Development Board of county officials who are helping to make the economic investments a success.
Members of the committee would include chief executives and senior leadership representatives from each of the companies at the metaplant to improve communication and planning, he said.
“The purpose is to really set policy, guidance, and procedures and how we manage that site”, said Susock, “Everything from safety, security, operations, you know, communications, public relations, everything that goes on at HMGA will go through that committee.”
It’s unclear how that planned change will help with employment recruitment efforts across the Hyundai supply chain.
A month after the raid, HMGMA hosted a job fair at Savannah Technical College, according to Johnson, the company’s public relations official.
From rusty pickup trucks to matte black Teslas, more than 350 people, many from across Georgia, came with resumes in hand, hoping to find job security, especially in the wake of mass layoffs from International Paper closing their mills last month and upheaval in the timber industry.
Cody Bennington, a truck driver from Millen, said he’s looking for a stable career.
“I’m just trying to make the change into a career rather than a job,” he said.
Dasia Mosley was laid off from Daniel Defense in September after four years of work at the weapons company located across I-16 from the metaplant. Even though she lives an hour away from the plant, she’s willing to commute for a good salary.
“For me, I don’t care if I have to go to Pooler,” she said, “I’m going to do whatever it takes.”
One current Hyundai Glovis employee at the job fair said her team was having trouble keeping employees. Jazzlyn Javis, who has been employed for almost four years, said she had trained close to 500 people in that time, but only five of those employees are still at Glovis.
“We don’t have enough people to do the work,” she said. “It takes time to get stability, but you can’t have stability when you’re constantly getting rid of people.”
Others, like Bruce Hall, a 62-year-old veteran from Pooler, saw the job fair as a sign that Hyundai was committed to the community for the long haul.
“It’s not about money,” he said. “It’s about something new, something we can actually build our community up on.”
Others like Kim, the real estate agent, who have invested into the community around the plant don’t feel so optimistic.
At the end of September, he moved back to Atlanta to refocus on his business there, because he sees that Hyundai’s regional slowdown will last for the foreseeable future.
He won’t be selling his home in Pooler just yet though, since he has hope a second “golden period” will happen in the next couple of years as visa regulations relax and Hyundai can allow more immigrant workforce to fly in from South Korea.
“Everything stopped,” he said of his revenue plans in Coastal Georgia. “And we don’t know when it’s going to start again.”
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