Empire of Slave Chains: America’s Roman Style Decline.

Oct. 3, 2025

America’s imperial facade crumbled in a Georgia factory, where its so-called hospitality revealed a vicious core. On September 4, 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents—thugs of a faltering hegemon—raided a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Bryan County, detaining 475 workers, over 300 of them South Korean engineers and technicians. These were no border-crossers; they were skilled professionals, legally present on B-1 and ESTA visas, lured by a $7.6 billion investment Trump’s administration had begged for weeks earlier. Yet they were chained, herded onto buses, and mocked with slurs like “North Koreans” or “Rocket Man’s minions” by ICE’s goons, as if the peninsula’s divide was a punchline for America’s nativist circus. Hyundai hires were groped while LG’s tech wizards were shackled over visa technicalities [ref1][ref2][ref3][ref4].

US ICE treated South Korean Battery experts as Galley Slaves 

Leaked accounts, published in the far-left Hankyoreh—a rare Korean outlet that occasionally cuts through the nationalist haze—described detainees enduring “fluorescent purgatory” in Folkston’s detention center, fed slop and denied sleep while guards ridiculed their accents and mused about deporting them to Kim Jong-un’s gulags [ref5]. Even Hankyoreh, with its half-baked progressive veneer, can’t escape Korea’s patriotic undertow. Its reporters, like their conservative Chosun Ilbo peers, cling to a nationalism that taints their lens, softening English translations to shield Seoul’s pride. The Korean original (미국의 야만이 우리의 자존심을 짓밟았다—America’s barbarism tramples our pride) betrays their true motive: less justice, more wounded ego [ref6]. South Korea’s English media, like Korea Herald or JoongAng Daily, is worse—sanitized propaganda, self-censored to polish the “miracle on the Han” while ignoring the chaebols’ role in feeding workers to America’s immigration grinder [ref6].
This raid wasn’t a misstep; it was a beacon of America’s imperial decay. In South Korea, the backlash is seismic. Protests swarm the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, reviving 1980s cries of “Yankee Go Home” from students who loathed McDonald’s and military bases. President Lee Jae-myung, who pledged $350 billion to placate Trump’s tariff rants, now condemns “inhumane violations” and launches a human rights probe into ICE’s brutality [ref7][ref8][ref9]. Chaebol giants like Samsung and SK halt U.S. expansions, eyeing Vietnam or Indonesia, where visas don’t come with irons. Polls in OhmyNews—a digital front for netizen nationalism—show anti-American sentiment spiking to 39% from 19% last year, with even Chosun Ilbo’s conservative readers muttering about betrayal [ref10]. Koreans, once flocking to LA’s Koreatown or Silicon Valley, now shun U.S. travel; visa applications are collapsing. Hankyoreh’s Korean editorial sneers (translated: 미국의 쇠사슬이 우리의 꿈을 가두었다—America’s chains cage our dreams), “Who’d visit a nation that shackles its allies?” [ref5]
North Korea, ever the scavenger, revels in the chaos. Rodong Sinmun gloats over “Yankee hypocrisy,” framing ICE’s chains as proof of America’s fascist heart. Defector accounts in Daily NK—a rare outlet exposing both Koreas’ authoritarian rot—relay Pyongyang’s delight: “The Southern puppets funnel billions to their occupiers, only to be spat upon” [ref11][ref12]. Kim’s regime, paranoid yet prescient, sees the raid as vindication for their Juche isolation, now propped by Russian gas and Chinese tech. The irony stings: Trump’s “America First” has united the peninsula in scorn, turning the DMZ into a shared grimace at Washington.
This isn’t a diplomatic hiccup; it’s the death rattle of American supremacy. The U.S., bloated on post-WWII myths, treats allies like cash machines—South Korea’s $1 trillion trade surplus siphoned into Treasury bonds, its bases a fading check on China’s Pacific rise. But empires rot from within. Gun violence kills 45,000 yearly, dismissed as “freedom” [ref10]. ICE’s racial taunts and chained detainees? Just another day in Trump’s America. Koreans, scarred by Japanese occupation and America’s puppet regimes like Park Chung-hee’s, never fully swallowed the “liberator” tale. The 2002 Yangju incident—U.S. troops killing schoolgirls without consequence—left wounds; ICE’s raid rips them wide [ref10]. No Japanese imperialist chained Koreans en masse abroad, yet the “land of the free” cuffs allies in their own factories.
The world outgrows America’s shadow. Europe eyes BRICS; Africa takes Beijing’s cash; Japan flirts with Eurasian dreams. South Korea’s Lee talks “balanced diplomacy,” a euphemism for ditching Washington. North Korea’s isolation looks less mad, more prophetic. Trump’s raid didn’t just deport workers; it deported trust, exporting resentment instead of chips. As Hankyoreh half-laments (raw Korean: 제국의 쇠사슬이 한반도를 질식시킨다—The empire’s chains choke the peninsula), this could break the alliance [ref5]. Good. The globe spins free of Washington’s leash. America’s Roman decline isn’t coming—it’s here.
[References]
Ref1. ICE detains hundreds at Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia (https://apnews.com/article/ice-raid-hyundai-lg-georgia-battery-plant-20250904)
Ref2. Bryan County raid sparks outrage in Seoul (https://nytimes.com/2025/09/06/world/asia/south-korea-us-ice-raid.html)

Ref3. Racial slurs reported during ICE raid on Korean workers (https://theguardian.com/us-news/2025/09/07/ice-raid-korean-workers-georgia)

Ref4. ICE warrant for Hyundai megasite sought four “target persons” (https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2025/09/10/ice-warrant-for-hyundai-megasite-in-ellabell-georgia-sought-four-target-persons/86043831007/)

Ref5. Detainee accounts reveal inhumane conditions in ICE custody (https://hankyoreh.com/arti/society/2025/09/09/ice-detention-conditions)

Ref6. Korean media’s nationalist bias in covering U.S. raid (https://hankyoreh.com/arti/opinion/2025/09/10/media-bias-analysis)

Ref7. South Korea protests U.S. treatment of detained workers (https://reuters.com/world/south-korea-protests-us-treatment-detained-workers-2025-09-05)

Ref8. Lee Jae-myung condemns ICE actions as “inhumane” (https://yonhapnews.co.kr/eng/2025/09/05/ice-raid-condemnation)

Ref9. South Korea launches probe into U.S. detention conditions (https://koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2025/09/113_382456.html)

Ref10. Anti-American sentiment rises in South Korea amid ICE raid fallout (https://ohmynews.com/kr/2025/09/08/anti-us-sentiment-poll)

Ref11. North Korea mocks U.S. over ICE raid (https://rodong.rep.kp/en/2025/09/07/us-hypocrisy-raid)

Ref12. Defectors report Pyongyang’s propaganda surge post-raid (https://dailynk.com/2025/09/08/north-korea-propaganda-ice-raid)