The head of Hyundai says the White House has apologized for that mass immigration raid at a Georgia factory.

Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm William Lee Adams. Good morning.

The chief executive of Hyundai says that the White House phoned him to apologize for an immigration raid at its battery factory in the U.S. state of Georgia

in September. More than 300 South Korean workers were detained and later sent back to South Korea,

stoking tensions between Washington and Seoul. Chief Executive Jose Munoz was speaking at a conference

of business leaders in Singapore, and the BBC's Nick Marsh was there, Nick High.

Hello, William.

So tell us exactly what Hyundai's boss said.

Well, he was speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.

I was listening to him speak about trade and tariffs and AI and that sort of thing.

And he was asked about this raid in a plant in Georgia that Hyundai runs. I don't know if you

remember, the images were quite shocking. It was hundreds of South Korean workers shackled on the

factory floor. They were detained for a week, sent back to South Korea. And in the end, he says,

and he didn't say exactly when this happened, but he says he received a phone call from the White House, basically apologising, saying that they'd got it wrong and that they were sorry.

And he said he also got a call from the governor of Georgia who said that this was not a state matter and that he didn't really know what had happened.

And he was also sorry.

And it kind of

struck me because it's the first time that I've heard at least anything publicly in terms of

an actual direct apology. It suggests the degree of embarrassment that was greater than we

previously thought. And also, I would say, reflects a genuine concern in the White House that a crucial

foreign investment in American manufacturing might have been lost. How much do you think this

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