Photo shows El Salvador prisoners, not South Koreans detained in the United States

"South Koreans arrested in the United States. Lee Jae Myung's responsibility," reads Korean-language text surrounding a photo shared on Facebook on September 7, 2025.

The photo shows rows of men with their hands clasped behind their shaved heads as masked and uniformed officers watch over them.

It circulated after more than 300 South Koreans were detained over alleged visa irregularities at a Hyundai-LG battery plant in the southern US state of Georgia during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid (archived link). 

The raid, the biggest so far in US President Donald Trump’s migrant crackdown, caught Seoul officials off guard.

South Korea's presidential office later said it had negotiated their release and arranged for them to return home on a chartered flight.

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Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on August 9, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The same photo was also shared in multiple Facebook groups supporting right-wing politicians, as well as on far-right forum Ilbe.

"Their hair shaved and treated like prisoners, what are you going to do about this Lee Jae Myung?" read a comment from one user.  

Another said: "They were rightly arrested because they all oppose President Trump."

But a reverse image search on Google found the same photo posted on the website of Getty Images, where its caption said it was taken in El Salvador (archived link).

On the higher-quality version posted on the Getty Images website, the guards can be seen wearing uniforms bearing the Salvadoran flag.

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Screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the Getty Images photo (right)

"Police officers inspect the cells of Mariona Prison (formally called "La Esperanza") where gang members serve their sentences as part of Bukele's plan to combat crime on June 07, 2023 in San Salvador, El Salvador," reads the photo's caption, referring to El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele.

The same image was also used in reports by the Financial Times and CNN Latino America about El Salvador (archived here and here).

Bukele, who unapologetically describes himself as a "cool dictator," enjoys sky-high approval ratings due to his heavy-handed campaign against criminal gangs, credited with returning a sense of normalcy to a violence-fatigued society (archived link).

Since declaring a state of emergency in March 2022, his government has detained more than 80,000 suspected gang members under expanded powers that permit arrests without warrants. The campaign has drawn criticism from rights groups, but has made Bukele the most popular leader in Latin America, according to a regional poll, and the envy of many peers.

As of September 8, there have been no official reports of the South Korean detainees having their heads shaved.

A South Korean foreign ministry official also told reporters on September 8 that consular officials in the United States interviewed over 250 of the South Korean detainees and none of them had complained about human rights abuses or about the conditions of their detention site (archived link).