COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — After nearly a year’s worth of panels, CSU ended its Korean War Armistice speaker series with a panel including key figures with ties to both Georgia and Korea.

The speaker series concluded April 4, but not before panelists brought to light ideas about what the future of U.S.-Korea relations could look like, 70 years after the armistice ended the Korean War.

“Our friends in South Korea live in a very bad neighborhood,” said U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, who represents Georgia’s third congressional district.

The representative elaborated, highlighting challenges with North Korea, proximity to China – which Ferguson called “our [the United States’] biggest economic and cultural threat,” referring to the Chinese Communist Party – and impacts on immigration and supply chains.

As Kia, a South Korean company, looks at becoming a major producer of electric vehicles in the coming years the panelists discussed how this may look for Georgia and the country.

West Point, Ga., is home to Kia Georgia which manufactures vehicles sold at Kia dealerships across the country, amounting to about 40% of U.S. Kia sales, according to the Kia Georgia website.

“When you look at the investment that Korea has brought into the state of Georgia, with our plant in the local area, there’s a huge story behind what was going on there,” said Stuart Countess, President and CEO of Kia Georgia Incorporated.

West Point, Ga., is home to Kia Georgia which manufactures vehicles sold at dealerships across the country, amounting to about 40% of U.S. Kia sales, according to the Kia Georgia website.

Countess added, “You’re looking at just shy of $3 billion pumped into the West Point community throughout the county and certainly coming all the way down into this particular area.”

The Kia Georgia CEO said he expects “exponentially northward” investment in the community with the company’s planned expansion into Savannah, Ga. Countess estimated the expansion could create 40,000 jobs within the local community.

According to Countess, the expansion is only made possible through a long-standing recruitment of Korean resources, dating back decades. This same recruitment of resources allowed Kia to navigate COVID-era challenges, only closing for a month during the pandemic, Countess said.

As Kia Georgia looks toward its expansion, it is looking to hire skilled workers to fill job openings. However, Ferguson said it would be difficult to count on bringing in many skilled workers from Korea due to immigration policymaking.

“I don’t think that you’re going to see much movement on really any immigration issue until there’s security at our southern border,” Ferguson said.

He continued, “It is the number one political issue in America right now… and makes it very, very difficult to address very specific items like skilled workforce, and getting visas for people that we know we need to grow are going to struggle.”

Ferguson added that he hopes Congress can find common ground.

Other panels in CSU’s speaker series have focused on the history of the Korean War, identifying unnamed soldiers and other topics related to U.S.-Korea relations. The series has been made possible by the school’s Hallock Endowment for Military History and other CSU departments.

As a conclusion of the recognition of the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, up to 15 CSU students will take a two-week trip to South Korea under the leadership of speaker series organizers Dr. David Kieran and Dr. Daewoo Lee, as well as retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Pat Donahoe.

On the trip, students will visit Korean War sites and military installations, as well as offices and headquarters facilitating the current-day relationship between the U.S. and Korea. The trip will take place in late May of 2024.