﻿Hyundai cars are popular vehicles in car markets all over the world.
But it wasn’t always like this. Their journey to the top was a difficult one that was faced
with a lot of challenges and situations that seemed hopeless. It all started with
a young boy born into an impoverished family in North Korea, an ambition, and a stolen cow.
This is the story of Hyundai… Welcome to Planet Biz.
Jung Joo-Young was the eldest son of eight children. He belonged to a large and poor
farming family that lived in northern regions of Korea,
which would eventually become what we now know as North Korea.
When Jung was born on November 25th 1915, Korea was under strict rule by Japanese colonists.
While he was still a young boy, Jung had dreams of becoming a school teacher. However, it became
evident to him soon enough that these dreams may never become reality. He got an education
but couldn’t go further than grade school because of how poor his family was. After grade school,
his days were spent working on his family’s farm. Jung discovered his talent for business on the
days when he would go into town to sell wood. Soon, he got tired of the life of
poverty that his family was living and made plans to leave that life behind.
Jung had gotten fed up with the poverty he had to live in everyday, so at the age of sixteen,
he decided to run away from home. He and a friend trekked for miles to Kowon county which was also
in the northern regions of Korea. The two friends worked as construction workers. It was tiring
work and the pay wasn’t good, but because he was earning his money independently, Jung preferred
the poor working conditions on the construction site to having to work on his family’s farm.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last for too long. Jung’s father soon found out where he was and
he was forced to return to his home in Asan. But at this point, Jung had gotten a taste of freedom
and had discovered his love for engineering. Not too long after, he planned another escape.
He and two friends left for Seoul, but immediately encountered some setbacks.
Early on in the journey, one of the three friends was found out by a sibling,
leaving only two people to continue the escape. The two remaining friends ran into yet another
difficulty. They were offered jobs by a stranger who ended up conning them out of all their money.
Finally, their escape plan was foiled completely when they were caught by Jung’s father.
Jung was once again left with no choice but to return home.
He stayed for about a year in Asan, busy with work on the family farm.
Jung was 18 years old when he finally managed to escape from his father’s grip for good.
He made his trip to Seoul by train and paid for the expensive ticket by secretly
selling one of his father’s cows. Once in Seoul, Jung looked for job opportunities
anywhere he could find them. At different points in time, he was a laborer, a construction worker,
and a handyman at a factory. Eventually, he found a job in a rice shop as a bicycle delivery guy.
The job allowed him to rise through the ranks. He worked hard and gained the favor
of the customers and even the store’s owner. In 1937, at the age of 22, Jung bought the store
on credit from the owner, who had fallen sick. The store grew and made good profits until early
1939 when Japan, in its war efforts to secure rice supplies for the country and its military,
imposed an oppressive rice-rationing system which forced Korean businesses out of trading rice.
Jung returned to his village once his business failed and remained there until 1940,
when he decided to try again in Seoul. After considering the reality of restrictions
imposed on Koreans in certain industries by the Japanese Occupational Government, Jung decided
to enter the automobile repair business. Using a service garage he purchased from a friend,
Jung started the A-do Service Garage on a 3,000-won loan. Within three years,
the number of employees grew from 20 to 70 and Chung was able to earn a good income. In 1943,
the Japanese Government forced the garage to merge with a steel plant as part of the war effort.
Jung went back to his village, but he was far from giving
up. At the end of World War II, after Korea
had been liberated from Japan, Jung restarted his automobile repair business. This time, he named it
Hyundai which translates to “modern” in English. In 1947, he established Hyundai Civil Industries
in anticipation of the major reconstruction that was bound to happen because the war had ended.
With the help of one of his brothers who was fluent in English, Jung won several lucrative
contracts from the United States military in South Korea. Unfortunately, his business
was once again disrupted by the outbreak of war between the northern and southern sides of Korea.
In 1950, when the war began, Jung and his younger brother had to abandon the business and run away
as South Korea was being invaded by the north. When the war ended in 1953, Jung returned to his
company and resumed work. The company won more and more contracts and continued to thrive.
Soon, it was one of the largest construction companies in the entire South Korea.
Jung’s company won many elite projects. In 1967, the company built the Soyang dam which
was completed in 1973. In 1968, Hyundai Civil Industries began construction on the Gyeongbu
Expressway which is currently the second oldest and most heavily travelled expressway
in South Korea. The construction of this expressway was completed in 1970
and is known today as the most important expressway in South Korea.
Jung had a mission to industrialize Korea so that the country wouldn’t have to depend
so much on foreign aid. So, Jung also established an automobile manufacturing plant in Ulsan, South
Korea. His company grew and continued to spread. The automobile company that Jung started was put
under the control of his brother. At its birth, the company started off building two
car models for Ford Motor Company to serve the market in South Korea. However, in 1974,
the company decided to produce their own car. They hired an engineer, George Turnbull,
who went ahead to hire five other British car engineers to work on the project with him.
Using some car parts from Mitsubishi and some from a Ford model that the company was
already building, the team drew on their combined experience and created the first
true Hyundai car – the Hyundai Pony. This car was introduced to South Korea
and the rest of the world in 1975. The Hyundai Pony was the first
mass-produced and exported car in South Korea. As Hyundai grew fast, Jung was constantly looking
for opportunities to expand and to diversify. He was known for his nearly iron-fisted approach
to business. He worked hard, determined to outshine other top conglomerates in South Korea
such as Samsung and the Daewoo Group. Then one day, he decided to go into the
shipbuilding business. This was a bold move for him to take, considering that he had no experience
at all in the business of shipbuilding. Undeterred by his lack of shipbuilding expertise,
Jung convinced a client to give him a contract to build
a ship worth tens of millions of dollars. He travelled to England and met with some bankers
from the prestigious Barclays Bank in London. He showed these bankers a 500-won bank currency note
which had a picture of an iron ship that had been built in Korea in 1592 [Picture], 300 years before
the British built and launched their first iron ship. He convinced them, using this currency note,
that the shipbuilding industry had potential which had been suppressed in previous times.
With this, he successfully persuaded them to give him the shipbuilding contract.
This was the beginning of Hyundai Heavy Industries
(also known as HHI) which is the largest shipbuilding industry in the world today.
HHI was built in Ulsan, South Korea. Ulsan Shipyard, owned by Hyundai Heavy Industries,
is now the largest shipyard in the world. The first ship built by this company was
completed in three years, which was two years sooner than what was originally expected.
Hyundai Heavy Industries thrived and achieved its current status as the largest builder of merchant
ships in the world within 30 years of operation. In time, Hyundai’s name was all over South Korea.
Hyundai built roads, bridges, ships, trains, cars, electronics, and more.
Ulsan, which was the city where Hyundai had the headquarters of its shipbuilding, construction,
and automobile manufacturing businesses, was informally known as Hyundai City.
Jung wasn’t satisfied with his success in just South Korea. He was interested in entering into
foreign markets. So, true to his methods, Jung went ahead and did just that. He bid
for several contracts overseas and won some. In the 1970’s he won a contract to build the Jubail
Industrial Port in Saudi Arabia which was, at the time, the largest construction project of the
20th century and is still considered one of the largest industrial ports in the world. In 1986,
Hyundai entered into the U.S. automobile market. They provided cars that the average consumer found
valuable while other automobile manufacturers were beginning to focus their attention on building
expensive, high-end vehicles. Jung had successfully built an
empire that was giving Korea’s economic status a huge boost.
Toward the end of his life, he used his business skills
to lobby relentlessly for South Korea to be the host of the 1988 Summer Olympics.
Eventually, they won. Hosting the Summer Olympics brought great pride to the people of South Korea.
Later in his life, Jung worked to reunite North and South Korea.
In 1992, he ran for president. Although the party he created won 30 seats in the National Assembly,
he lost the presidential race. Despite this, Jung continued trying to unite the two Koreas
as a civilian. In a grand gesture, he made a trip in 1998 across the North Korean border. He took
with him 1000 cows as a gift to North Korea to pay for the cow he stole from his father.
He had plans to negotiate with the North Korean government and to embark on projects that would
reunite the two Koreas. Unfortunately, he died before he could bring this dream into reality.
In present times, the Hyundai Conglomerate is restructured into various groups based on the
services or products delivered. Each group is worth billions of dollars today. It’s almost
hard to believe that all this started from a young boy, an ambition, and a stolen cow.
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