Chung Mong-hyuk, chairman of Hyundai Corporation Group, delivers a speech marking the company’s 50th anniversary at the Grand Hyatt Seoul on the 29th. Photo courtesy of Hyundai Corporation
Hyundai Corporation (011760.KS) Group, marking its 50th anniversary, has set the fusion of trading and manufacturing as its growth strategy for the next 50 years and will pursue acquisitions of manufacturers at home and abroad.
The group said on the 30th that it held a 50th anniversary ceremony on the 29th at the Grand Hyatt Seoul, attended by about 600 employees from Korea and overseas. Held ahead of its founding anniversary on Oct. 1, the event was designed to look back on the past 50 years and share the direction of a new leap forward for the coming half-century.
At the ceremony, the company unveiled a special congratulatory video featuring founder Chung Ju-yung, restored using artificial intelligence. In the video, the late honorary chairman thanked employees who built the company’s growth over the past 50 years by traveling the world in search of new opportunities at a time when information and experience were scarce, guided by his founding philosophy of “earning abroad to enrich the home country.” He also stressed the “Hyundai spirit” of challenge and pioneering, saying that what matters is whether one takes on a challenge again despite countless failures, and that if there is no road, one can build one.
Founded in 1976 under the honorary chairman’s philosophy of building the nation through exports, Hyundai Corporation served as the export gateway for Hyundai Group and opened new sales channels around the world. It pioneered overseas resource development through the Drayton coal mine in Australia and the Marib oil field in Yemen, and it was part of Korea’s trade history through its opening of northern trade routes, five consecutive years as the country’s top exporter among individual companies and the nation’s first $25 billion export tower award.
The company later went through the foreign exchange crisis and a corporate workout before returning to the Hyundai fold in 2009. Chairman Chung Mong-hyuk took office in 2010, opening what the company calls its second founding era, and it was newly launched as an independently managed group within the broader Hyundai family after a corporate separation in 2016. In 2021, it unified its Korean corporate name with Hyundai Corporation, the name it had used overseas, establishing a new identity beyond the framework of a general trading company. It has set record operating profits for four consecutive years.
“Our past 50 years were not simply a period of growth but a time of overcoming many difficulties,” Chung said in his commemorative address. “Many companies have disappeared into history, but we changed ourselves and built the Hyundai Corporation of today.” He added, “The flexibility and resilience accumulated in that process are our greatest assets. I want to build not a company that is No. 1 temporarily, but a first-class company that keeps changing and growing in any environment and lasts for a long time.”
Chung presented the convergence of trading and manufacturing as the growth direction for the next 50 years. Hyundai Corporation plans to extend its value chain into manufacturing, building on its existing trading capabilities and global network, and to shift to a business model that organically combines trading and manufacturing. After acquiring Korean auto parts maker Luchinova last year, it will pursue additional acquisitions of mid-sized manufacturers at home and abroad within five years, and over the longer term will seek to secure a large manufacturer with global influence.
The company will also strengthen NEST, its regional collaboration framework for global operations. NEST, which groups overseas bases into regional units, has developed into a system for identifying new businesses and sharing results through cooperation between branches as well as across regions.
Hyundai Corporation plans to develop NEST so that each region serves as a “second headquarters” that identifies businesses and invests independently, as the Seoul head office does. It will groom Singapore in the Southeast Asia NEST and Los Angeles in the North America NEST as global headquarters within three years, and Frankfurt in the Europe NEST and Tokyo in the Japan NEST within five years. It will then build a structure in which all 10 NESTs worldwide — later adding China, Australia, Africa and the Middle East, South Asia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Latin America — each perform headquarters functions.
“If the past 50 years were a history of challenge and pioneering, the next 50 years will be a time of turning the dream of a 100-year company into reality,” Chung said. “That is not a road one person can travel with a single mind or effort, so we will all take on challenges and overcome them together to open the next 50 years of Hyundai Corporation.”
At a ceremony marking its 50th anniversary held at the Grand Hyatt Seoul on the 29th, Hyundai Corporation unveils a congratulatory address by late Honorary Chairman Chung Ju-yung recreated with artificial intelligence. Photo courtesy of Hyundai Corporation