Hyundai

Hyundai (to pronounce H' yound-have and not H' yound-have) is a South Korean firm active in many sectors: Automobile, Naval construction, electronic (flat panel displays in particular).

History

The history of Hyundai is related to that of its founder, Chung Ju-yung (1915 - 2001). Wire of peasant, it leaves his family at 16 years and practical several small work to survive: operate, rice merchant and repairer of cars. It founds in 1947 Hyundai Engineering & Construction (Hyundai means " modernité" in Korean), which will remain the center of its group. After the War of Korea, the Americans of Ford will entrust to him the repair of their military vehicles and the construction of the hutments for the armed with the United States.

Years 1960 will be favourable in Chung Ju-Yung which puts its talent at the service of Korea of the general Park Chung-hee. He will be the manufacturer of the highway which connects Seoul to Busan in 1968. He launches out in naval construction, where the Koreans excel. Its shipyards will become largest of the world, in particular those of Ulsan. In 2006, Hyundai is the first world naval manufacturer in value of production.

Hyundai Motors is created in 1967. The company will produce the first conveys 100% Korean as of 1973, the Pony. Chung Ju-yung immediately includes/understands the economic importance of the public Travaux and construction to the the Middle East, from where Korea imports South the essence of its consumption of Hydrocarbures. Hyundai will be then selected several times to carry out great projects of infrastructure in the Middle East.

In 1983, Hyundai Electronics east creates from a point of view of Diversification. Its activity develops in priority on the markets of the precision mechanics, petrochemistry and robotics.

The group also created a subsidiary company, Hyundai Asan specialized in the cooperative projects between the South Korea and the North Korea.

After having repurchased the mark Kia in 1998, Hyundai Motor is the 6th car manufacturer today, with 3,7 million vehicles sold in the world. First Korean manufacturer of cars, Hyundai became the first employer of the country with 170.000 workers, and second behind Samsung for the sales turnover.

Hyundai also illustrated in the production of screens cathodic (before the appearance of LCD), considered for their relatively low quality and their price (such as for example the series of ImageQuest F900, F910 etc).

Policy and businesses

The Hyundai empire, prisoner primarily by the Chung family, fact of her leaders (Ju-yung until 2000, then Wine storehouse-kwan and recently) the men among richest of the world, and undoubtedly richest of South Korea.

Hyundai is also a political sponsor impossible to circumvent, Chung Ju-yung having always supported the capacity in place, some is the political label of the government, while contributing largely to the various campaigns, contributions rewarded by attribution for markets and adjudications.

That did not prevent Chung Ju-yung, defender of entrepreneurial freedom vis-a-vis the State and to the Fisc, to present themselves to the presidential election of 1992 and to obtain 16% of the voices.

In 2006, following an investigation of the South Korean government, the chairman of Hyundai Chung Mong-koo was accused of corruption and embezzlement.

Social conflicts

If many Koreans recognize that Hyundai made it possible Korea to become one principal Asian dragons, the policy of the company was hardly social. The heavy tributes paid by the workers and the Syndicats remain at the origin of the success of the company.

Hyundai Motor knew ten social conflicts in 2006, on the initiative of the central trade-union KCTU, which would have involved according to the direction of the losses quantified with more than 1,2 billion euros.

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