The 'silent Y' in Hyundai

By Jon Dunbar

“Hyundai. The silent Y stands for youth marketing.”

Back in August 2013, U.S. satirical comedian Stephen Colbert made this off-hand quip on “The Colbert Report.”

Funny in context, but wildly wrong to anyone with at least basic understanding of the Korean language, who know that 'Y' is as pronounced as the 'Y' in gyoza or Tokyo. The correct pronunciation, according to modern revised Romanization rules, is “Hyeon-dae,” with the second syllable sounding more like “day” not “die.” The exact meaning of Hyundai is “modernity.”

Due to linguistic differences, Westerners have twisted the pronunciation of Hyundai, dropping that troubling “Y” and making the last syllable rhyme with “die” rather than “day.” The result comes out like “Hondai,” veering close to Japanese carmaker Honda.

This puts Hyundai at a disadvantage overseas, but also this corruption of its pronunciation has been creeping in over here.

Several years ago, I spent a few months teaching business English to Hyundai Motor employees, where I discovered many of them have the odd habit of pronouncing the company name “hyeon-die,” with that foreign-influenced “-die” syllable rather than the proper Korean way. Likely this is partly due to overseas work, exposing them to foreign Hyundai offices where the name isn't pronounced correctly.

And on a 2010 visit to North Korea, I discovered the people I thought would be strictest about “pure Korean” pronunciation of Korean words also tended to pronounce it that way, “hyeon-die.” Maybe it was their way of rejecting it as somehow foreign, or maybe it was introduced to them exclusively through non-South Korean intermediaries.

You'll note I've been saying Hyundai Motor, not Motors. The full company name is Hyundai Motor Company (HMC). So, differing from its co-affiliate Kia Motors, Motor is singular. Unless we're talking about Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors FC, the HMC-owned K League football team based in Jeonju.

Now that we can properly say the name, we can start looking into Hyundai's complicated corporate structure. Hyundai was founded in 1947 by Chung Ju-yung, who later split the company's many subsidiaries among his heirs by 2003, creating groups including Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, Hyundai Development Company Group, Hyundai Department Store Group, Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance and Hyundai Motor Group (HMG). So that's why you can see Hyundai-brand cars, department stores, foods, gas stations, apartments ― such as I'Park (which are luxury apartments, not parking garages as the name would suggest) ― and so on.

HMG owns HMC, and employees refer to those initialisms to keep them apart. HMG also owns Kia Motors. Kia, absorbed into HMG in 1998, may have once stood for “Korean International Automotive” but is commonly spelled Kia, not KIA which is more commonly identified as “killed in action.”

Just to give you a headache, Kia Motors is a partial owner of some Hyundai-branded affiliates, including Hyundai Glovis, which despite what its name suggests is a logistics company, not a glovemaker. This means, in a sense, Hyundai owns Kia owns Hyundai.

Additionally confusingly, HMG controls steel and construction affiliates, including Hyundai Engineering and Hyundai Engineering & Construction, even though you'd think Hyundai Development Company or Hyundai Heavy Industries would make more sense as their owners.

Recently, a plan to merge HMC with Hyundai Mobis, an auto parts affiliate of HMG, was said to violate antitrust laws, as Hyundai Motor also owns Hyundai Capital and Hyundai Card. Except, HMG owns both of those affiliates, as well as HMC and Mobis. I'm struggling to believe Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Kim Sang-jo could have made this mistake.

Chaebol ownership structure is confusing enough already, but even the names don't make it easy to understand, let alone that name with the “silent Y.”

Jon Dunbar (jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr) is a copy editor of The Korea Times.