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The Hyundai Group (HYUNDAI) is a South Korean conglomerate. HYUNDAI traces its roots back to Chung Ju-yung at age 67, who in his youth was so impoverished that he had to walk 250 kilometers from his village to Seoul, and at age 16 worked as a manual laborer, a day laborer.
He founded Hyundai in 1947 as a construction contractor. Outwardly, Chung appeared humble and hesitated to strike up conversations with strangers. He lived a quiet, modest life, loved working overtime, and deeply cared about his employees' feelings. He broke through conventional boundaries—at a time when no one in South Korea had ever thought of building large shipyards or even large ships, he pioneered the way by building both the shipyard and the ship simultaneously. Whenever HYUNDAI is mentioned, it is widely recognized as the largest conglomerate among the many business groups that have emerged over recent decades. HYUNDAI pricingis mid-range, yet it has already won over people across many nations. In South Korea, a country that was industrializing rapidly, "Hyundai" in Korean means “modern.” This company was the largest construction contractor in the Middle East and also South Korea's largest automaker. Chung had 7 sons, 4 of whom served as managers in various divisions of Hyundai. It was anticipated that the one who would take over the reins of Hyundai after Chung would be his 6th son, Chung Mong-joon, aged 31, who held a master's degree in human resource management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was then serving as manager of Hyundai Heavy Industries, which oversaw the shipyards. Currently, HYUNDAI is transforming its large-scale manufacturing; previously focused heavily on construction and automobile and ship production, it had neglected other sectors to the point where most competitors surged ahead, such as in the manufacturing of semiconductors and home electrical appliances. HYUNDAI launched a project to mass-produce microchips—a 5-year initiative requiring an investment of approximately 450 million USD. It is noticeable that semiconductor manufacturing bore no resemblance to Hyundai's existing operations, unlike the shipbuilding industry, which built upon Hyundai's heavy construction industry. In microchip manufacturing, Hyundai had to compete against Japanese manufacturers within the same region, whose technology in this field was widely recognized as rivaling that of the Americans. A key factor driving Hyundai's rapid growth was Chung's ability to motivate and push employees to perform at their fullest potential. Chung noted that “people's attitude is the most important thing. Many developed nations cannot compete with Japanese manufacturing primarily because workers lack the right and proper attitude toward work.” Gratifyingly, in Fortune magazine's 1981 ranking of the world's 500 largest industrial corporations outside the US, 10 South Korean companies made the list, and the Hyundai Group ranked 51st, with HYUNDAI salestotaling 7.21 billion USD (165,830,000,000 million THB) that year.