Industrial History | Hyundai — The Swamp Lot at 700 Yeompo-ro, Ulsan

People treat Hyundai Motor as a Seoul brand that arrived with a shipyard already attached.

The car company was registered on 29 December 1967. Chung Ju-yung had already bought about eighty-two acres on the Taehwa in Ulsan, unused swamp that other people walked past. Ground was broken in May 1968 at what is now 700 Yeompo-ro, Buk-gu. The first vehicle off the line was a Ford Cortina assembled under licence, not a Korean design.

Chung came from Hyundai Construction. The government wanted a domestic car industry and promised support. George Turnbull, late of British Leyland, was hired to get a plant up in half the usual time. The Pony, the first mass-produced Korean passenger car, did not reach the Ulsan line until 1975, when Factory 1 was finished. The Seocho headquarters on Heolleung-ro is a later address.

Ulsan is now the largest single car plant on earth. That scale is not the origin. The origin was a swamp parcel by the river, a licensed Cortina, and a construction boss who decided Korea could make cars because it had already learned to make ships.