You would hardly recognize the 2022 Hyundai Sonata in its 1990s predecessors, whose shoddy build quality dented the South Korean car-maker’s reputation.

Cars with Seoul

Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group has spent decades becoming the world’s third-largest car-maker. Suddenly, they seem poised to take first place

By Jamie Kitman

I love Korean food, dug the 2020 Academy Awards’ best-picture winner, Parasite, and firmly believe K-pop’s A-O.K. I mean, it’s not my precise jam, but as an old music-business hand, how could I not admire the genre’s numbers? Ditto Netflix’s hit series Squid Game.

Yet, when I tell many of the people who ask me for car advice that they should strongly consider buying their next machine from Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group, I hasten to add that I’ve not been swept up by Hallyu, the bastardized Western version of the Chinese term for “Korean Wave,” which is used to describe the outsize success of television shows and other products of the Korean Peninsula’s booming culture factories. Nor am I a paid influencer. (Send requests for such service to me, care of this publication.)