A History of Korean Gaming

Everyone knows Hyundai Motors, Korea's biggest and most representative manufacturer of automobiles. Until the end of the 1999, Hyundai was the biggest of the country's jaebeol, massive conglomerates who had their hands in almost any kind of business.

Hyundai Electronics had its role in the video game business as the publisher of Nintendo consoles, beginning in October 1989 with the Hyundai Comboy, which was based on the American NES. The company continued licensing the Game Boy, SNES and the N64.

In 2000, the group fell apart after internal rivalries and financial crises. Hyundai Electronics initiated their split in 2000, which was completed in August 2001. Until then, the company had already spun off several internal departments and renamed itself to Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (later bought by SK Telecom and changed into SK Hynix)1. Hynix doesn't have anything to do with video games at all, anymore.

In 1996, another gaming-relevant branch of the group was formed as a joint venture with Sega, adequately named Hyundai-Sega Entertainment, but it later seperated from the Hyundai Group (January 2000) and eventually renamed itself to Hyundai Digital Entertainment(August 2001)2. Hyundai-Sega was primarily intended to distribute Sega arcade games in Korea, but it soon expanded its tasks to the publishing of PC games as well. The company was also planning to publish the Dreamcast in Korea3, but cancelled it due to import resriction issues in combination with the system's commercial failure in Japan. In 2003, the online racing game CTRacer was started, which even survived the folding of the company in 2008, and is since offered through Mobilplanet.