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Hyundai Motor Group headquarters in Seoul’s Yangjae neighborhood (Hankyoreh archive photo)

A former employee of Hyundai Motor Company who reported defects in Hyundai and Kia vehicles has received an award of US$24 million from the US federal agency in charge of road safety.

“NHTSA will give more than $24 million to a whistleblower in connection with information provided to NHTSA related to Hyundai Motor America (Hyundai) and Kia Motors America (Kia),” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a press release on Tuesday. The agency noted that this was its first-ever whistleblower award.

The whistleblower receiving the award is Kim Gwang-ho, a former manager at Hyundai. In 2016, after working as an engineer for Hyundai Motor for 25 years, Kim informed NHTSA and South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport that the company hadn’t taken appropriate measures to address defects in the Theta II engine it had developed.

Kim’s information prompted NHTSA to launch a probe that determined that Hyundai and Kia hadn’t recalled 1.6 million vehicles with the Theta II engine at the appropriate time and that it had misrepresented important information about the serious engine defects to the agency. According to a consent order issued in November 2020, Hyundai and Kia had to pay US$81 million in penalties to the US government.

The NHTSA awarded Kim the maximum award permitted under a law that states that whistleblowers who provide important information leading to penalties of US$1 million or more can receive awards worth up to 30% of the penalties imposed.

“I am pleased that I have been justly compensated for the risks I took to protect owners of these defective cars, and grateful that the US’s legal system had a program in place to make this possible,” Kim said in a statement that was quoted by Reuters.

Kim was terminated by Hyundai in November 2016 for leaking company business secrets. He received acclaim as a whistleblower in Korea, where he received the Mongnyeon Medal of the Order of Civil Merit in 2018 and was awarded 200 million won (around US$169,000) by the Korean Anti Corruption and Civil Rights Commission in 2019.

Last month, Kim was named Whistleblower of the Year for 2021 by the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, a US-based nonprofit.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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