Korea faces dark road ahead as U.S. auto imports skirt strict safety standards

Home > Business > Industry

Korea faces dark road ahead as U.S. auto imports skirt strict safety standards

Published: 16 Dec. 2025, 07:00

SARAH CHEA
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Vehicles from U.S. brands are parked at a port in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, on July 31. [YONHAP]

[NEWS ANALYSIS]

From Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) suite to GM’s Super Cruise, a wave of U.S. automotive technologies — only recently seen in Korea — has swelled on the country’s roads, despite falling strikingly short of Korea’s safety standards.

This stems from Korea’s decision to dismantle its cap on U.S.-made vehicles entering the Korean market — so long as they met U.S. safety standards, not Korea’s — a provision that U.S. President Donald Trump denounced as a “nontrade barrier.” In return, the United States agreed to lower its auto tariffs from 25 percent to 15 percent.

With the United States maintaining far looser traffic and safety standards, U.S. vehicles are often ill-suited for Korea’s narrower, denser roads — prompting criticism that such disparities effectively impose a form of reverse discrimination on domestic automakers.

Under the FTA, U.S. automakers were allowed to ship as many as 50,000 vehicles into Korea each year as long as they meet U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. They are not obliged to comply with Korean safety rules, as Seoul is barred from unilaterally prohibiting or disadvantaging safety, environmental or technological specifications legally permitted in the United States. The quota was previously 25,000 units, but President Trump widened it to 50,000 in his first term in 2018.

That cap has now been abolished entirely. Though the Korean government argued that the “impact will be negligible,” the repercussions are expected to be far more substantial as sales of U.S. brands, such as Tesla, are accelerating at a breakneck pace.

A video uploaded on the account of X user ″Tesla Chan″ shows Tesla's supervised Full Self-Driving system in use during a drive in Seoul [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Made for the United States, risky for Korea

With Korea maintaining far more stringent overall safety standards than the United States, there are concerns that vehicles engineered to meet U.S. regulations can operate safely within Korea’s complex and constricted driving ecosystem.

Tesla’s FSD software, for instance, explicitly requires continuous driver supervision, but the system’s performance — trained predominantly on U.S. road data — may behave unpredictably in Korea, where lanes are narrower, sudden merges and aggressive cut-ins are common and side streets are often clogged with illegally parked cars.

In environments marked by heavy rain or snow, dimly lit alleyways and dense traffic involving motorcycles and bicycle couriers, sensor and camera misreadings or delayed reaction times could further amplify collision risks.

“In Korea, drivers are legally required to keep their hands on the wheel at all times — but Tesla’s FSD entered the market and has been marketed as a supervised autonomy system that allows the cars to navigate roads without the driver holding the steering wheel,” said Lee Ho-geun, a professor of future automotive studies at Daedeok University.

“Tesla itself does not offer fully autonomous driving, yet what is currently circulating on the roads can be considered hazardous.”

Tesla’s electronic door mechanisms have also been cited as a serious design flaw, as when electrical power is cut, whether from a battery failure or a crash, occupants may be unable to escape. While there is a manual release lever, many drivers do not even know it exists.

The company’s flush, retractable door handles have likewise been implicated in multiple fatal incidents worldwide, as first responders have struggled to open the doors after a collision.

Vehicles from U.S. brands are parked at a port in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, on July 31. [YONHAP]

In fact, a Tesla Model X crashed into a wall and burst into flames inside a parking area in Yongsan District, central Seoul, in December 2020, killing the driver. A parking attendant reportedly attempted to open the door but failed, and firefighters eventually forced open a rear door with specialized equipment, but by then it was too late to save the driver.

“Tesla’s door-related defects have effectively been overlooked for years under the FTA exemption framework, provisions that would be inconceivable under Korea’s own law related to automobiles,” said Kim Pil-soo, a professor of automotive engineering at Daelim University College and chairman of the Korea Electric Vehicle Association.

“I have raised these concerns for more than a decade in various locations, like in the National Assembly, at policy hearings and in broadcasts, yet not a single substantive improvement has come due to the broad shield of the FTA," Kim added. "If even this remaining restriction [on U.S. imports] is now abolished, what incentive will there be to fix any of it?”

Such cases remain plentiful; for instance, turn signals are required to be amber in Korea, whereas U.S. regulations permit red signals as well, resulting in a mix of both colors on Korean roads. Numerous studies have shown that when brake lights and turn signals share the same red hue, the risk of collisions increases.

[GETTY IMAGES]

Regulatory tangle for locals

Looser regulations on U.S.-made vehicles have drawn criticism for creating a reverse-competitive disadvantage for domestic automakers like Hyundai Motor and Kia, effectively impeding technological development and commercialization timelines.

While Tesla and GM entered the Korean market with minimal additional investment and have been accumulating local driving data — the core for developing self-driving technologies — Hyundai faces stringent domestic regulations that delay both testing and commercial rollout.

Hyundai Motor Group has already developed Highway Driving Pilot technology nearly comparable to Tesla's FSD, but commercialization remains stalled. Initially, the company planned to integrate the system into flagship models such as the Genesis G90 and Kia EV9, but regulatory and certification barriers forced a delay or effective cancellation of these launches.

The resignation of Song Chang-hyeon, head of Hyundai’s autonomous vehicle program and CEO of 42dot, a Hyundai-owned self-driving technology startup, underscores the difficulties the group faces in advancing its autonomous driving initiatives.

Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung recently acknowledged the gap, stating that they are “somewhat behind companies like Tesla and Chinese automakers” but “our priority remains safety, and we intend to maintain a strong focus on it.”

“The permissive regulatory landscape facilitating the unchecked proliferation of imported vehicles may place Hyundai at a structural disadvantage,” Prof. Lee said.

“It is true that Hyundai’s autonomous driving technology lags behind Tesla’s, but Korea’s regulatory framework — a restrictive model under which only enumerated actions are permitted — imposes obstacles for companies, making the development and deployment of such technology exceedingly difficult.”

Teslas are charged at a station in downtown Seoul. [YONHAP]

Loophole-fueled U.S. car rise

Homegrown manufacturers may face escalating market strains with the surging sales of U.S.-made cars. Tesla’s Korean sales from January to November nearly doubled last year’s total to 55,594, according to data from the Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association.

When combined with other U.S. brands sold in Korea, including Ford, Jeep, Cadillac, Lincoln, Chevrolet and GMC, U.S. brands sold 61,802 units.

Led by Tesla, the market share of U.S. vehicles among imported cars in Korea has steadily risen. Until 2019, it lingered in the single digits at around 9 percent. By 2020, it had climbed to 12.1 percent before reaching 15.1 percent in 2024. This year, the share is expected to exceed 20 percent.

A similar surge occurred during Trump’s first term in 2018, when regulatory relaxations facilitated higher U.S. car sales. Sales of U.S.-brand vehicles, which came to 21,277 in 2018, rose to 23,972 in 2019 and jumped 56 percent to 33,154 in 2020.

BY SARAH CHEA [[email protected]]