India summons South Korea envoy over Hyundai Pakistan tweet

India has summoned South Korea's ambassador to India to convey its strong displeasure over a social media post by a Pakistani partner of Hyundai Motor over Kashmir, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

The foreign ministers of India and South Korea also spoke by telephone as the car company faced a backlash in India from customers incensed over the comments expressing solidarity with the people of Kashmir in their struggle for self-determination.


Earlier in the day the Korean auto major unequivocally condemned a post by an independent distributor in Pakistan on its official Twitter and Facebook handles, announcing “solidarity with Kashmir”.

This is the second statement issued by the company amid mounting pressure on social media in India. “As a business policy, Hyundai Motor Company does not comment on political or religious issues in any specific region. Therefore, it is clearly against Hyundai Motor’s policy that the independently owned distributor in Pakistan made unauthorised Kashmir-related social media posts from their own accounts,” HMC said.

“Once the situation was brought to our attention, we made the distributor acutely aware of the inappropriateness of the action. We have since taken measures to ensure the distributor, which misused the Hyundai brand identity, has removed the social media posts and we have put in place processes to prevent a further recurrence,” the statement added.