The Kia Boys

Why Kias and Hyundais are being targeted, and what this means for the Korean carmaker

Reminder: Until Christmas, you can get a free signed copy of Little Brother if you buy any of my books, including, yes, Little Brother, which was just named a Top 10 nonfiction book of the year by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

When I first heard about the “Kia Boys” gang, I wondered why they didn’t associate themselves with a higher-end car, like a Mercedes or Lexus. But then I learned they steal Kias, as well as Hyundais, which are owned by the same company, and that it is remarkably simple, involving just a screwdriver and a USB cable.

That’s because recent models of these cars lack something called an “engine immobilizer,” designed to foil car thefts. Apparently they were removed as a cost-cutting measure, and this glitch in the matrix was publicized in a Tik Tok challenge. As the Kia Boys gained notoriety on the internet untold numbers of Kias and Hyundais were stolen, inspiring a class action lawsuit.

The complaint says that virtually every carmaker over the last 20 years has used [engine immobilizers], and yet Kia and Hyundai did not — hence the easy car swiping by children.

The Kia Boys and their copycats around the country tend to be, yes, children, because minors are less likely to receive serious jail time.

In an intrepid documentary about the group — filmed in Milwaukee, home to the original gang — one Kia Boy says those caught tend to serve only three week stints. He claims “hundreds” of Kia Boys exist in Milwaukee, alongside “Sonata Boys,” which sounds oddly beautiful. Gunplay, violence, crashes, and even flipping are common outcomes from these thefts. The cars are sometimes “chopped” for profits, but sometimes simply taken for joyrides or parked in the garages of abandoned houses. (Another reason Kia Boys trend young is because many don’t possess cars of their own.)

The Kia Boys are particularly active in St. Louis. According to the St. Louis Police Department, in August, 2022 alone there were “393 reported theft and attempted thefts involving Hyundais and 269 involving Kias.” That month the city of St. Louis threatened to sue the Kia and Hyundai if they didn’t address the problem.

The excellent Riverfront Times reporter Ryan Krull has documented this crime wave, including a police helicopter pursuit of a Hyundai Santa Fe, at which time, “the teens exited the Hyundai and entered a Kia Optima that was also reported stolen.” Then there is the much more disturbing trend of Kia Boys using stolen cars to smash through walls of St. Louis gun stores, in order to loot the hardware.

My friend, the rapper Kosta Longmire, has a personal connection to this story, as his nephew recently became the subject of a viral video entitled, “#KiaBoyz Member Caught Sleeping In Stolen Kia.” In the video his cousin, 14, lies on the ground in shame after being caught by the owner of the car. “What you want to do in life, man?” the car owner asks. “You want to be a real estate agent? This gonna fuck you up, stealing…We doing this to each other, man.”

Kosta says that his nephew, who’s currently incarcerated, is not actually a Kia Boy, and in fact the Kia Boys don’t exist in St. Louis. There are plenty of people stealing Kias, but not in an organized way, he says. Because the local landscape is so crowded with established gangs, there isn’t room for a new clique. “St. Louis gangs and groups are kinda set,” he says.

Car theft in St. Louis has been incredibly common for decades. Previously, thieves targeted older models of American cars, Kosta says, with windows easier to jimmy. He continues:

With the old Dodges and Chevys, you could use a screwdriver. That would get the windows down and get you in the door…You just create a big enough hole inside the ignition where you can literally just turn it with the screwdriver, and the car will start. And you would keep the screwdriver as the key. And that was how everybody I grew up with stole cars. It got to the point where if the police stopped you with a screwdriver in your pocket, they would put the case of the stolen car on you.

“The newer type cars, people never really stole,” Kosta adds, noting that they tended to have alarms and more-sophisticated locks. That changed with the Kia Boys phenomenon, though its company says the engine immobilizers became standard on Kias and Hyundais as of November, 2021.

Still, I can’t imagine worse publicity for a company that was starting to gain major traction. I’d always thought of Hyundais as basically knock-off Hondas, right down to their logo, but as I learned from former Hyundai PR executive Frank Aherns’ excellent memoir, Seoul Man, the vertically-integrated Korean conglomerate has invigorated the brand in the last ten or fifteen years, owing to bold design and engineering choices.

These choices were inspired by the market in China, where Hyundai was largely dominant in the early 2000s. Eventually, however, they could no longer compete with the hundreds of homegrown companies who could sell their cars for rock bottom prices, since they were subsidized by the government. And so Hyundai decided to move their entire brand “up” the value chain, poaching a German designer to give the cars a more space-age look, and launching the Genesis model to compete with BMW and Audi.

This strategy has been remarkably successful, particularly in the US, though that now seems in jeopardy owing to the immobilizers snafu. But though Kias and Hyundais have received the negative publicity, other cars are likely vulnerable as well. In fact, in the Kia Boys documentary, the filmmaker lets a Kia Boy into his vehicle — a Chevy —to show him how the theft is done. The Kia Boy goes through the motions with incredible muscle memory, finally grabbing the filmmaker’s own USB cable out of his charging station to turn the engine over.

“If you have a Hyundai or a Kia, you’re never supposed to leave a [USB cable in the car],” he explains. “See how fast I reached right here? It’s an instinct.”