Hoyeon Learned to Drift a Hyundai Stellar for Hope

Hoyeon did not arrive on the set of Hope knowing how to slide a 1980s police sedan. She already held an automatic driving licence, but the Hyundai Stellar waiting for her was a manual, rear-drive stunt car. She earned the licence she needed, trained with a racing instructor, and learned to make the old sedan rotate on cue.

The result arrived in Korean theaters on July 15. Hoyeon plays police officer Sung-ae in director Na Hong-jin's science-fiction thriller, set around an isolated community near the Demilitarized Zone. The film had premiered in competition at Cannes two months earlier, where reviews disagreed about its 160-minute scale but repeatedly singled out the practical chase work.

Plus M Entertainment's new making-of video shows how much of that work belonged to Hoyeon. In interviews, she said she performed the road drifts, right turns, and left turns herself. A stunt specialist handled a narrow-alley maneuver around real buildings. That distinction makes the achievement more credible: she learned the repeatable driving the production could safely put in her hands, while the highest-risk shot stayed with a specialist.

Her licence was preparation, not a stunt credential. Korea's Class 1 Ordinary category covers manual passenger vehicles and several larger vehicle classes. Hoyeon passed the manual test on her first attempt, then worked with an instructor to translate basic control into camera-ready movement. The Stellar's interior had also been repaired, and the production prepared the car to drift, though no reliable source has detailed its engine, suspension, brakes, or safety equipment.

The square-edged sedan carries its own history. Hyundai launched the Stellar in 1983 as its second independently developed passenger model after the Pony. Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign shaped the body, while the rear-drive mechanical roots reached back to Hyundai's licensed Ford Cortina production. The first Sonata arrived in 1985 as an upscale Stellar before the name moved onto a separate front-drive generation.

That family tree gives the film an unexpected North American connection. The Stellar reached Canada during Hyundai's early export push, before the less expensive Pony Excel opened the brand's U.S. chapter. For some Canadian families, it represented an unfamiliar Korean company learning how to compete against established Japanese and domestic sedans. Four decades later, the same shape reads as Korean period texture rather than a budget-car curiosity.

Hope uses the car as more than background dressing. Hyundai sponsored the film and supported the Stellar's appearance as the police vehicle driven by Sung-ae and Hwang Jung-min's Bum-seok. The exact financial and technical support remains undisclosed, so the safest reading is also the most interesting one: a modern global automaker saw value in letting an old, imperfect sedan make noise again.

Hyundai has been revisiting this era for several years. It supplied 1980s cars and locations for Seoul Vibe, restored a Stellar 88 for a 2025 heritage exhibition, and backed the vehicle-shot short film Night Fishing. Hope puts that archive in an actor's hands instead of behind a velvet rope.

Hoyeon, known internationally by her single professional name after Squid Game, spent six months preparing for her first feature-film role. Her account of the driving is refreshingly physical: licences, repetition, an instructor, and a real manual gearbox. She also described asking the aging Stellar for one more take, as if driver and machine had to negotiate the scene together.

The story of South Korea's underground car scene shows how imported influences became local culture. Hyundai's own journey from the Stellar to today's family crossovers traces another side of that change. In Hope, the old sedan gets a simpler assignment: stay running, hit the mark, and let Hoyeon throw it sideways.