HL Group blog wins grand prize at Social Eye Awards 2026

HL Group announced Thursday that its blog "HL Mobility Labs" won the grand prize in the corporate category at the Social Eye Awards 2026.

The Social Eye Awards, now in its eighth year, is South Korea's largest social media awards ceremony, recognizing outstanding brand-building efforts on social platforms each year. This year, 296 companies entered 338 social media channels.

HL Group overhauled the blog in December last year at the direction of its editors, shifting the focus to technology content centered on autonomous driving, software-defined vehicles and robotics. In March this year, more than 30 specialist researchers from across the auto sector — including HL Mando Chief Technology Officer Vice President Bae Hong-yong — contributed articles directly.

Since the content overhaul, cumulative visitors, including general users, surpassed 50,000, and the rate of traffic arriving via AI search rose more than 90 percent compared with the same period last year.

"This award carries great significance because it points to a new direction for blogs in the generative AI era — going beyond conventional search engine optimization," an HL Group official said.

The group's Instagram account, "HL World," also broadened its reach by weaving the HL brand campaign "I Believe in Myself" — which reached about 25 million people — into its content in a distinctive way while sharing the group's technology updates. More than 5,400 people took part in follower events, and the account surpassed 1 million views so far this year.

With the Instagram prize, HL Group claimed the top award in the large-enterprise category on its first entry, adding it to the blog grand prize to become the first double winner at the ceremony.

Meanwhile, HL Group has also been actively nurturing startups, recently selecting three promising companies through its open-innovation initiative across five areas: mobility and autonomous driving, robotics, AI, smart construction and logistics.