A Kia Boy is an overarching term used to describe the groups of teenagers that are actively stealing Kia’s and Hyundai’s in major cities across the country. The term teenager is used in its true meaning. The ages of those arrested in these grand theft autos have ranged from 11 to 16. Originally coming to mainstream notoriety in Minneapolis, Minnesota; where it started to make appearances on local news and was covered in a YouTube documentary (below) that was seen hundreds of thousands of times.

            The trend began to spread after a Tik Tok video went viral showing how easy it was to steal any Kia or Hyundai made between 2015-2019. If the plastic covering over the ignition where the key is used it reveals a rectangular slot that allows a USB charger to be used as a key to start the vehicle.

Easy as that. With that Tik Tok example, new Kia Boys popped up in Detroit, Austin, and other cities across the middle of the country.

            With the primary participants being so young, it means that the legal consequences are not that great, but the physical ones are. Being kids, they are not good drivers. Which is something you don’t think of. It is assumed that if you are committing grand theft auto you would have some sort of experience driving a car, but no. Kia’s are being crashed and kids are being killed. Wrapped around trees, bodies ejected from cars, crashing into school buses full of children.

            Like any scene with a cool name the Kia Boys, they have their own form of music to accompany their lawless summer vacation. Distributed across social media platforms by rappers with names that rarely make sense.

            One thing that does stand out about the Kia Boys is that there is really nothing to gain for them. They do not sell the cars or steal from them; they just take them for a spin. Show off to their friends. Jerk the steering wheel right to left quickly to make it shake as they say. Then they crash it or get bored and leave it wherever they see fit.

And I guess they’ll just keep doing it until they’re tired of it, or Hyundai and Kia decide they will actually make a fix to the car to make them harder to steal.