HYUNDAI Motor Co and Kia Motors Corp, South Korea's two biggest car makers, began cutting production at overseas factories as the global recession and tighter credit saps demand for cars.

Hyundai will reduce output in all four factories overseas this month, company spokesman Jake Jang said by phone yesterday in Seoul. Kia has been adjusting output in China and Slovakia since late October, spokesman Michael Choo said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

Hyundai and Kia join Toyota Motor Corp and other Asian auto makers in curtailing production as concerns of job losses and lack of credit deter consumers from showrooms. All five South Korean car makers are building fewer vehicles than planned this month.

'Even Toyota is cutting production. Hyundai and other Korean car makers can't avoid that, either,' said Yun Tae Sik, a Seoul-based analyst at Dongbu Securities Co. 'At a time like this, it doesn't matter whose sales are falling the least.' Neither Hyundai nor Kia gave details about the output cuts.

Hyundai's sales in the United States, its biggest overseas market, tumbled 40 percent in November, while sales at Kia dropped 37 percent from a year earlier.

Hyundai runs plants in China, India, Turkey and the US with a combined annual capacity of 1.6 million vehicles. It's about to open a new factory in the Czech Republic, where it began test production recently.

Kia initially planned to build 225,000 vehicles in Slovakia.