SEOUL, March 25 (Reuters) – General Motors, which received a South Korea government rescue package in 2018 to stay in the Asian country, said on Wednesday it plans to invest $600 million in its local unit to upgrade manufacturing facilities and products.
The U.S. automaker is adding a $300 million investment to another $300 million spending plan announced in December, it said.
The investment will go towards modernising its two plants in South Korea by adopting the latest models of press machines, GM said. The funds will also be spent on upgrading production capabilities, improving product quality and boosting technological competitiveness for small-size sport utility vehicles at its plants in South Korea.
The Korean unit is a “center of excellence” for production of GM’s small-size SUVs, Hector Villarreal, chief executive officer of GM Korea, said in a statement.
GM Korea sold 462,310 vehicles in 2025, mostly via exports to the United States, down 7.5% from a year earlier amid U.S. tariffs on imported automobiles.
The investment plan is a positive for the company’s Korean workers as they are still worried about a potential GM exit from South Korea, Ahn Kyu-baek, a workers’ union leader, told Reuters.
Faced with low production rates and poor sales, GM agreed on a rescue package worth $7.15 billion from the South Korean government in 2018. Under the terms of the binding deal, GM cannot exit its investment in the country for 10 years.
“The company still has not announced any plan to produce a new model of future cars like electric vehicles from its two plants in South Korea over the past years,” Ahn said.
(Reporting by Heejin Kim and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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