DETROIT/SEOUL: General Motors said it will close one of its four plants in South Korea and incur an $850 million (SR3.18 billion) impairment charge as part of a restructuring of its money-losing business in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.
The US automaker said it would decide the future of its remaining South Korean operations within weeks, amid ongoing talks with the government and labor unions on how to cut costs and make the business profitable.
“Time is short and everyone must move with urgency,” GM President Dan Ammann said.
The move is the latest in a series of steps the US automaker has taken to put profitability and innovation ahead of sales and volume. Since 2015 GM has exited unprofitable markets including Europe, Australia, South Africa and Russia.
GM would take charges against profits of $850 million to reflect the South Korean restructuring costs, including $375 million in cash related to employee expenses, the company said in a statement. Most of the financial writedowns would be recorded by the end of the second quarter.
South Korea had for years been a low-cost export hub for GM, producing close to a fifth of its global output at its peak. But sharp rises in labor costs, weakening demand for sedans, which GM Korea mainly produces, and big investments in neighboring China hurt the South Korean business’s competitiveness.
The plant shutdown is part of its broader Asia business restructuring. Excluding profits from China, GM said its Asian operations lost money in 2016. GM Korea posted a total of 1.9 trillion won in net losses between 2014 and 2016.
In recent years, GM ceased manufacturing in Australia and Indonesia, and significantly restructured its Thai operations. It is also winding down efforts to sell cars in India and is turning its manufacturing facilities there into an export hub.
The automaker’s decisions to exit other unprofitable markets have exacerbated problems for GM Korea, which used to build many of the Chevrolet models GM once offered in Europe. Declining sales of small cars in the United States have also hurt demand for Korean-made Chevrolets.
The first step in the South Korean restructuring plan is the closure of GM’s plant in Gunsan, southwest of Seoul, which employs 2,000 out of GM’s 16,000-strong South Korean workforce.
The factory was running at about 20 percent of its full production capacity last year, GM said. The automaker’s three other assembly plants in South Korea built 485,403 vehicles in 2017.
GM sells Chevrolet and Cadillac brand vehicles in Korea, and more than half the vehicles built by GM’s Korean plants are exported.
A GM Korea official said the company planned to start a voluntary retirement program for all its workers, not just those at Gunsan, from Tuesday. The official declined to be named as the decision had not been made public.
Ammann said a decision on investments in new models for the remaining South Korean plants to build depended on the government’s willingness to offer funding or other incentives, and on whether unions would agree to cut labor costs.
“If we are successful in working with our stakeholders to restructure and get to a viable cost structure, we would see an opportunity to invest” in new vehicles, Ammann said.
South Korea’s state-run development bank owns a 17 percent stake in GM Korea. The Detroit automaker owns 77 percent of the operations while GM’s main Chinese partner, SAIC Motor, controls 6.0 percent.
An official at the Korea Development Bank said GM had declined a request for an audit.
“There are some issues to be resolved to find out ways to help the company, such as a shareholder audit, but GM has not listened to us,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
General Motors to shut South Korean plant in move towards profitability
General Motors to shut South Korean plant in move towards profitability
World must prioritize resilience over disruption, economic experts warn
- Al-Jadaan said that much of the anxiety dominating markets reflected a world that had already been shifting for years
- Pointing to Asia and the Gulf, Al-Jadaan said that some countries had already built models based on diversification and resilience
DAVOS: Saudi Arabia’s Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan urged policymakers and investors to “mute the noise” and focus on resilience, as global leaders gathered in Davos on Friday against a backdrop of trade tensions, geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change.
Speaking on the final day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Al-Jadaan said that much of the anxiety dominating markets reflected a world that had already been shifting for years.
“We need to define who ‘we’ are in this so-called new world order,” he said, arguing that many emerging economies had been adapting to a more fragmented global system for decades.
Pointing to Asia and the Gulf, Al-Jadaan said that some countries had already built models based on diversification and resilience. In energy markets, he pointed out that the focus should remain on balancing supply and demand in a way that incentivized investment without harming the global economy.
“Our role in OPEC is to stabilize the market,” he said.
His remarks were echoed by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Economy and Planning Faisal Alibrahim, who said that uncertainty had weighed heavily on growth, investment and geopolitical risk, but that reality had proven more resilient.
“The economy has adjusted and continues to move forward,” Alibrahim said.
Alibrahim warned that pragmatism had become scarce, trust increasingly transactional, and collaboration more fragile. “Stability cannot be quickly built or bought,” he said.
Alibrahim called for a shift away from preserving the status quo towards the practical ingredients that made cooperation work, stressing discipline and long-term thinking even when views diverged.
Quoting Saudi Arabia’s founding King Abdulaziz Al-Saud, he added: “Facing challenges requires strength and confidence, there is no virtue in weakness. We cannot sit idle.”
President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde stressed the importance of distinguishing meaningful data from headline noise, saying: “Our duty as central bankers is to separate the signal from the noise. The real numbers are growth numbers not nominal ones.”
Managing Director of the IMF Kristalina Georgieva echoed Lagarde’s sentiments, saying that the world had entered a more “shock prone” environment shaped by technology and geopolitics.
Director General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that the global trade systems currently in place were remarkably resilient, pointing out that 72 percent of global trade continued despite disruptions.
She urged governments and businesses, however, to avoid overreacting.
Okonjo Iweala said that a return to the old order was unlikely, but trade would remain essential. Georgieva agreed, saying global trade would continue, albeit in a different form.
Georgieva warned that AI would accelerate economic transformation at an unprecedented speed. The IMF expects 60 percent of jobs to be affected by AI, either enhanced or displaced, with entry-level roles and middle-class workers facing the greatest pressure.
Lagarde warned that without cooperation, capital and data flows would suffer, undermining productivity and growth.
Al-Jadaan said that power dynamics had always shaped global relations, but dialogue remained essential. “The fact that thousands of leaders came here says something,” he said. “Some things cannot be done alone.”
In another session titled Geopolitical Risks Outlook for 2026, former US Democratic representative Jane Harman said that because of AI, the world was safer in some ways but worse off in others.
“I think AI can make the world riskier if it gets in the wrong hands and is used without guardrails to kill all of us. But AI also has enormous promise. AI may be a development tool that moves the third world ahead faster than our world, which has pretty messy politics,” she said.
American economist Eswar Prasad said that currently the world was in a “doom loop.”
Prasad said that the global economy was stuck in a negative-feedback loop and economics, domestic politics and geopolitics were only bringing out the worst in each other.
“Technology could lead to shared prosperity but what we are seeing is much more concentration of economic and financial power within and between countries, potentially making it a destabilizing force,” he said.
Prasad predicted that AI and tech development would impact growing economies the most. But he said that there was uncertainty about whether these developments would create job opportunities and growth in developing countries.
Professor of international political economy at the University of New South Wales in Australia, Elizabeth Thurbon, said that China was driving a Green Energy transition in a way that should be modeled by the rest of the world.
“The Chinese government is using the Green Energy Transition to boost energy security and is manufacturing its own energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports,” she explained.
Thurbon said that China was using this transition to boost economic security, social security and geostrategic security. She viewed this as a huge security-enhancing opportunity and every country had the ability to use the energy transition as a national security multiplier.
“We are seeing an enormous dynamism across emerging market economies driven by China. This boom loop is being driven by enormous investments in green energy. Two-thirds of global investment flowing into renewable energy is driven largely by China,” she said.
Thurbon said that China was taking an interesting approach to building relationships with countries by putting economic engagement on the forefront of what they had to offer.
“China is doing all it can to ensure economic partnership with emerging economies are productive. It’s important to approach alliances as not just political alliances but investment in economy, future and the flourishment of a state,” she said.
The panel criticized global economic treaties and laws, and expressed the need for immediate reforms in economic governing bodies.
“If you are a developing economy, the rules of the WTO, for example, are not helpful for you to develop. A lot of the rules make it difficult to pursue an economic development agenda. These regulations are not allowing the economies to grow,” Thurbon said.
“Serious reform must be made in international trade agreements, economic bodies and rules and guidelines,” she added.
Prasad echoed this sentiment and said there was a need for national and international reform in global economic institutions.
“These institutions are not working very well so we can reconfigure them or rebuild them from scratch. But unfortunately the task of rebuilding falls into the hands of those who are shredding them,” he said.
WEF attendees were invited to join the Global Collaboration and Growth meeting to be held in Saudi Arabia in April 2026 to continue addressing the complex global challenges and engage in dialogue.
