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GM Korea Company () is the South Korean subsidiary of American multinational corporation General Motors and the third largest automobile manufacturer in South Korea. GM Korea's roots go back to the former Daewoo Motors vehicle brand, which was split from its parent company, Daewoo, in 2002. In addition to importing vehicles for sale into South Korea, the company also operates three manufacturing facilities producing vehicles for the domestic market and for export.
Korea Development Bank (KDB), the company's creditor, took over management in 1976 as the company found itself unable to cope with competition from Hyundai and Kia. After Daewoo gained control in 1982, the name was changed once more to Daewoo Motor. In the early 1990s the company started to expand heavily throughout the world. Until 1996 all Daewoo cars were based on GM-designed models. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis reached South Korea, Daewoo took over the troubled SUV manufacturer SsangYong Motor in 1998, but ran into financial trouble and was forced to sell the company off in 2001 to GM affiliate SAIC Motor.
On 25 November 2003, the design center was relocated to the new two-story building at the Bupyeong-gu headquarters. The first car to be produced under the GM Daewoo nameplate was the 2002 Daewoo Lacetti, replacing the Daewoo Nubira. This car was developed in South Korea under the Daewoo Motor era, but it gradually became a GM world car, sold under many different marques all around the globe. After a few years without any new cars to present, in 2005, GM Daewoo introduced the Holden-based Statesman luxury car replacing the discontinued Daewoo Chairman. The third generation of Daewoo Matiz was introduced, refreshed by the GM Daewoo design team, and an evolution of the four-door Daewoo Kalos appeared: the Gentra.
In early 2006, GM Daewoo presented Daewoo Tosca, the replacement of the Daewoo Magnus. GM Daewoo's official press releases says that Tosca is an acronym for "Tomorrow Standard Car". The end of the same year, GM Daewoo introduced the Daewoo Winstorm, its first proper sport utility vehicle (SUV), which was, as the Lacetti, sold worldwide under different brands and names including Opel Antara, Chevrolet Captiva and Holden Captiva, and previously Saturn Vue before the demise of the Saturn brand in 2010. It featured a common rail Diesel engine for the first time in a Daewoo vehicle, in addition to regular four and six cylinder gasoline engines. The diesel engine design was licensed from the Italian engine maker VM Motori.
2007 saw the introduction of the Lacetti and Kalos hatchback facelift's wagon version, becoming the Gentra X. For 2008, GM Daewoo introduced the first Korean-branded roadster: the Saturn Sky sports car, a badge-engineered Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky which was based on the GM Kappa platform, and started to sell the Opel Antara under the name of Daewoo Winstorm. The Statesman flagship was also replaced by the new Daewoo Veritas which is now based on the Holden Caprice V. In 2008, GM Korea built more than 1.9 million vehicles, including CKD products.
Late 2008 and early 2009 were a major period for GM Daewoo with the introduction of the all-new Chevrolet Cruze, which is based on the Chevrolet Cruze, a very important compact car for GM divisions worldwide. The newly rechristened third generation of the Matiz was added to the range in 2009 as the Chevrolet Spark.
2010 saw the introduction of the Chevrolet Orlando and Alpheon, a local version of the Buick LaCrosse.
GM's luxury division Cadillac entered South Korea in 1996 and, with a record sales year of 28,000 units in 2017, South Korea became the fifth largest market for Cadillac worldwide (after China, the United States, Canada and the Middle East).
In 2011, the Daewoo Tosca was replaced by a locally built version of the Chevrolet Malibu.
More recently, the low annual incomes a result of lower levels of sales, led to closing the non-profitable factories of the GM Korea unit.
In 2019, GM Korea split its R&D unit, GM Technical Center Korea (GMTCK), into a separate firm despite protests by unions worried about potential layoffs at factories. General Motors announced on 16 February 2020 that "as part of a strategy to exit markets that don't produce adequate returns on investments" it was exiting from all left-hand drive markets worldwide, including Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. This coincided with the demise in 2020 of the Holden brand, hitherto a large distributor of GM Korea products.
In April 2022, GM Korea's Bupyeong 2 plant was closed due to reduced productivity. The Spark and Malibu were to be discontinued in the South Korean market by August 2022.
The Bolt EV and Bolt EUV were discontinued in the South Korean market on 1 December 2023.
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