The U.S. automaker General Motors Co. will invest fresh $50 million to expand its plant in South Korea as part of efforts to place GM Korea, its Korean operation that was saved on the verge of bankruptcy, back on track.

GM Korea said Friday that GM will inject $50 million for expansion of its Bupyeong plant, west of Seoul. The investment will ramp up the facility’s annual production output capacity by 75,000 units by next year. The new assembly lines will mainly produce compact SUV Trax.

The investment will also include hiring 100 new engineers, bringing GM Korea’s total research and development workforce to more than 3,000, according to the company.

A GM Korea official said the new investment is in addition to $3.6 billion pledged in May and GM Korea will also lead the project of designing and developing GM’s next-generation compact SUV model.

Earlier in May, GM and the Korean government agreed to inject a total of $7.15 billion to provide much-needed liquidity to GM Korea, with $6.4 billion from GM and the remainder from state-run Korea Development Bank. The Detroit- based automaker, vowing to commit new models in the Korean operation to accelerate its turnaround, promised to spend a total of fresh $3.6 billion to upgrade and expand GM Korea’s facilities.

The U.S. automaker is also getting ready to relocate its Asia Pacific headquarters to Korea from Singapore by the end of this year as it pledged earlier this year to nurture GM Korea as the region’s key base for the automaker’s production, sales, and technology development. The new Asia Pacific headquarters in Korea will oversee business of the region’s markets excluding China.

By Lee Seung-hoon and Cho Jeehyun

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