GM Korea's roots go back to the remnants of the Korean War and Shinjin Motors, which launched its business by rebuilding scrapped US military vehicles.

The new company started operations on 17 October 2002, with GM and its partners Suzuki and SAIC holding a stake of 66.7% with investments of US$400 million.

[5] The remaining equity stake of 33.3% was held by Korea Development Bank and several other Korean creditors with investments of US$197 million.

The third generation of Matiz was introduced, refreshed by the GM Daewoo design team, and an evolution of the four-door Kalos appeared: the Gentra.

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 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.

The Statesman flagship was also replaced by the new Veritas which is now based on the Holden Caprice V. In 2008, GM Korea built more than 1.9 million vehicles, including CKD products.

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 2017, General Motors finalized its move out of the European market by selling the Opel and Vauxhall brands to PSA Group (now part of Stellantis).

This coincided with the demise in 2020 of the Holden brand, hitherto a large distributor of GM Korea products.