GM Daewoo had 210 foreign executives as of the end of February, data shows. A subsidiary of General Motors, GM Daewoo published the figures at the request of its labor union.

That was 17 times more than the 12 foreign executives at Renault Samsung and almost the same as the entire 250 executives at the headquarters of Hyundai Motor, the world¡¯s fifth largest automaker in terms of sales.

There is a growing criticism that GM Daewoo has too many executives given that it is a production-centered subsidiary of GM. Hyundai has 250 executives for 56,000 personnel whereas GM Daewoo has 400 executives out of 17,000, a full five times more per production worker.

A GM Daewoo executive who asked not to be named said, "Foreign executives dispatched from headquarters are deployed in almost every department of GM Daewoo, but they mainly do the same work as Korean executives. Employees are forced to share the pain, but no efforts are made to cut cost by managerial executives."

Korea Development Bank, which was asked for financial support by the automaker, is raising doubts over the executives' efforts to cut costs. "We think executives at GM Daewoo should make more self-resuscitating efforts before receiving support from us," a senior figure at the bank said.

But GM Daewoo PR executive director Kim Jong-do said some foreign executives at GM Daewoo are paid by GM headquarters or Asia Pacific headquarters and their main job is associated with global affairs, "so in a sense it's difficult to say exactly how much money they cost GM Daewoo."