GM union faces big job losses but South Koreans don't care about it

When Lee Bum-yeon lost his job along with nearly 2,000 other union workers in 2001 after South Korea's Daewoo Motor went bankrupt, his neighbours at supermarkets and bakeries gave his young daughters free snacks and bread.

"People felt sorry. People felt heart-broken. They were worried how we were going to make a living," 55-year-old Lee said.

Now, with General Motors cutting some 2,600 jobs and threatening to leave South Korea in the absence of steep union concessions, the once sympathetic public is nowhere to be seen.

"I don't think anyone is feeling for us anymore," a grim-faced Lee, who was rehired by GM a year after it bought Daewoo in 2002, told Reuters outside GM's Bupyeong factory near Seoul.

South Korea's reputation for militant unions and rigid labour practices has long been cited as contributing to high labour costs and a persistent discount for corporate Korea. Shares of South Korean companies are typically undervalued in comparison to their global peers, a phenomenon known as the "Korea Discount".