A WALL STREET JOURNAL News Roundup

                    SEOUL, South Korea -- Banks threatened to withhold loans to Daewoo
                    Motor Co. -- a move that could force the heavily indebted auto maker
                    into bankruptcy -- unless the company's labor union agrees to
                    restructuring.

                    Daewoo Motor must pay $155 million in debts coming due within a
                    week, and the company would go bankrupt without quick new loans
                    from the creditor banks, said Uhm Rak Yong, president of Korea
                    Development Bank, Daewoo Motor's main creditor.

                    Daewoo Motor's hardline labor union opposes restructuring demanded
                    by potential foreign investors, including U.S. auto maker General Motors
                    Corp. Under such circumstances credit banks can't provide new funds,
                    Mr. Uhm said.

                    Resistance by hardline labor is seen as a major obstacle to South
                    Korea's efforts to liquidate or sell debt-strapped businesses to restore
                    foreign investors' confidence in the economy.

                    About 500 workers set fire to seven trucks
                    during a protest rally Friday evening after credit
                    banks said they would liquidate or sell Samsung
                    Motor's truck-making plant and 51 other
                    troubled companies.

                    "We oppose liquidation," the Samsung workers
                    chanted at their plant in Taegu, central South
                    Korea. Liquidation occurs when a company's
                    account is settled by apportioning assets to
                    creditors.

                    The car businesses of Daewoo Motor and
                    Samsung have become symbols of South
                    Korea's reckless expansion on borrowed
                    money.

                    Samsung sold its passenger-car operation to
                    Renault SA of France early this year. On Friday,
                    banks said that Samsung's truck-making
                    operation was also nonviable and must be
                    liquidated.

                    Daewoo Motor is now surviving on emergency funds from credit banks
                    trying to sell the company to a foreign investor. GM is negotiating with
                    Daewoo Motor's credit banks after Ford Motor Co. pulled out of a deal
                    to acquire Daewoo Motor in September.

                    If Daewoo Motor is declared bankrupt, it would further complicate
                    sell-off negotiations with GM, Mr. Uhm said.

                    There was no immediate reaction from Daewoo Motor's labor union. But
                    the union has threatened strikes if their company is sold to a foreign
                    investor. They fear such a takeover would result in massive layoffs.

                    Daewoo Motor has the capacity to make two million vehicles a year in
                    plants stretching from the Philippines to Poland. Last year, it lost $3.9
                    billion on revenues of $5 billion.

                    The nation's umbrella union groups threatened to organize strikes to
                    protest the government's corporate reforms.

                    On Friday, creditor banks released the list of 52 firms they deemed
                    nonviable and planned to liquidate, sell off or put under court
                    receivership. The 52 were selected from among 287 companies whose
                    future has been in question with huge amounts of debts.

                    On Sunday, South Korean Finance Minister Jin Nyum said Daewoo Motor
                    needed drastic reforms to survive.

                    "Daewoo Motor's reform efforts in the past year were unsatisfactory,"
                    Mr. Jin told a recorded talk show with state-run Korea Broadcasting
                    System television. "If the company fails to carry out drastic self-rescue
                    plans, it will not survive."

                    He said both management and labor should share the burden. "Without
                    an agreement between the two sides, the current sales talks with
                    General Motors could go awry," he said.