General Motors(GM) shut down one of its plants under its South Korean unit GM Korea on Thursday, ending 22 years of production.

In a move to restructure operations at home and abroad, GM closed down the plant in the southwestern city of Gunsan, which saw its utilization rate plunge to 20 percent from 2016 amid rising labor costs.

With production shut down, only 38 GM employees will remain at the plant for maintenance.

While one-thousand-200 employees have voluntarily resigned, the carmaker is considering relocating 200 of the remaining 680 workers to other plants, and paying the remainder monthly unemployment benefits of up to one-point-eight million won for three years.

In February, GM announced its plan to shut down one of its four car assembly plants in South Korea by May and asked the other biggest shareholder of its Korean unit, the state-run Korea Development Bank(KDB), for financial support.

Early this month, GM and the KDB agreed on a combined seven-point-seven trillion-won lifeline to keep the loss-making Korean unit afloat.