Pardon me, is that a Daewoo on Your Roof?
South Korean carmaker Daewoo International, founded in 1967 by Kim Woo-Choong, a figure seen as something of the Henry Ford of Seoul, looked to diversify into other avenues of manufacturing in the 1970s. This led to a spin-off, Daewoo Precision Industries, which soon launched an effort to gen up a modern rifle/carbine that could replace both the license-produced M16A1 and WWII/1950s-vintage M3 Grease Guns, M1 Garands, and M1 Carbines in ROK service.
The effort, borrowing a little from just about every modern autoloading rifle that preceded it, resulted in the Daewoo K-series rifles, which were adopted in the early 80s. These interesting guns, which used a DGI system in its first generation before moving to an adjustable gas piston setup for the second, were imported in sporter format to the U.S. in two brief runs from 1984-89 and 1995-96, making them hard to find for black rifle collectors here in America.
But they are distinctive in every way.
More in my column at Guns.com.
