SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Two South Korean automakers — the Hyundai Motor Company and the Kia Motors Corporation — cut their joint 2008 sales forecast by 12.5 percent Monday and said they would freeze pay for managers amid slumping vehicle demand.

Separately, a smaller rival, the Ssangyong Motor Company, said it might not be able to meet its December payroll on time.

Hyundai and Kia said in a statement that they now expected total sales to reach 4.2 million vehicles this year, compared with an earlier forecast of 4.8 million. Overseas inventories, meanwhile, are expected to reach 1.06 million vehicles, the statement said.

The two companies, which dominate the South Korean car industry, form the world’s fifth-biggest automotive group. Kia is a Hyundai affiliate.

In addition to freezing management pay, the statement also said that beginning this week Hyundai will curtail working hours at two separate production sites, including one that manufactures buses.

Hyundai earlier this month reduced overtime for the first time since 1998.

The two automakers were in an “emergency management structure to overcome the crisis,” the statement said.

Hyundai and Kia have been expanding aggressively overseas. Hyundai has plants in China, India, Turkey, the United States and the Czech Republic. Kia has plants in China and Slovakia and is building one in Georgia, in the United States near Hyundai’s Alabama facility.

Meanwhile, Ssangyong Motor said that weakness in the automotive industry and fallout from banking and financial pressures could prevent timely payment of salaries this month.

“The company said it may be delayed,” a Ssangyong spokesman Choi Nam-hyun said, referring to its Dec. 25 payday.

Ssangyong, majority owned by China’s Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, makes the Rexton, Actyon and Musso sport utility vehicles as well as the Chairman luxury sedan.

The company’s labor union said on its Web site it had heard that SAIC refused to provide a cash infusion to the company because of union demand that management step down and the holding of a protest at the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

Choi said that negotiations with SAIC for new capital, which he described as a regular process meant for new model development, were in progress.

Ssangyong swung to a net loss of 28.2 billion won ($21.6 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a profit of 1.2 billion won in the same period last year. Ssangyong has annual production capacity of 200,000 vehicles.

Its vehicle sales during the third quarter slid 17.4 percent to 26,321.