I keep a pair of hollow-nose slip-joint pliers that manages that ring very nicely (among many other uses). I have no idea of the technical name of that plier, but it does the trick.

As I previously noted, took me about an hour from start-to-finish. But I had good light and lots of room.

The part that gripes me about the older LG machines is that they rust, badly. After about 2015 or so, they seem to have fixed that. And the reconditioned unit that we replaced a bit ago cost us about $0.14 per load (machine only) or so, so it owed us nothing at all. Were it not for the rust, I probably would have done the necessary repairs....