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| Kia Motors general manager Sim Dong-seob / Courtesy of Kia Motors |
According to the company, Sim passed the sales milestone recently after selling a Sorento SUV as the 4,000th vehicle. He joined Kia Motors in 1994 and in 26 years sold 4,000 vehicles, meaning he sold an average 150 vehicles per year.
"No matter how long it takes and no matter what happens, I tried to keep the promises I made with customers," Sim said. "I pushed myself to achieve goals set by myself every year and this helped a lot."
Sim is working at a Kia Motors showroom in Gwangju, and the company presented him a K9 sedan in recognition of the achievement.
Kia Motors awards dealers for great sales achievements. Those who sell more than 2,000 vehicles receive a Star award, over 3,000 a Master award, over 4,000 a Grand Master award and 6,000 a Great Master award.
Including Sim, there are only 14 Grand Master dealers, and two of them have since become Great Masters ― Cheong Song-ju and Park Gwang-ju. Park, who became the first car dealer in Korea to sell more than 8,000 vehicles in 2018, drew keen attention last year as his annual salary of 1.07 billion won in 2018 was higher than that of the company's CEO Park Han-woo with 1.03 billion won.
In the second quarter of this year, Kia Motors sold 161,548 vehicles in Korea and 354,502 in overseas markets. The domestic number increased 26.8 percent year-on-year helped by the government's tax benefits for car purchase along with release of new models including the K5, the Sorento and the Seltos.
In overseas markets, however, sales declined 39.7 percent year-on-year as plant operations and dealer activities were halted for COVID-19 shutdowns. The total number of sales for the second quarter was 516,050, down 27.8 percent from a year earlier.
