Why BYD is selling so well

Why would anyone buy a BYD when the "prestige" of driving a Chinese car is below zero? If you think from the customer's perspective, the answer is easy.
Let's consider the median person in their late 20s to early 30s. This would be Mr. Kim, a young worker at a small-to-medium enterprise living in Gumi, Gyeongbuk, earning 2.6 million KRW per month, with 50 million KRW in assets and 3 years of work experience. He needs a car to commute to his workplace located in an outlying industrial complex. Mr. Kim begins his search to buy a car.
He looks into used cars the conventional way. Risking being scammed, he goes onto Encar. An Avante CN7 that is 5 years old is priced over 15 million KRW. A "Samgak-tte" (Avante AD facelift) that is nearly 10 years old is over 12 million KRW. He turns his eyes to compact cars, but even an old Morning is over 9 million KRW. He wants to avoid compact cars and was considering the Samgak-tte, but the maintenance costs and residual value seem daunting. Will a dealer even buy an Avante with 12 years of age and 200,000 km on it in 5 years? And what about being ripped off by used car dealers? Even when he goes to HeyDealer, which is relatively safe, the prices are almost no different from new cars.
Mr. Kim makes a big decision and looks at new cars. A base-model Morning is 14 million KRW, and a full-option one is 19 million KRW, but options like Around View Monitor aren't even available. An Avante base model is 24 million KRW, but it lacks a cluster and navigation. The higher Inspiration trim is 31 million KRW, but Hi-pass and a dashcam are extra options. Mr. Kim's entire net worth is 50 million KRW; if he buys the Inspiration, what will he have left? He turns his eyes to Renault Samsung (Renault Korea). It's just a Chinese car with a rebadged name, but the price is that of a domestic car. Faced with Renault Samsung's flashy lineup of "junk" cars, Mr. Kim turns his eyes back to Hyundai/Kia.
Mr. Kim decides to blow his entire fortune on an Avante. But now, maintenance costs become an issue. How much can Mr. Kim, earning 2.6 million KRW a month, invest in a car? Since it's a mid-size class, upgrading to a 2.0 naturally aspirated engine has also increased the automobile tax. It looks like it will cost at least 500,000 KRW a month. That's more than 20% of his salary flying away.
At this moment, electric vehicles catch Mr. Kim's eye. However, EVs are about 20 million KRW more expensive than internal combustion engine cars. Even considering maintenance costs, he would have to drive the car for 8 years to break even. The Casper Electric, which costs 20 million KRW after subsidies, catches his eye, but delivery takes over a year and getting subsidies isn't easy. In this situation, the last thing that catches Mr. Kim's eye is the BYD Dolphin.
In Mr. Kim's scenario, the BYD Dolphin is the most economically rational choice. That is why people buy it even if the BYD logo is attached. This is the type of person buying BYD, and BYD has overcome the disastrous image of Chinese cars to hit the 20,000 units per month mark, with sales skyrocketing. It is no coincidence that Avante and Renault Samsung sales were devastated during the same period. It's not as if 20,000 new monthly consumers suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Hyundai/Kia should stop whining about not being able to compete on price and should actively defend the low-end market, and the government must protect the market, even if it means significantly increasing subsidies. If things continue this way, Renault Samsung is set to collapse soon, and we have already experienced several times what happens when even a single factory closes. To compete with China, the state has no choice but to provide protection.