soens
Not to spoil your fun but... Korean cars still have a ways to go before rising to Japanese level. Kia's need their engine timing belt/chain replaced around 60K miles which is a major expense most US and Japanese cars won't see before 150K-200K miles, if even then.
Most items direct from China don't last long enough to be of any real value here, which explains their low cost. I just bought a low voltage AC/DC converter on Amazon that only lasted a few hours and died.
No fun there to spoil, because I'm not saying Korean cars are at the same level as Japanese, but they have taken a good portion of the market cake in the west with their tempting price/quality ratio and 5-10 years warranties. The Japanese ones are often pricier than the German ones in Europe, so they hardly have any advantage in the price/quality-ratio. In the US I think Kia/Huyndai have about the same market share as Nissan or Honda, and bigger than WV-group (in 2011 at least). (And, according to stats Japanese cars made in the west are weaker than the ones made in Japan).
Buying gadgets directly from China doesn't tell the whole story, if your buying "blind" from an unknown manufacturer. You can buy any inexpensive accessory gadget via internet in the EU or North America, and get rubbish, and you don't always know, where the product is made. The "Made in ..." tag seldom tells the whole truth. Many (most?) quality brand phones, laptops, tablets and you name it, are made in China, Indonesia or Vietnam. And Korean and Japanese producers are using parts made in the those countries. Korea and Japan will 100% get hard rivals from those.
Maybe the problem is, as Ham N Eggs suggests, that you get what you pay for, but you need to separately express your willingness to pay for usable products only:o). If you go for the cheapest, you get the respective quality, just as it is in the west, too. But Chinese cheap is cheaper than the western cheap, both are rubbish, but Chinese is rubbisher :o/ because the western one is actually the next price-level version of the Chinese...:o/
There is nothing that prevents the Chinese from doing excellent cars, they do have the know-how for sure. It would not be good business, though, because nobody would believe they're that good and be willing to pay, they don't have the status. As in any business, you need to start by digging a market slot where you're strong/believable. And for Chinese cars, it's the cheap end, obviously. Mainly, because their first target is the home/near market, and big investments in western succes are still relatively far ahead, I think.