There's nothing new in this phenomenon of "shoddy-built" ships being built by yards in emergent shipbuilding nations. Some of the Korean yards turned out some "horrors" in the early stages of their learning curve. Sometimes, though, these 'inexperienced' yards fell victim to "deadweight-greedy", western owners (sometimes aided and abetted by classification societies) who were demanding such reduced scantlings for their vessels that the technology and build quality required to safely attain these scantlings was pushing at the limits of the yards' experience and expertise.
There were also stories of "jerry-built ships" from Japan in the early years, and from the Soviet-bloc countries, but some of these had to be taken with a pinch of salt because of prejudice from the countries whose shipbuilding industries were suffering due to the arrival of these "cheapie" newcomers.