All I can say is you buy second hand cars and you bear the risk. It all depends on how the original owner maintain the car. Plenty of people got burned too buying second hand Japanese or local brands. A 5 year old cats are usually the time where major parts need to be changed and that’s why people change cars after 5 or 6 years. Maybe I was lucky as even driving Getz for 6 years and Accent for 7 years, I did not encounter any major parts replacement problems.

As for parts, like I say it’s all original and it’s more costly than local or the 2 famous Japanese brand because they have non original parts.

The biggest problem with Korean brands is they got screwed by Malaysian distributors. Kia was badly handled by Naza while Hyundai distribution was not united until Sime Darby took over the whole franchise. Sime Darby is one of the worse car distributor in Malaysia as they have too many brands under their care. Over time, the sales never picked up and Korea never really bothered with Malaysian market.

If Korean cars are so bad, they would not have penetrated the western car markets including US. Malaysian has always been stuck with the mentality of Japanese cars are the best. You can see the same happening to China cars as well but China brands seems to be trying very hard to change that mentality.

see many old japanese cars or korean cars?

yea the parts are more expensive than japanese brands.
i have an old matrix & vios still driving around not much issue same same as japanese car just that its more expensive on the maintenance.

It’s more due to distributor. Sales volume is not big enough like Japanese cars where they can store lots of parts.

yea, even for the old car its quite alright.
I did try the KIA forte last time but i feel the steering bit too light.
KIA RIO has feels weird ,gearbox like it hesistates to change gears when i test drove my friends car when he bought new few years back.

Korean cars are generally pretty reliable nowadays. The most serious one is some KIA model might run into ecu problem few years later which requires a repair but nothing major.

I think if you're okay with heavier fuel consumption, then you can buy a Korean car. I personally prefer the seats on korean cars, more ergonomically compared to Japanese namely T and H. Korean cars generally came better fit internally such as auto headlight and wiper. Heater also included. Sun roof. Other than pricing, there's really not much between Japanese and Korean cars.

4 gears and they were long gears. It's a design choice. Vios (Old model) on the other hand also had 4 gears but shorter gear ratio. Not only that, vios is also lighter by 100kg iirc. Hence the old vios is very responsive up to 120kmh.

Later breakdown, no spare parts, need wait few months to come. And then expensive spare parts.
Even China cars better lah.

I saw that the USA made Korean cars all had serious oil burning issues, that dealerships refuse to fix, giving all kinds of excuses to not honor the warranty. Apparently then newer SmartStream engine fixes this. Not sure if Malaysian CKD models have this issue too?