You first points is not a property of the food style, just bad cooking.

The bland meat seems to be endemic among Korean fried chicken places here (and I'm talking chain restaurants, which are supposed to be more consistent) — I'm not sure if it's the food style or cooking skill.

I've tried Korean fried chicken quite few times and I was disappointed. We even supposedly have quite a bit of good Korean restaurants here, but alas KFC or even air-fried frozen chicken always won me.

What city have you tried it in? Its relatively new in the US and it was becoming trendy so there are a lot of places that still do a pretty bad job since most people don't have a baseline. Its basically like sushi 15 years ago. So far in Chicago, I've only found one place that comes close to what I had in Tokyo's Koreatown (which admittedly isn't actually Korea)

Auckland, NZ. Plenty of good (and cheap btw) Korean food here. Just not fried chicken. Or Vietnamese.

Have you tried the Almond Chicken at Pocha?

I remember going to place perhaps right next to it was being unimpressed for countless time. Might try soon!

Though whenever I'm in CBD I go to Boracay Garden - filipino food was my biggest discovery in NZ (admittedly it's only two same dishes - pork sisig and chicken adobo).