I mean, Toyota and Hyundai make cars in the South, so that particular lesson has been learned before

Are we lumping up modern Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese culture into one now?

From a western perspective, everything people say about the Chinese (regarding culture, "bad products", cheap immitations, low quality, and so on) had been said about the Japanese in the 50s to 70s, the Taiwanese 80s to 90s, and the Koreans 90s to 00ss. In all cases it was followed by "they are now better and cheaper than us" and "they take our jobs".

Besides, this discussion is not about their respective cultures in general, but about manufacturing styles and working conditions, which are indeed, and even by necessity, similar.

Not that they don't also have shared history, interactions and cultural exchanges going back thousands of years. So, yeah, even that would be more like comparing Argentina and Uruguay, or comparing US and Canada, or France and Belgium, and so on, than some unfathomable comparison.

Surely in terms of work culture they're more similar to each other than any of them are to North American work culture? That's the culture we're all talking about here.

Wasn’t there a documentary about this or something? I swear I’ve seen this premise play out somewhere.

Maybe American Factory (2019) or Gung Ho (1986). The latter isn't a documentary though.

I think the former was it. I only caught clips of it, but the previous comment basically summed up what I saw.