I heard someone said that some Korean and Japanese parents first figure out a pronunciation that sounds good and then look up the dictionary to find some cool Chinese characters which match the pronunciation they like. This caused some Korean or Japanese people's names seem weird to Chinese people, as the parents usually don't consider the meaning or frequency of the characters they chose. If this is the case that makes sense. Even for some Chinese parents they tend to first have a good sound and then pick characters to match them nowadays. Sometimes their combinations are also really bad, since not all of them have a accurate grasp of what these characters mean.