If by "local" you mean as a national trend. I still stand by my statements, if a friend of mine in this country were considering tkd for self defense, id tell him to consider another style because statistically in this country tkd is overrun with glorified daycares and mcdojos.So it's not Taekwondo that's bad, but the way it is trained local to you. Taekwondo is what it is, just because it's trained one way local to you doesn't change the truth of what it actually is. It seems that TKD in the US compared to internationally represents a rather different and misleading picture of Taekwondo as a martial art, so generalisations based on local experiences are also likely to be misleading.
I Can't speak about tkd overseas but I'm not certain it's better, but I won't go as far to say something I'm not certain of. I've talked to more than few guys in the states that think their tkd school is one of the few strong schools only to learn otherwise myself. Obviously these guys are biased, maybe you are too.