From my understanding, they were all made in Korea, by the same guys who made "Cort" guitars. ("Westheimer") That isn't a bad thing, they made/still make nice guitars. I don't know of anywhere you could decode your serial #, none of the 3 JBP's Ive had had serials on them anywhere. THis website is also the only place I've seen any info about them, other than just looking at Ebay constantly so if someone knows how to decode the #'s, they aren't on the web.
Oh yeah the wacky tremolo is definitely the only bad part of these guitars, I actually took my bolt-on one apart to see if I could replace the tremolo with something else. THey're top-mounts at least so theoretically they could be replaced or you could route some more wood out to put a "real" Floyd Rose if you wanna keep the arm.