There are some characters that are just not meant to be endearing, and their creators are very conscious of this as they develop these characters. For example, Jin Yong wrote characters such as Ah Chi, Gwok Fu, Mit Jeut See Tai, and Ding Mun Gwun knowing (or at least reasonably surmising) that most readers would dislike these characters: they were characters designed so that most readers would hate them.
There are a few Jin Yong *main* (or major) characters, however, that he probably didn't deliberately design to be annoying, but do tend to be disliked (for various reasons) by a sizeable number of his readers. In particular, I'm thinking about Deun Yu, Wong Yu Yin, Yeung Gor, and Little Dragon Girl. Among the primary characters, these four get criticized for being irritating by more people than others (not that even popular characters such as Kiu Fung, Ah Chu, Gwok Jing, Wong Yung, Ling Wu Chung, and Yam Ying Ying don't have their detractors, but not like those first four I mentioned do). Cheung Mo Gei and Hui Juk also get criticized fairly often.
So the question is: when Jin Yong created these characters, did he deliberately create them with their distinct personality characteristics KNOWING that at least some of his readers would react negatively to them, or did he design them for maximum appeal to a wide audience and got caught off-guard when some readers didn't embrace those characters?