A lot of the electronics problems in the late 90s/early 2000s (and continuing somewhat today) were because of the change to lead free solder. Lead is a fantastic material for solder because of the low melting point and high fatigue resistance. When they went away from it, they started using silver and alloying it with tin to lower the melting point and cost. The problem is that tin has extremely poor fatigue properties so it tends to crack when placed in a vibration environment, especially when under load (such as through-hole components). The move to surface mount components and potting electronics has helped, but it is still an issue.
In the case of this radio, contamination was not the problem. The problem was a combination of the vibration environment and the solder joint was not properly heated when it was assembled. That pin goes into the ground plane for the board, so it needed 10x the heat to get the pad hot enough for the solder to flow out and adhere properly. Whoever initially built it did not get it hot enough, so the bond was poor and it cracked.
On the subject of counterfeit parts, there was a big snafu in the hobby electronics world where a couple suppliers were selling fake Atmel processors. Sparkfun did a deep dive investigation into a couple of them that is an interesting rabbit hole to go down if you get bored:
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/350
