Not just KIA. Most if not all major automobile manufacturers track a huge amount of data on the vehicles [and their owners/operators]. For example, many vehicles come with that OnStar thing, and so they have a baseband processor and even LTE as well as a GPS receiver, and it's always on even if you don't pay for the service, which means that the manufacturer gets to know your vehicle's location and all the places you go and the routes you take.
The price of that feature (constant tracking of your vehicle's location) is not worth it in a world where entities who sell or give away that location data without the vehicle owner's explicit, intentional, actually-informed consent do not go to superjail forever.
Why does it have to track your bloody location all the time though? Why not make it so it just logs in to the server every 5 minutes and asks. "Have I been stolen?" and if the answer is yes it activates. Better yet, mandate all software like this is open source so no manufacturer can claim one thing and do another.
And before anyone says "but the thief can swap the ECU before it calls home and if it was continously reporting at least there would be a trail where he did it" it is silly. Let's say there indeed is a gps trail leading from in front of your house to some alleyway or a forest. Do you think the car is still there? Nope.
It is a common fallacy. The manufacturer wants to steal your privacy and gives you a useful feature tied to it. Oh, do you want to be able to switch the car off remotely when it's stolen or not? If so we need to know where you drive for next 20 years. And if you ever drove over 80mph we're using this to decline your warranty BTW. I
