Yup, I did play the original CoM and loved it, that's why I wanted to have the ps2 version too, it looked more fun actually ;/
Yeah, they're 'locked' for every region, PSP's for example don't do this, neither do blu-rays (PS3) and DS games (3DS changed this though and are region-locked).
I did play Re:Coded, it was a very nice game, I loved the interaction between Data Riku/Jiminy's journal and Data Sora, for the first time they really acted like best friends.