I kinda like that, actually. It's more usable to me. I'm not a huge fan of current “modern” Western design trends. Asian websites do have a tendency to be a mish-mash of incompatible UI patterns though (IME, but my experience is limited to Weibo and a few misc sites). There's way more consistency in the west.

Yahoo in its heyday wasn't beautiful but it was pretty usable.

> Large, popular Korean sites look a lot like Yahoo during its heyday.

I agree. Also a large number of the websites including government ones requires that you install Active X and have Windows machine with IE.

Like others, I prefer the content-centric look of East Asian sites.

Many highly trafficked Japanese (and Korean) web sites are model for brevity and efficiency.

Compare:

http://www.sankei.com/

vs

http://www.yahoo.com/

vs

http://www.naver.com/

Sankei site has so much more content, yet its HTML file is only 38kb. Naver site is 97kb. Yahoo's html file is 614kb.

Do View-Source on these sites, and it doesn't take long to figure out what a joke Yahoo site is.

And the real joke is Japanese and Korean web developers make 1/2 or 1/3rd of what Yahoo guys make.

I think the parent is referring to the tendency of Asian design to be more ‘fun/cute’ than ‘modern/flat’. There's less infatuation with low contrast flat designs in Asian websites and apps. Ads are somewhat invasive in both.