I am wrong to think that this kind of thing is more acceptable in Asia than anywhere else?
There are still whole races of people kept as slaves in sub-saharan Africa, for example. And I mean outright slavery, no ambiguity about it.
Abolitionism is a Eurocentric concept.
Another example from Asia. Two people were kept as slaves for 14 years in a tofu factory. This is in a developed country with a GDP per capita comparable to Spains. They were caught and fined 40k USD, no jail time.
Were they wrong?
This idea is definitely more acceptable than it is in the west in all the world. Africa. Asia. Middle East. Maybe not South America, but even there it would be more acceptable than it is in say Norway.
As for the absolute level of acceptability in each area or country, that is hard to work out, especially in Asia where saving face means something can be unacceptable in theory, but practiced quasi-openly, as in the example of the article, where Lola was an open secret in the guys family.