I feel like the author wrote this article with a bias that Western websites are better and more aesthetically pleasing because it's simpler. But those are all subjective matters and Asian users probably prefer what they have. I come from a Korean background and I visit many different Korean and American websites daily, including the ones mentioned in the article. While some of the reasons given may seem plausible, non of them were actually convincing. There isn't really a solid reason why Asian websites look like that. That's just how it was and users are familiar with it. Some people like Hacker News because it's simple, while some people don't like it because it's too simple. There's no better or worse, it's just a preference.

Also, those patterns are not unique to Asian websites. If you go to cnn.com or msn.com, they're not that different either.