in Eastern culture, quoting the information word for word was a sign of reverence and respect for the person who wrote it.

Sure - but so's attribution. I think this is half the story.

It's interesting to me that plagiarizing is pretty much primarily a western notion. It's that Socratic vs. Confucius approach to knowledge.

Well, yeah. But the Socratic notion is that knowledge is something you discover. Something you drive through and discard in pursuit of better and better knowledge. The Confucian notion is that knowledge is something you cherish. Something you reinforce and repeat because all that ever was is all that ever will be forever and ever amen. I can see this being a problem with, say, a book report... but the whole idea of "research" is that you're finding something new.

I agree with you that the Confucian approach definitely favors reheating the past, and that Asian countries in general have less of a beef with copying (lookin' at you, Daihatsu). I'm not sure I agree that college-level hand-holding is necessary. Yeah, maybe Western audiences are more steeped in the notion of "you do not rip off other people's shit" than the Koreans or Chinese. But when you're forced to sit in a class for a quarter just to learn how to cite your sources in the proper MLA style I think it stands to reason that not citing your sources at all is a bit of a party foul.