Grange_Guzzler
What a name what a life-style. Delay due away. Your points:
a. G/S intercept...Quite agree, although it's a long time since I flew a cat C circle with an MDA 1000ft agl or higher (although I'm sure they exist and most likely at the sort of terrain-girdled airfield where circling is both an unhealthy pastime, yet de rigeur due to civ/mil ops, mid-field arrest chain-gear controlling runway choice, lack of aids, local airspace etc). However the way in which circling approaches normally come unstuck is either/both a lack of MDA maint and exceeding the protected area. At night in particular it is very hard to judge distances and an increasingly flat perspective can be quite insidiously come by. Wings level on centre-line is (I agree) too pedantic...but it conveys the theme of religiously not descending until turning final and you have the VASIS, T-VASIS, PAPI's etc for absolute guidance.
b. Re ARP. Without consulting PANS OPS or TERPS criteria, I vaguely recall that the ARP is derived as being the centroid of a line joining the centre of each threshold and that the way I was taught was to relate your 1.7nm latitude to that (i.e. it will quite closely approximate the area defined by your pukka definition plus a half runway length buffer to the edge of the protected area - unless the main instrument runway is inordinately long). But unless you are lucky enough to have a VOR/DME at that ARP point, even that "safer" 1.7nm becomes very arbitrary and the safest, more expedient course of action is simply to become adept at manoeuvring your airplane as tight in to the field as you feel comfortable with, in the wind conditions. Airbus peeples might be a bit limited with their further bank constraints but the general idea is that you are less likely, particularly in daylight, to lose contact with the landing threshold in heavy precipitation if you keep it close aboard (and far less likely to become an elevated scenic attraction).
Someone smarter than me advocated coping with tightening base turn winds by initially overbanking, rolling it off progressively and allowing the wind to do the centre-line lin-up for you. As QFI I've sat and watched repeated centre-line blow-throughs at high bank angles off low-level night circuits - mostly by experienced pilots on conversion. I would have to surmise that the average airline pilot does not get enough (any?) practise at that sort of thing. That type of training instils confidence, even with the restricted visuals of the average sim. Having to do it like Captain Wu, not having done it before, trying hard but not fully understanding the pitfalls, we shouldn't be surprised if we were were to come seriously unstuck. It's a different type and quality of decision to be cranking into a missed approach off a circling that's gone geometrically impossible. Time and again, failing to "give up", make that quality decision (and instead attempting to salvage a fiasco) proves to be the short-cut to the accident site.
c. In the military, some 30 years ago, I was taught the "shortest way" method and I like many others found that it could be disorienting and whole-heartedly endorse turning onto the MAP course by turning "through" the airfield. ATC sometimes act a little surprised when you do that however.
Re the WisofOZ point about being visual:
The whole problem with circling approaches is that you can be quite legal even though you can't see (ahead) a foot in from of you due to heavy rain - as long as you have the landing threshold in sight on your beam. That's exactly why the protected area is provided, because in the conditions in which you're likely to carry out a circling approach, localised intense areas of precipitation and low scud can reduce the prevailing visibility in certain directions. I'd have to say that I've seen a lot of cunning captains (who felt uncomfortable flying RH patterns with large drift angles towards the runway) just cross the midfield of their planned landing runway and use a continual left turn to finals, the headwind on base resolving any potential "tangle with the angle". I realise that wasn't an option at Kimhae, but it sometimes can be whether you're circling for a cross-runway or the reciprocal..
A Final Thought. Unlike Initial, Intermediate and Final Approach segments, circling areas do not have a "secondary area" for defined obstacle clearance. For cat C it's a design obstacle clearance height of 394ft and then suddenly, outside the "protected area", nix.
IMHO unless training organisations are prepared to train people with a dedicated syllabus on circling approaches, they should be labelled fraught with danger - and as subtle traps for young players.