I completely agree. I think just like many of the other concepts that have been moved into backgrounds or subclasses or even feats the monk could move there too.
Unarmed fighting could be done very well with one of 5e's triple sized feats.
The mystical abilities could be completely subsumed into the spell system. Rather than D-door 1/day make the monk character multi-classes into a caster type of some ilk and gets the abilities. To this end I think there could be a casting method that venerates the monk better than vancian magic. Allow them to select that.
The ascetic foreigner trope needs to be for any class not just a monk. I can see an ascetic wizard from a foreign land being a very good concept or an ascetic fighter, rogue... you name it. So pull this trope out of the monk and turn it into a background that can be selected. Also this makes sense because in greyhawk the monk runs around in the setting and are not foreigners, they are just a mystic set of guys with a certain unique and rare power, they are jedi in the setting, and the scarlet brotherhood are the sith. They are not foreign, this needs to be pulled out of the class and made a background.
I agree stepping back from the I punch you as the default for the class and everything else for them is sub-par is the wrong approach. If you want to make them only use "peasant" weapons in a world where swords and spears are the norm, I suppose. But if they are a martial class then would they not typically use the best weapons available to them?
Which brings me to I dont want to see a whole asian list of weapons. Sickle can be kama etc. There really is no need for a long list of different weapon rules. I would not object to adding an equivalency chart, tetsubo is great club, Ono is great axe, No-dachi is great sword, longsword is katana etc. These are flavor differences not mechanical differences that need to be teased out of the rules. I think the scimitar and rapier could be incorporated into the other swords as just other versions of longswords and shortswords...