korean (multibyte) makes it appear bad and I can't choose option #1 ...
I really have no idea how to deal with this, I spent some time the other day looking into it when I first encountered it myself, but the multi-byte fonts break the console itself, not the etc-update tool...
Not sure what problems your having here. When I open up hanterm or mlterm with baekmuk Korean fonts, I have no problem with etc-update. What term prog and fonts are you using?
etc-update is being replaced by dispatch-conf see a bug about it assigned to carpaski and test it if you are bored.