Clash of Korean Culture with the Rest:Boiling Clothes in a Cooking Pan!

It's a weekend here already. This Saturday morning when I went to our grad school's kitchen preparing my breakfast, a girl, who is a  Chinese junior visiting researcher (of Korean ethnicity), came in. She took out the cooking pots and put her towels and started boiling them. I and another Russian student told her to stop, since we cook our food in those pots. She said: this is Korean culture that you boil clothes in a pot before washing them and there is nothing unusual.It's O.K!

I have lived with 2 Korean families and one of them used to boil clothes in a pot- but that pot was NOT USED for cooking.

The girl kept arguing and finally did what she wanted to do and left.

I do NOT mind boiling of clothes in a proper manner but I DO MIND IF the clothes are boiled in a pot, which is used for the prurpose of cooking in a communal kitchen. There are students from about 40 or 50 countries and all of them have their own cultural dos and don't s. If we are living together, there MUST BE  some respect for people from other cultures. It's not about: do in Rome as Romans did, especially in some cases where hygeine, cleaniliness is of utmost importance. A couple of years ago, in the grad school dorm,  SARS was reported.

We don't want people to boil their clothes in cooking utensils. It is disgusting and is morally wrong!!HIding behind "any" culture is even worst!