France does have a directly elected head of state (I wouldn't want to emulate that either, though their system is not purely presidential), as does South Korea, Mexico, Turkey and many other countries really.
" it’s _largely_ a thing in the Americas and Africa"
" In terms of big countries with a true presidential system, you’re really talking the US, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia."
These are factual inaccuracies.
South Korea is a functioning democracy. They tend to jail their ex-presidents quite often, but then only those that do deserve it, which is more than we can say about a few western democracies which are very lenient about the criminality of politicians. Ah yes and the president is limited to serving one term.