Haha, so true @mariola! All the toilet humour is crazy ... and disgusting! lol
I know it doesn't only happen in Asia, but I feel it happens more there than here. I may be wrong though as this is just my perception. On Western (broadly used to describe North America & Europe) TV in my experience it's not so normalized to drown your sorrows in a bottle. The average character will have a drink or two, but it's rare to seem them actually drink until they turn over. When a character drinks so much he passes out or can't stand up it's either because he's already an alcoholic, on his way to becoming an alcoholic or it's untypical behaviour spurred by an extremely devastating event. Plus, more variety in how people deal with emotional distress is shown - some drink, some exercise, some fight etc - not everybody swipes out a bottle. In K-dramas, however, no matter the issue, large or small, male or female, it would seem the bottle is always the first and only option. And they drink like its going out of fashion. lol They drink to numb themselves, pass out and forget, which is basically what professional drunks do. They abuse alcohol to deal with personal problems, to escape ... until it becomes a sickness. So yes, while you see it on Western TV too, I don't think it's necessarily portrayed as an acceptable way to deal with your problems, as is done in K-drama, esp if you're just regular Joe good guy and not a character that's specifically developing an alcohol habit. Like you said, not everyone in Korea drinks. Some people release their stress in other ways, but mostly we only see them turning to the bottle.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if maybe they do it to dramatize how serious the problem the character is facing is. But, if the writing is done properly, we will have already understood this.
As for C-dramas, you can try Loving, Never Forgetting. I quite liked it, though it was by no means perfect.
