Actually, Japan was worse, since horse dung was used to create alcohol to treat soldiers.
If anything, this is the legacy of imperialism, where Japan tried to act "civilized" by ignoring its "dirty" customs and objectifying their colonials as uncivilized.
Well, I understand using feces and carcassess for starting the fermentation but usually it is done to stuff that will get distilled later, not just left to stew in the shit for months.
Using partially rotted cat / moose / reindeer / etc local animal or human faeces has been relatively common and sometimes traditional in the past when cultured yeast hasn't been available since it was faster (and more reliable in some cases?) than using wild yeast. Still it was just the means to an end, not the main purpose or flavoring.
I suppose at ancient times when no one knew about the concept of refrigeration or bacteria, looking for edible not poisonous food that could be left rot into a container was a necessity. Which brings the tasty discoveries we have now.
I've removed the link from the right side note for the second panel because the Wikipedia article for Ttongsul was merged with the feces wine article and the whole article about the latter was later deleted some reason.
...were swaaaapped!?Is this Romanée-Conti!?Their drinks...Ttongsul!?