Why is seafood so popular in East Asia, and why is eating live seafood mostly concentrated in East Asia as well?
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Funny thing about living on a sphere: go far enough in any direction, even East, and you’ll hit an ocean. There’s a whole coast over there, and a whole ocean ~~of oil~~ teeming with life, a decent chunk of which is edible.
When there are mouths to feed, and not a few of them, and not a ton of money flying around to spend on silly things like farming, people tend to look to the water for food. Asia has the Pacific, SE Asia has even more of the Pacific, and even the Indian Ocean. Couple that with warm water, which yields and abundance of critters for fish to eat, and you get more fish, just waiting to be caught.
So, everyone is eating seafood.
But, what if refrigeration is an expensive proposition, or just straight up doesn’t exist, or, like all of us, didn’t exist before the modern era? A caught fish spoils quickly, so getting that fish (or whichever seafood one prefers) from alive to cooked meal as quickly as possible is the easiest way to assure that it hasn’t spoiled. Ever see a lobster tank in a diner? Same thing. Better fresh than frozen.
Now, to touch a bit on the active eating of still-alive seafood: I can’t vouch for its commonality, but I know that it’s a thing at least in limited amounts, and all I can say is “that’s just how the culture evolved.” Can’t explain it any further than that.
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