Why "The Squid Game" resonates: struggling in a society of extreme inequality

SEOUL — In Netflix's hit dystopian drama "Squid Game," 456 people in deep debt and financial distress are engaged in a series of deadly children's games in South Korea to receive a cash prize of 45.6 billion won (about 250 million yuan).

Koo Yong-hyun, 35, a Seoul office worker, has never faced murderous watchmen or competitors who want to slit his throat, as his characters did. But Mr. Cho, who watched "The Squid Game" in one night, said he empathizes with the characters' struggles to survive in a highly unequal South Korean society.

After losing a stable job, Mr. Qiu struggled to survive on freelance jobs and government unemployment subsidies, saying that in a city where housing prices are soaring, it is "almost impossible to live comfortably with the income of ordinary employees." Like many young people in South Korea and other countries, Cho sees a smaller cake and more competition, like the participants in Squid Games.

It is this similarity that has caused the nine-episode series to unexpectedly cause a global sensation. "Squid Games" became Netflix's highest-rated series in the United States and is expected to become one of the highest-rated series of the platform's history. "This is likely to be the episode with the largest audience for us," Ted Sarandos, Netflix's co-CEO, said at a recent business conference.

On a cultural level, the show's unique visual effects have sparked a stir on the Internet, especially the black masks worn by the nameless guards, decorated only with simple squares and triangles. At the same time, it has also stimulated the world's curiosity about Korean children's games, and it is from which the deathmatch in the play was born. The recipe for making caramel is all over the Internet, and this Korean sweet is the main line of a particularly tense competition in the play.

Like the Hunger Games series and movies, the Squid Game is fascinating in its violent tone, satirical plot, and (spoiler warning!). A passion for killing the most beloved characters of the fans. But it has also touched on the perception that people everywhere in the United States, Western Europe and other places are accustomed to the perception that as the gap between rich and poor widens, housing prices have risen to unaffordable levels, and it has become increasingly difficult for nominally rich countries to achieve a rich life.

"The difficulties encountered by these stories and characters are extremely personal, but they still reflect the problems and realities of Korean society," Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show's creator, wrote in an email. In 2008, he wrote the play's screenplay, where many trends were already evident, but he later revised the script to express more new concerns, including the impact of the coronavirus. (Minyoung Kim, Netflix's content director for Asia Pacific, said the company was in talks with Hwang Dong-hyuk about the production of the second season.) ）

"Squid Game" is just the latest case of Korean cultural export that has won global reputation, and these works are all showing the deep understanding of inequality and reduced opportunities in Korean society. 2019's "Parasite," which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, intertwines the stories of desperate scammer families with the stories of apathetic and ignorant affluent families in Seoul. The 2018 hit "Burning" created dramatic tension through young delivery men competing with wealthy rivals for women's pleasures.

South Korea prospered after the war and became one of the richest countries in Asia, with some economists calling its rise the "Miracle of the Han River." But as the economy matures, so does the gap between the rich and the poor.

"Koreans used to have a collective spirit," said Yun Suk-jin, a theater critic and professor of modern literature at Chungnam National University. But the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s shattered South Korea's economic growth myth, where "everyone fights on its own." ”

Among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which studies the world's richest countries, South Korea now has the 11th highest Gini coefficient, one of the measures of income inequality. (The United States ranked sixth.) ）

As South Korean households struggle to make ends meet, household debt is also accumulating, prompting some economists to warn that debt could be a drag on the economy. Soaring home prices have made housing affordability a hot political topic. During President Moon Jae-in's presidency, house prices rose more than 50 percent in Seoul, sparking a political turmoil.

Shin Yeeun, who graduated from college in January 2020, just before the pandemic, said the squid game reveals irony by revealing the social pressures to succeed in South Korea and the difficulty of achieving it. Mr. Xin, 27, said she had spent more than a year looking for a stable job.

"It's really hard for people in their 20s today to find full-time jobs," she said.

South Korea is also facing a sharp decline in the birth rate, in part because young people find it too expensive to raise children.

"In South Korea, all parents want to send their children to the best schools," Mr. Shin said. "To do that, you have to live in the best neighborhoods." That means saving enough money to buy a home, a goal that's so unrealistic that "I never even calculate how long I'm going to save," she said.

The story of "Squid Game" revolves around the protagonist Seong Gi-hun, who is over forty years old and addicted to gambling, and does not even have the money to buy a decent birthday present for his daughter, nor can he afford to pay for the medical expenses of his elderly mother. One day he was given the opportunity to participate in the "Squid Game," a secret entertainment for the wealthy. To receive a $38 million prize, entrants must complete six rounds of traditional Korean children's games. Failure means death.

The 456 contestants directly reflected the anxiety of the South Korean public. One of them graduated from Seoul National University, the best in South Korea, but was wanted for misappropriating client funds. The other is a defector who needs to take care of his brother and help his mother escape North Korea. Another role is that of an immigrant laborer whose boss refuses to pay his wages.

These roles resonate with South Korean youth who do not see a chance to rise. In South Korea, the so-called "earth spoon" generation, many are obsessed with ways to get rich overnight, such as cryptocurrencies and lottery tickets. South Korea is one of the largest virtual currency markets in the world.

Like the bonuses in the show, cryptocurrencies "give people the opportunity to change their lives in an instant," said Qiu Rongxian, an office worker. His previous company went out of business during the pandemic, and he said the difficulty of making money was one of the reasons South Koreans were so obsessed with getting rich quickly.

(People's desires are endless, but in the end, it is not themselves who are hurt)