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Squid Game (Korean: 오징어 게임; RR: Ojing-eo Geim) is a South Korean survival drama television series streaming on Netflix. Written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, it stars Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-joon, Jung Ho-yeon, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung. The series, distributed by Netflix, was released worldwide on September 17, 2021.

The series centres on a contest where 456 players, drawn from different walks of life but each deeply in debt, play a set of children's games with deadly penalties for losing for the chance to win a ₩45.6 billion prize. Hwang had conceived of the idea based on his own economic struggles early in life as well as the class disparity within South Korea. Though initially scripted in 2008, Hwang had been unable to find a production to support the script until Netflix around 2019 found interest as part of their drive to expand their foreign programming offerings. Hwang wrote and directed all nine episodes himself.

Squid Game received widespread critical acclaim, with praise for its acting, originality, directing, visual style, musical score, art direction, atmosphere, and themes; however, the English dub was criticized. Within a week, it became one of Netflix's most-watched programs in several regional markets. On 10 October 2021, Hwang Dong-hyuk revealed that there are plans for the possibility of a second season of Squid Game, in view of the show's popularity.

Overview

Seong Gi-hun, a divorced and indebted chauffeur, is invited to play a series of children's games for a chance at a large cash prize. Accepting the offer, he is taken to an unknown location and finds himself among 455 other players, all with similar large debts. The players are kept under watch at all times by masked guards in red jumpsuits, with the games overseen by the Front Man. The players soon discover that losing in these games results in their death, with each death adding ₩100 million to the potential ₩45.6 billion grand prize. Gi-hun allies with other players, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo, to try to survive the physical and psychological twists of the games.

Cast and characters

Main cast

Numbers in parentheses denote the character's assigned number in the Squid Game.

• Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun (성기훈, Korean pronunciation: [sʌŋ gi hun], 456), a chauffeur and a gambling addict, he lives with his mother and struggles to support his daughter financially. He participates in the Game to settle his many debts.
• Park Hae-soo as Cho Sang-woo (조상우, Korean pronunciation: [tɕo saŋ u], 218), the head of the investment team at a securities company, he is a junior to Gi-hun and was a gifted student who studied at Seoul National University, but is now wanted by the police for stealing money from his clients.
• Wi Ha-joon as Hwang Jun-ho (황준호, Korean pronunciation: [hwaːŋ tɕun ho]), a police officer who sneaks into the Game as a guard to find his missing brother.
• Jung Ho-yeon as Kang Sae-byeok (강새벽, Korean pronunciation: [gaŋ sɛ bjʌk], 067), a North Korean defector who enters the Game to pay for a broker to find and retrieve her surviving family members who are still across the border.
• O Yeong-su as Oh Il-nam (오일남, Korean pronunciation: [o il nam], 001), an elderly man with a brain tumor who prefers playing the Game as opposed to waiting to die in the outside world.
• Heo Sung-tae as Jang Deok-su (장덕수, Korean pronunciation: [dzaŋ dʌk su], 101), a gangster who enters the Game to settle his massive gambling debts.
• Anupam Tripathi as Abdul Ali (199), a foreign worker from Pakistan, who enters the Game to provide for his young family after his employer refuses to pay him for months.
• Kim Joo-ryoung as Han Mi-nyeo (한미녀, Korean pronunciation: [han mi njʌ], 212), a mysterious and manipulative woman who claims to be a poor single mother.

Supporting cast

Game participants

• Yoo Sung-joo as Byeong-gi (111), a doctor who secretly works with a group of corrupt guards to traffic the organs of dead participants in exchange for information on upcoming games.
• Lee Yoo-mi as Ji-yeong (240), a young woman who was just released from prison after killing her abusive father.
• Kim Si-hyun as Player 244, a pastor who rediscovers his faith during the Game.
• Lee Sang-hee as Player 017, a glass-maker with more than 30 years' experience.
• Kim Yun-tae as Player 069, a player who joins the Game with his wife, Player 070.
• Lee Ji-ha as Player 070, a player who joins the Game with her husband, Player 069.
• Kwak Ja-hyoung as Player 278, a player who joins Deok-su's group and acts as his henchman.
• Chris Chan as Player 276, a player who joins Seong Gi-hun's group in the Tug of War round.

Others

• Kim Young-ok as Gi-hun's mother
• Cho Ah-in as Seong Ga-yeong, Gi-hun's daughter
• Kang Mal-geum as Gi-hun's ex-wife and Ga-yeong's mother
• Park Hye-jin as Sang-woo's mother
• Park Si-wan as Kang Cheol / Sae-byeok's brother

Special appearances

• Gong Yoo as a salesman who recruits participants for the Game (Episodes 1 and 9)
• Lee Byung-hun as The Front Man / Hwang In-ho (Episodes 8–9)
• Lee Jung-jun as Guard (Episode 3)

English dub cast

Source:

• Greg Chun as Seong Gi-hun
• Stephen Fu as Cho Sang-woo
• Paul Nakauchi as Jang Deok-su
• Hideo Kimura as Oh Il-nam
• Vivian Lu as Kang Sae-byeok
• Rama Vallury as Abdul Ali
• Tom Choi as Front Man
• Donald Chang as Hwang Jun-ho
• Stephanie Komure as Han Mi-nyeo
• Yuuki Luna as Ji-yeong

Episodes

Production

Development

Squid Game was created and written by Hwang Dong-hyuk. Hwang says he originally developed the script in 2008 when he was in a bad financial situation and living in a Manhwabang, reading Japanese survival manga books such as Battle Royale, Liar Game and Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji; however, he feared the storyline was "too difficult to understand and bizarre" at the time. Hwang stated, "I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life." The two main characters Gi-hun and Sang-Woo were based on Hwang's own personal experiences and represented "two sides" of himself; Gi-hun shared the same aspects of being raised by an economically disadvantaged single mother, while Sang-Woo reflected on Hwang having attended Seoul National University with high expectations by his family and neighborhood.

Hwang based the narrative on Korean games of his childhood to show the irony of a childhood game where competition was not important becoming an extreme competition with people's lives at stake. The central game he selected, the squid game, was a popular Korean children's game from the 1970s and 1980s. Hawng recalled the squid game as "the most physically aggressive childhood game I played in neighborhood alleys as a kid, which is why I also loved it the most", and because of this "it's the most symbolic game that reflects today's competitive society, so I picked it out as the show’s title". The "Red light, Green light" game was selected because of its potential to make a lot of losers in one go. Regarding the selection, Hwang said, "The game was selected because the scene filled with so many people randomly moving and stopping could be viewed as a ridiculous but a sad group dance." Hwang joked that the dalgona candy game they chose may influence sales of dalgona, similar to how sales of Korean gats (traditional hats) had bloomed after broadcast of Netflix's series Kingdom. Licking the candy to free the shape was something that Hwang said that he had done as a child and brought it into the script. Hwang had considered other Korean children's games such as Gonggi, Dong, Dong, Dongdaemun, and Why did you come to my house? (우리 집에 왜 왔니?, a Korean variant of the Hana Ichi Monme).

Hwang had tried to sell his story to various Korean production groups and actors, but had been told it was too grotesque and unrealistic. In the 2010s, Netflix had seen a large growth in viewership outside of North America, and started investing in productions in other regions, including Korea. Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, had stated in 2018 that they were looking for more successes from overseas productions: "The exciting thing for me would be if the next Stranger Things came from outside America. Right now, historically, nothing of that scale has ever come from anywhere but Hollywood." Netflix took interest in Hwang's script in 2019, and announced in September 2019 they would produce Hwang's work as an original series, initially titled Round Six. Netflix's Bela Bajaria, head of global television operations, said that of their interest in Hwang's work, "we knew it was going to be big in Korea because it had a well-regarded director with a bold vision", and that "K-Dramas also travel well across Asia". Regarding his return to the project, Hwang commented, "It's a sad story. But the reason why I returned to the project is because the world 10 years from then has transformed to a place where these unbelievable survival stories are so fitting, and I found that this is the time when people will call these stories intriguing and realistic." Hwang further believed that the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 impacted the economic disparity between classes in South Korea, and said that "All of these points made the story very realistic for people compared to a decade ago".

Hwang wrote all of the series himself, taking nearly six months to write the first two episodes alone, after which he turned to friends to get input on moving forward. Hwang also addressed the challenges of preparing for the show which was physically and mentally exhausting, saying six of his teeth fell out while making Season 1. Hwang mentioned that he has no immediate plans to write a sequel to Squid Game, stating that he did not have well-developed plans for a follow-up story and if he were to write one, he would likely have a staff of writers and directors to help. Hwang said in an interview with The Times that a second season may focus more around the story of the Front Man as well as incorporating more about the police. Hwang himself had been a former police officer and said "I think the issue with police officers is not just an issue in Korea. I see it on the global news that the police force can be very late on acting on things—there are more victims or a situation gets worse because of them not acting fast enough. This was an issue that I wanted to raise."

Production and filming of the series ran from June to October 2020, including a mandatory month break due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Casting

Hwang said he chose to cast Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun, a character inspired by the organizers of the SsangYong Motor labor strike of 2009 [ko] against mass layoffs, as to "destroy his charismatic image portrayed in his previous roles". Jung Ho-yeon was requested by her new management company to send a video to audition for the series while she was finishing a shoot in Mexico and preparing for New York Fashion Week. Although this was her first audition as an actor and her expectations were low, Hwang said "The moment I saw her audition tape from New York, I immediately thought to myself, 'this is the girl we want.' My first impression on her was that she is wild and free like an untamed horse". Both Gong Yoo and Lee Byung Hun had worked with Hwang during his previous films, Silenced and The Fortress respectively, and Hwang had asked both to appear in small roles within Squid Game. On casting Ali Abdul, Hwang said, “It was hard to find good foreign actors in Korea.” He chose Anupam Tripathi because of his emotional acting capabilities and fluency in Korean.

Casting for the series was confirmed on June 17, 2020.

Costume and set design

As Netflix was targeting the work for a global audience, the visuals were emphasized and some of the rules of the children's games were simplified to avoid potential issues with the language barrier. The colorful sets and costumes were designed to look like a fantasy world. The players and soldiers each wear a distinctive colour, to reduce sense of individuality and emphasise the difference between the two groups. The green tracksuits worn by the players were inspired by 1970s athletic wear, known as trainingbok (Template:Lang-ko). The maze-like corridors and stairs drew inspiration from the 4-dimensional stair drawings of M. C. Escher. The complex network of tunnels between the arena, the dorm, and the administrative office was inspired by ant colonies.

The robot doll in the first episode, "Red Light, Green Light", was inspired by Younghee, a character who appeared on the covers of Korean textbooks in the 1970s and 1980s, and her hairstyle was inspired by Hwang's daughter's. The doll singsongs, in Korean, "Mugunghwa Flower has Blossomed", referring to the hibiscus syriacus, the national flower of South Korea.

The dalgona used in "The Man with the Umbrella" were made by a street vendor from Daehangno.

Music

The soundtrack was released on September 17, 2021.

Marketing

In the Philippines, a replica of the doll used in the show was exhibited on Ortigas Avenue in Quezon City in September 2021.

A more complete set replica was exhibited at the Itaewon station in Seoul. However, the exhibit was prematurely closed due to COVID-19 quarantine regulation concerns.

A squid game pop up store opened in Paris on October 2 and 3, and a person could win a free one-month subscription if they managed to get the right shape from the dalgona in one minute and 30 seconds.

Reception

Critical reception

The show received widespread critical acclaim. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the series an approval rating of 91% based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Squid Game's unflinching brutality is not for the faint of heart, but sharp social commentary and a surprisingly tender core will keep viewers glued to the screen – even if it's while watching between their fingers." On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Joel Keller of Decider opined that the concept of the show was creative. When writing about the narrative, he described it as "a tight narrative and a story that has the potential to be tense and exciting." Keller concluded, "STREAM IT. Squid Game takes a fresh idea and spins it into a thrilling drama; we hope it continues to build the tension we saw in the last 20 minutes throughout the season." Pierce Conran of the South China Morning Post rated the series with 4.5 out of 5 stars and wrote, "Overall, this is still a savagely entertaining slam dunk from Netflix Korea, which is likely to be embraced around the world as its predecessors were." Hidzir Junaini of NME rated the series with 4 out of 5 stars and opined, "Thematic intelligence aside, Squid Game is also a white-knuckle watch, thanks to its visceral competition element." John Doyle of The Globe and Mail described the series as "a brave, dark, ambitious tale, at times moving and at times terrifying", and added: "Its power is in its understanding that money is survival. This is not some dystopian fantasy like Hunger Games. This is present-day life in all its complex awfulness".

Brian Lowry of CNN wrote that the series "presents a visually arresting variation on themes seen plenty of times before, which include tapping into the class divide – and the rich essentially preying on the poor and destitute – at a moment when the audience might be more receptive to that message." Henry Wong of The Guardian compared the show favorably to the 2019 South Korean film Parasite, and used the "present-day, very real wealth inequality" in South Korea as a backdrop to keep the viewer interested in its characters. Caitlin Clark of American socialist magazine Jacobin also compared the series favorably to Parasite and said that it "shreds the capitalist myth that hard work guarantees prosperity." Melanie McFarland of American progressive website Salon.com described the series as "an excellent distillation of how predatory capitalism works."

The series drew some criticism upon release for its similarity to the Japanese film As the Gods Will, released in 2014. It is an adaptation of a manga and has a story based around dangerous versions of children's games such as "Daruma-san ga koronda", the Japanese version of Red Light, Green Light. Responding to allegations of plagiarism, director Hwang Dong-hyuk stated that he had begun working on the script as long ago as 2008 and that similarities between the two films, of which he had been made aware during the process of filming, were coincidental. He acknowledged that he had been inspired by Japanese comics and animation, including Battle Royale and Liar Game.

Public response

The series became the first Korean drama to top Netflix's top 10 weekly most-watched TV show charts globally. It reached No. 1 in 90 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Outside of South Korea, Netflix did not invest heavily into promotion of the show, and its popularity was driven primarily through word of mouth and viral spread on social media. Vulture also claimed that the show's widespread localization, with subtitles in 37 languages and dubbed versions in 34 languages, helped to capture an international audience. Hwang believed that the popularity was due "by the irony that hopeless grownups risk their lives to win a kids' game", as well as the familiarity and simplicity of the games that allowed the show to focus on characterization. The diversity of the characters that play the Squid Game, drawing from different walks of lower- and middle-class life, also helps draw audiences to watch as many could find sympathy in one or more of the characters.

Debate around from multilingual viewers over the quality of the show's captioning, with one initial observation that the show's English closed captioning from the dubbed version changes the meaning of some dialog compared to the spoken Korean dialog or the close translation provided in the English subtitled version of the Korean version. Bilingual performers for the English dub acknowledged that there were some translation issues, but this type of work has been challenging due to limitations on how captioning can be presented to viewers.

While all of the actors saw increases in followers on their social media accounts in the weeks after Squid Game premiered, Jung Ho-yeon saw one of the largest increases, going from about 400,000 to over 13 million followers in three weeks after Squid Game. In October 2021, fashion house Louis Vuitton announced Jung as their new global house ambassador for fashion, watches, and jewelry; creative director Nicolas Ghesquière said that "I immediately fell in love with Ho Yeon's great talent and fantastic personality" from her performance on Squid Game.

In South Korea, the popularity of Squid Game led to a surge of network traffic which caused SK Broadband to file a lawsuit against Netflix, seeking monetary damages to pay for increased broadband usage and maintenance costs associated with the program. One of the phone numbers used in the show belonged to a private residence, and the man reported receiving up to 4,000 calls each day from people, several of whom desired to play a real-life version of the game; Netflix stated they would edit the show to remove the number. As the show was introduced ahead of the 2022 presidential election in South Korea, several of the candidates took to using some of the Squid Game imagery in their political ads and challenging opponents to similar games, as well as using the themes of the program related to economic disparity as part of their political platform.

Shortly after the show's release, users of social media adapted some of the games featured in Squid Game as Internet challenges, including the first "Red Light, Green Light" game and the second honeycomb cookie game. Users of the interactive environment Roblox created numerous games in the system that were based on one or more of the Squid Game challenges. Vendors of dalgona, the honeycomb candy featured in the second game, both within Korean and internationally found a significant increase in sales after the show's release. Clothing items matching those worn in the show saw large growths in sales in the weeks after the show's initial broadcast, such as Vans slip-on shoes which spiked by 7,800%. Variety attributed this sales increase in part to preparation for Halloween costumes inspired by the show.

Notes

1. ^ At the time of broadcast, ₩45.6 billion was approximately €33 million or US$38 million
2. lit. The day hibiscus bloomed. The English title references the game Red Light, Green Light. The Korean title references the Korean version of the game.
3. The title is a reference to the 1924 Korean novel with the same name that tells the story of a rickshaw man initially being happy earning a lot of money from having a lot of customers on a rainy day, and thrilled to buy his wife some soup, only to find his wife dead in her house.

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External links

• Squid Game on Netflix
• Squid Game at IMDb
• Squid Game at HanCinema
• Squid Game at Daum (in Korean)

• 2021 South Korean television series debuts
• Battle royale
• Korean-language Netflix original programming
• South Korean action television series
• South Korean thriller television series
• Television productions suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Television series set in 2020
• Television series set on fictional islands
• Television shows about death games
• Television shows set in Seoul