Spoiler Alert
I just binge-watched the first season of Squid Game. It took me, with on and off viewing, most of Saturday and part of Sunday. I did not expect to enjoy the show as much as I did. After finishing the last episode (season 1 only) I decided the series was brilliant, and I had some questions about South Korean society.
I remembered watching another South Korean production (actually South Korean/Czech production), The Snow Piercer (the film, not the series), that had a similar over-arching theme. If you haven't seen either one of these, stop reading now because I'm going to 'give it away' for both. They both deal with the profound effects of economic inequality. In both productions, characters are locked in a closed system where there is fierce competition for limited resources.
In the case of Squid Game, the system is the game itself. Players are controlled by armed guards. In The Snow Piercer, the system is a train. Passengers are controlled also by armed guards. In each case, participation in the system is technically voluntary. This obliges us to take a look at the true meaning of 'voluntary'.
In both productions, there is a choice between participating and not participating. In the case of the train, not boarding the train would have been the choice for death, because the entire earth was frozen and survival impossible. In the case of the game, not participating in the game for most of the players meant ruin, including prison terms, or even death. Many of the game players had owed so much money that creditors were poised to harvest their organs.
So...The passengers stay on the train in Snow Piercer, and the players stay in The Squid Game.
I'll start with the Squid Game plot. It takes place in South Korea. The story opens with ne'er do well Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae, arguing with his mother, and then rifling through her cookie jar to steal her ATM card. Gi-hun is a gambler, a loser, a debtor, a deadbeat father. His creditors catch up with him and have him sign a document that agrees they can harvest his kidney and his eye if he does not pay up in a month.
It is at this point that Gi-hun runs into a well-dressed man on a subway platform. The man engages Gi-hun in a game. If Gi-hun wins a round, the man pays him. If the man wins a round, Gi-hun pays with 'his body'. Every time Gi-hun loses a round, the man slaps him in the face. After many rounds where the man wins, Gi-hun finally prevails. The man gives him his money and a golden card. He also demonstrates an uncanny familiarity with Gi-hun's financial straits.
It is obvious now that Gi-hun was not randomly selected in the subway, but was targeted. As the show progresses, and we learn more about the people behind the Squid Game, we begin to wonder how much of Gi-hun's difficulties were due to his lack of character, and how much were instigated by the powers that run the game. After all, they need desperate people in order for the game to work.
So what is the game? After hesitating, Gi-hun calls the number on the golden card and is carried away in a van (where they gas him into unconsciusness) to the game site. There he discovers hundreds of others who will be 'playing' with him.
The first game is Red Light, Green Light. Losers of this round will be eliminated, players are told. Soon they learn what elimination means. Anyone who fails to stop moving on the green light is shot. Bodies and blood litter the floor. Not only that, play is on a clock. Whoever does not make it across the finish line after five minutes is 'eliminated'. Players have no choice but to move forward, but in moving forward they risk death.
The killer in the game is a huge mechanical doll--a motion detector. Here is Game 1, as captured in a Youtube video.
After this episode players want to leave, but they can't leave until at least 50% vote to end the game. Ending the game means forfeiting the opportunity to win enormous amounts of money. More than half of the players do vote to end the game, but eventually most of them return. The same conditions that drove them to join in the first place still exist. Now, when they play, they know the stakes and still they stay. Hanging over their heads always is the lure, the huge ball of money that keeps getting fuller.
Here is what the money looks like--literally hanging over their heads. With every death the pot grows.
Eventually, players realize that more deaths means more money for the winners. This motivates the criminally inclined to kill fellow players. What doesn't seem to sink in for players through much of the game is that only one person will win. Everyone else must be 'eliminated'.
Who would think of such a game, viewers ask themselves. Who profits?
For a while it looks like this might be an organ theft scheme. The dead have their organs harvested and sold. No, that can't be the reason for the game because the dead are mostly incinerated, and only those who haven't had their bodies torn apart by gunfire are suitable for organ harvesting. The harvesting is done by the guards, who have a little money making deal going on the side.
The game motivation is far more evil than merely selling organs. Selling organs makes financial sense. The people who run the game do it for amusement. They are the super rich. They sit in a lounge and bet on the finalists until only one survivor remains. The decadence of the game sponsors is manifest in Episode 7, where we see them file in to a luxurious lounge. The lounge is decorated by painted mannequins, live, naked human beings arranged around the suite like furniture. One VIP rests his feet on the back of a kneeling mannequin.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, creator, director and writer of the series explains the motivation for the series: "The violence depicted in this series is more allegorical, I try to depict society's violent ways of treating the losers of competition, not it being physical violence, but the way they drive them to the bottom of society, forcing them into poverty…Those that are eliminated, so to speak, or those that lose the competition, they are headed for a life in pain, and I tried to express that."
At the end of the first episode, ne'er do well Gi-hun walks out alone with millions. He is destoyed by what he has seen, and what he has done. It takes him a year to collect his funds, and the catalyst that persuades him to do this is one element I will leave for viewers to discover. That catalyst is the discovery of a final betrayal.
The Snow Piercer
This South Korean/Czech film predates The Squid Game by several years. This film uses a science fiction premise to set the scene. Everyone on the train is locked in by the frozen earth outside, as the train circles the globe. Social classes are strictly stratified. The people in the front live in luxury. The people in the rear have barely enough to eat, and what they do eat is 'protein' bars, which are made of crushed cockroaches.
Every now and then, someone from the front will come to the back and require a service from one of the poor. An instance of this is when a child is selected. A gear in the engine is broken and there is no replacement part. A human child is trained to act as that gear. He is just the right size to fit in the space. Of course, as time passes and the child grows, a new child must be found as replacement.
Here is the inimitable Tilda Swinton, describing the social structure on the train. In the beginning of the clip there is an amputation scene. A man's arm is amputated because he refuses to give up his son, his child, to the front of the train. Swinton explains why the punishment is necessary. Here is the clip.
The poor in the rear eventually rebel. It turns out this is a planned rebellion. From time to time population among the poor must be controlled. Occasional, instigated (deliberately, by the rich) rebellions allow for weaning of the numbers as rebels are killed. This time, however, the rebellion gets out of control, the train is blown up, and there are only two survivors left, two young people. These two wander out onto the snow. They see a polar bear. As dismal as this film is, it ends on a note of hope. There is life, and possibly a future, for the two young people.
South Korea and Social Inequality
After finishing the last episode of the Squid Game (remember, I only watched only the first season) I wondered what it was in South Korean culture that led to such sharp social criticism. I did a little reading to look for answers and discovered that social criticism in cinema has been a powerful force in South Korean society. Economic inequality is one of the issues that has been addressed.
I looked up some stats on South Korea's economy. The country rates better than the U.S. (my country) on global indexes that measure social and economic factors. With regard to wealth inequality, South Korea ranks 141 (the lower the number, the less inequality). The U.S. comes in at a dismal 22. Even Canada, with a score of 140, rates worse than South Korea. In the social mobility index, South Korea comes in at 25 out of 82 countries (in this case a higher number is better...more social mobility). The U.S. comes in at 27.
However, it seems that the objective reality is not what determines social discontent. It is rather the subjective perception that matters, and in South Korea that perception suffers as compared to the U.S. It seems there is generally a 'tenuous' relationship between objective data and subjective perception.
I found a study that addressed directly South Koreans' perception of inequality and the effect this perception has on society. The article is entitled, "Perceptions of Inequality and Loneliness as Drivers of Social Unraveling: Evidence from South Korea". It is this sense of unraveling that I perhaps see in both The Squid Game and Snow Piercer.
Series Credits, the Squid Game (From IMDB)
Series Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk
Series Writing Credits Hwang Dong-hyuk
- Cast
Lee Jung-jae ... Seong Gi-hun
Tom Choi ... Front Man
Greg Chun ... Choi Seung-hyun
Wi Ha-joon ... Hwang Jun
Film Credits, Snow Piercer (2013)(From IMDB)
Directed by
Bong Joon Ho
Writing Credits
Jacques Lob (based on "Le Transperceneige" by)
Benjamin Legrand (based on "Le Transperceneige" )
Jean-Marc Rochette (based on "Le Transperceneige")
Bong Joon Ho (screen story )
Bong Joon Ho (screenplay )
Kelly Masterson (screenplay)
- Cast
Chris Evans Curtis
Song Kang-ho Namgoong Minsoo
Ed Harris Wilford
John Hurt Gilliam
Tilda Swinton Mason
Some references I used in writing this:
https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizations/which-countries-have-the-greatest-wealth-inequality/
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76555-y
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0276562423001191
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/01/09/global-perceptions-of-inequality-and-discrimination/
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantcheva/files/stantcheva_3.pdf
https://ubwp.buffalo.edu/selfandmotivationlab/wp-content/uploads/sites/91/2024/03/Park-et-al.-2024-EJSP.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6371776/
https://www.irreview.org/articles/2023/10/8/the-power-of-film-how-south-korean-films-alter-legislation-over-pressing-domestic-social-issues