After staying up all night to watch the entire Netflix series Squid Game in one sitting, I may finally understand why it’s become such a global hit. A deeply unequal society where the debt-ridden underclass gambles their lives away for a financial jackpot could be a description for any number of countries, not just Korea, in this new gilded age.
But some details in the show are distinctly Korean, like a South Asian migrant worker owed months of back wages by a callous Korean boss (a familiar tale in local news), a struggling North Korean defector (a frequent target of discrimination as a group), and a factory worker forced into early retirement ten years ago and down on his luck after opening two eateries that fail (a common scenario following the 1997-8 Asian Financial Crisis).
The name of this last character Seong Gi-hun’s fictional automotive company employer—“Dragon Motors”—is even an unambiguous reference to the very real South Korean firm Ssangyong (“Double Dragon”) Motors, which underwent restructuring 12 years ago and shed some 2,600 jobs. Ssangyong unfortunately is facing another bankruptcy and looking for a buyer right now.