With 142 million household views, according to The Korea Herald, Squid Game takes the crown as the number one most viewed non-English show on Netflix as of December 2021. The South Korean thriller, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, displays themes that surround us in our everyday lives such as capitalism, social instability, and inhumanity. 

Summary

The series begins by introducing the main character, Seong Gi-hun, a man who has accumulated a debt so great that with his status of unemployment, he is far from able to pay it off. After running from a group of loan sharks he owes money to, Gi-hun finds himself at the subway where a suited man asks if he wants to play a game for money. Gi-hun thinks it’s an absurd scam at first, but agrees at last after remembering how desperately he needs money. After losing time and time again, Gi-hun finally wins the last round they play and the suited man gives him his promised 100 thousand won, along with a card. The suited man tells Gi-hun to call the number on the back of the card if he would like to participate in an opportunity to win big money from playing similar children’s games and swiftly walks away. 

When Gi-hun remembers that he is neck-deep in debt, he decides to call the number and signs up for this odd offer to see what it was all about. He is told to stand and wait on a sidewalk and at midnight to be picked up. A van arrives and once he gets in, he is drugged and put to sleep. 

Gi-hun awakes in a brightly lit room with hundreds of other people, all wearing the same jumpsuit with a different number sewn on the front of the jacket: their player number. Monitors of the games wear red jumpsuits and hard black masks that cover their full face, and they lead them to the first game setting: a sandy terrain with a large doll in the back of the room. In this room, they play the children’s game “red light, green light,” but there’s a catch- if you move and the doll senses your movement, you will get shot and meet a fatal death. More than half of the players were eliminated within the first game. 

Red light, green light startles the players so horribly that they demand to terminate the games. The majority of players vote to end the games and everyone is sent home, but after a day, many players voluntarily go back in hopes to win the prize money. 

The games continue for five days. The last man standing wins. 

Review

At first glance, the show may seem gory and confusing. Questions arise like, why are the contestants playing children’s games to win money and why do they get killed off for losing? Everything in the show- from the way the games work, to the symbol on the game monitors’ mask- has a deeper meaning. This is why the editors at The Torch loved Squid Game.

The entire show is an allegory for modern day capitalistic societies. The “higher-ups,” also known as the VIPs, created the games out of pure boredom. They had the time and the money, so they used the excess of what they had in order to make a game that exploits those who are vulnerable and desperate for money. The VIPs bet money on which player they think will win, and treat the players as if they are racehorses while the players toil through mental, emotional and physical pain; this clearly and undoubtedly represents capitalism and the class divide that is a result of it.