Since "SQUID GAME" appeared in mid-September, the show has taken the world by storm, producing millions of videos on TikTok. In Paris fights broke out as fans tried to crowd into a shop where visitors could take photos with staff dressed like the characters from the show.
"Squid Game", which takes its name from a common Korean schoolyard game, follows a group of heavily-indebted losers who are dressed in green sportswear and fight for a nearly $40 million prize.
The global strong interest for the show confused people in South Korea. "Nobody around me understands why it was so popular, and neither do I/5 says In-young, a 26-year-old from Seoul who stopped watching after a couple of episodes (集) because it upset her to see her childhood games described as a cruel struggle for survival, though she admitted the show in some way made sense for ordinary South Koreans struggling with unaffordable housing and low-paid jobs.
One Korean critic (评论家) guesses that the mix of violent entertainment with a very popular comments explains the show's attraction to Western audiences, who are used to such themes from American productions such as "The Hunger Games"
No doubt the attractive shape of the design, the grand clothing and scenes as well as the translation of different languages also help. The popularity of "Squid Game" is a reflection of South Korea's outsize cultural power on the global stage. It may also have benefited from "Parasite", a film about social injustice, which won the Oscar for best picture in 2020. But most of all, it shows that, like love and money, complaints about unfairness have no language.
