Series / Features
The Myth Of 'Squid Game', Is It Really Based On True Events?
The series 'Squid Game' intricately blends fiction with real-life social issues, creating a thought-provoking narrative.
The story of Squid Game has raised questions about its reality since the first episode. After the second season, online images emerged of supposedly real locations that closely resembled the surreal game environments from the series. Season 3 also features references to actual suffering. But is Squid Game indeed based on true events, or is this mainly a persistent myth?
A notable element in the discussion is the link to the notorious Brothers Home in Busan, an internment camp where thousands of South Koreans were held under dire conditions from 1975 to 1987. According to witnesses, victims wore tracksuits and numbers instead of names; a chilling similarity to the players in Squid Game. The tales of torture and forced labor presented as 'game rules' keep this association alive.
The creator of the series, Hwang Dong-hyuk, denies any direct link with Brothers Home and instead refers to the drama at automaker Ssangyong in 2009. There, hundreds of people lost their jobs, leading to dozens of suicides. This crisis, according to Hwang, is the true core of his series: how far will someone go to escape debt and misery?
In the series, the protagonist Seong Gi-hun is fired from a company called Dragon Motors, which clearly alludes to Ssangyong (literally: twin dragon). It illustrates how fiction and reality constantly intertwine in Squid Game. While the deadly games may be fictional, the social and economic tensions underlying them certainly are not.
Anyone looking to watch all three seasons can do so on Netflix.
A notable element in the discussion is the link to the notorious Brothers Home in Busan, an internment camp where thousands of South Koreans were held under dire conditions from 1975 to 1987. According to witnesses, victims wore tracksuits and numbers instead of names; a chilling similarity to the players in Squid Game. The tales of torture and forced labor presented as 'game rules' keep this association alive.
Ssangyong
The creator of the series, Hwang Dong-hyuk, denies any direct link with Brothers Home and instead refers to the drama at automaker Ssangyong in 2009. There, hundreds of people lost their jobs, leading to dozens of suicides. This crisis, according to Hwang, is the true core of his series: how far will someone go to escape debt and misery?
In the series, the protagonist Seong Gi-hun is fired from a company called Dragon Motors, which clearly alludes to Ssangyong (literally: twin dragon). It illustrates how fiction and reality constantly intertwine in Squid Game. While the deadly games may be fictional, the social and economic tensions underlying them certainly are not.
Want To Watch?
Anyone looking to watch all three seasons can do so on Netflix.
