Commentary: Behind Squid Game is a real debt crisis shaking South Korea
SHEFFIELD, Great britain: Squid Game is anything but your typical, saccharine, soft-glow Korean television receiver drama. In this biting commentary on life in South Korea today, viewers are presented with a twisting, technicolour story of violence, expose and agony.
All of this is set around a series of macabre games in which players literally fight to the decease. Despite its roughshod content, the testify has captivated audiences globally, becoming Netflix's pinnacle show in at least 90 countries.
The drama takes viewers on a high-suspense ride across nine episodes where a grouping of people mired in debt and personal misfortune enter a serial of 6 survival games, modelled on familiar South Korean children's games.
The losers will die past a ruthless process of elimination, and the single winner volition take away 46.v billion S Korean won (Usa$39.four 1000000).
Early episodes show the circumstances that have led key characters to place everything on the line. Audiences see a series of very dissimilar lives, simply each is mired in debt and misery.
A man who was made redundant and then indebted by failed business ventures and gambling is joined by an unsuccessful fund managing director. An elderly man dying of cancer plays the game alongside a Due north Korean defector.
A Pakistani migrant worker and a gangster, forth with hundreds of other equally hapless individuals who have fallen foul of S Korean capitalism, risk it all.
Squid Game adds to other recent South Korean screen productions, almost notably the 2022 Oscar-winning film Parasite, in providing a abrupt critique of the socioeconomic inequality that plagues the lives of many in South korea.
More than specifically, it speaks to the deepening household debt crunch affecting the lower and center classes.
SOUTH KOREA'S STRUGGLE WITH HOUSEHOLD DEBT
Household debt in South Korea has risen sharply in recent years to over 100 per cent of its gross domestic product - the highest in Asia. The top 20 per cent of earners in the country accept a net worth 166 times that of the bottom 20 per cent, a disparity which has increased by one-half since 2017.
There has been rising debt relative to income and a recent hike in interest rates. This has left those who lack the resource to bargain with unplanned events, such as a sudden redundancy or a family unit illness, in an even more precarious position.
The Gini Alphabetize measuring national wealth distribution puts Republic of korea roughly on par with the United kingdom and in a meliorate position than the United States.
However, growing youth unemployment, soaring house prices and the global pandemic have reversed the pocket-size reduction in inequality experienced in recent years under the progressive Moon Jae-in Regime.
It'southward not just families that are putting themselves in debt to pay for housing and educational activity costs – an essential expense for centre classes hoping to secure entry to a desirable university for their children.
In Baronial, the South Korean government announced new lending curbs aimed at bringing down debt among younger people. Millennials and those in their 30s are in the most debt relative to their income.
But attempts to adjourn borrowing have led to some people turning to higher cost and higher risk lenders instead. Such a pick leaves many at the mercy of debt collectors if the slightest change in their circumstances causes them to default on repayments.
While few may find themselves in the easily of gangsters threatening to harvest their organs for sale, every bit shown in Squid Game, the burden of overwhelming debt is a deepening social problem – non to mention the leading crusade of suicide in South korea.
CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY
Squid Game'south inclusion of other characters representative of South korea's disadvantaged minorities highlights the consequences of socioeconomic inequality for these groups besides.
A factory employer's callous exploitation of a migrant worker who is forced to enter the game is representative of the barriers to upward mobility for those from S and Southeast Asia. North Korean defectors feature too, as individuals who must fight on many fronts to achieve both financial stability and social inclusion.
The show mocks Christianity repeatedly expressing the growing plow in opinion of South Korea's rapid development during the 1970s and 1980s and its connection with the growth of the church at the time.
The supposed Protestant work ethic was a cornerstone of Republic of korea's authoritarian-era economic "miracle", during which three decades of ambitious economical plans transformed the country into a high-income economic system.
Throughout this time, worldly success was seen as a sign of blessing and mega churches were booming.
However, abuse was rife amid politicians and chaebol conglomerate families who served every bit church elders while embezzling funds and edifice their private empires.
Unsurprisingly, disillusionment with some members of the political elite and the church has led many in an increasingly secular state to dispute the truth of Christianity's merits to serve the poor and oppressed in South korea.
SUCCESS AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS
This is not a story unique to South Korea of course. Squid Game'south characters, their troubles and their humanity resonate with the experiences of societies globally. Economies like to South korea are experiencing many of the same challenges, exacerbated past the ongoing pandemic.
Squid Game brutally reminds the winners of each stage, and the show's global audience, that those who succeed often do and so at the expense of those who failed by way of weakness, bigotry, poor sentence, or just bad luck.
The terminal episode hints at the possibility of a second series, just even if it doesn't continue, Squid Game makes information technology clear that the larger story it represents is far from over.
Sarah A Son is a lecturer in Korean studies at the University of Sheffield. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.
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