“Squid Game” fans know that the trumpet call means someone is going to die. Not our hero, Gi-hun, but one or more of the players hoping to make a fortune competing in childish, but deadly games. It is both a thriller and a critique of inequality and greed.
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Season 1 was an international hit. With 330 million views, it is Netflix’s most watched series of all time. It won Emmys for its lead actor, Lee Jung-jae, and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. Both made history as the first Asian winners in their categories.
We first spoke with Hwang in Korea just as he was about to embark on a global promotional tour for Season 2.
“So you’re in a sweet spot now?” I asked
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘sweet spot,'” Hwang replied.
“Just things going your way?”
“But it’s not easy. Nothing is easy,” he said. “People keep telling me, ‘You’re the happiest person in Korea.’ But in my mind, I’m not so happy that I’m fighting every day and night.”
That’s thanks to a brutal workload: Hwang directed and wrote every episode. Sworn to secrecy, “Sunday Morning” was invited to a sound stage outside of Seoul where much of Season 2 was filmed.
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Hwang was at the top of his game, but that wasn’t always the case. He was only five years old when his father died. After that, he says, his family was stuck in poverty. As a struggling filmmaker in debt, Hwang said he was looking for an escape into comics. “I’ve read a lot about the survival game genre and the gambling genre,” he said. “And that got me thinking, what if I combined childhood games with people putting their lives on the line for a big cash prize? And that’s really how the idea came about.”
And a blockbuster was born.
In the show, contestants driven by desperation risk everything for money, exploited by a sinister master of the game, the powerful Front Man.
Asked if “The Squid Game” represents how he sees capitalists and capitalism in general — a group of desperate people manipulated by a cruel, wealthy elite — Hwang replied, “I think fundamentally what’s still driving this system it’s human selfishness and greed these days. I’m more and more pessimistic about human nature, I almost think it’s greed that allows them to create a society they feel more comfortable in.” .
Many of the characters from season 2 are new (Hwang killed a lot of them in season 1), but the guards are back, and so is Gi-hun, now on a doomed mission to stop the game.
To watch a trailer for “Squid Game: Season 2,” click the video player below:
Hwang said that Seasons 2 and 3 of “Squid Game” will “show people the bottom of this world, the bottom of human beings.”
So does it get even darker? “Yeah, it’s getting darker, episode by episode,” Hwang said.
The show is so popular that 50,000 people recently applied for the chance to take part in a real-life (but not deadly) squid game in Paris. The prize: an early look at the new season.
Hwang is surprised, especially by the wild success of his show in the U.S., where audiences haven’t traditionally opted for a subtitled TV series: “I always hoped to do something very popular in the U.S., so I it was surprising,” he said. “At the same time, there was, like, my dream come true. But this level of success [was] beyond my expectations.”
Ironically, this creator of a dystopian parable about despair and poverty now finds himself a rich man, one of capitalism’s big winners. Has that changed you? “Not much,” he said. “It made my life better, for sure, because I don’t have to worry [making] more money But since then, I don’t think I’ve changed much for more success or more money, because it’s just a number. It has no meaning to me.”
what ago making sense is his work. But the success and pressure of “Squid Game” has taken its toll: “I’ve been just working on this project for over five years, day and night. I’m so exhausted. I’m so fed up, you know?” he laughed “I need a break, I need a break.”
A break from non-stop work… and from his deep dive into the dark depths of human nature.
So what makes Hwang Dong-hyuk laugh? “My friends! I love talking to my friends and having a beer.”
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Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Publisher: Joseph Frandino.
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