To watch the new season of “Squid Game” amid the past few weeks’ events in South Korea has been to experience an unsettling synchronicity between fiction and reality.
The show released its second season on Dec. 26, bringing back its blistering critique of power, inequality and collective morality through the premise of 456 individuals participating in a survival game to win a life-changing sum of money. Meanwhile, the country experienced real-life political upheaval and tragedy, from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law declaration on Dec. 14, which led to massive public protests (which are still ongoing) and Yoon’s impeachment, to the devastating Jeju Air crash on Dec. 29 — the deadliest aviation accident in the country’s history.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator of “Squid Game,” has embedded sharp social commentary into the show from the outset. The show’s depiction of VIPs orchestrating the suffering of others for their own satisfaction and to justify their societal views feels uncomfortably close to home in South Korea, where public discontent with leaders prioritizing power over the people is surging.
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