Intro
Squid Game is not just a story about debt, desperation and great reward. It is a story about a society that has sold its soul to capital. But actually, why did South Korea become the site of this story? What made the game of survival seem so realistic to us?
Ssangmun-dong and the generation of disillusionment
Before we get to the depths of the system and consider the macroeconomic aspects and the Squid Game itself, it is worth seeing the man in all of this. The man is located in Ssangmun-dong, which is a working-class neighborhood in Seoul. That’s where Gi-hun lives. He lives there with his mother, and the entire neighborhood is a rusting medal of the old order. Ssangmun-dong is not the shiny and beautiful Gangnam. It’s an element of Korea that you won’t see in the most popular music videos. Less than a decade before “Squid Game”, the world was dancing to PSY’s choreography and his song “Gangnam Style”. The song itself, though seemingly viral and comical, was in fact a bitter satire on the glitz and superficiality of the Gangnam district, the mecca of the neoliberal dream. PSY mocked aspirations to be the “somebody” of Gangnam by dancing in a horse stable or playground. Gangnam and Ssangmun-dong are the two faces of Seoul. Two sides of the same coin. On one side, there are broken promises, lives and debts, and on the other, unlimited opportunities, wealth, status. “Gangnam Style” was a show about capitalist beauty and glamour. “Squid Game” is a brutal testimony to its true cost: poverty, disillusionment and death.
Asian crisis in 1997
Before hundreds of desperate Koreans joined the Game of Life, the real game of survival began decades earlier in… Thai brokerage offices. On July 2, 1997, the Thai government unpegged the price of the local currency (baht) to the U.S. dollar. Previously, countries such as the aforementioned Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia had pegged exchange rates to the U.S. dollar. The problem began when the dollar began to strengthen. This caused the currencies of these countries to also rise, generating higher costs for exports, making them uncompetitive.
Previously, easy access to a cheap dollar caused chaebols such as Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, Daewoo, etc. to obtain gigantic loans. This led to huge debts for chaebols, which were repayable under the conditions in which the loan was taken, i.e. in an environment of a pegged currency exchange rate. “When the currency was allowed to float freely, the value of these loans skyrocketed.
However, foreign loans were not the only problem for Korea and the chaebols at the time. The Korean bank was also giving the chaebols loans to repay, but these were not necessarily repaid. By the international financial community, this was the beginning of a disaster.
With the cheap yen and expensive dollar, some corporations like Hambo Steel and Hansin were already starting to collapse from early 1997. More problems hit Kia Motors in the summer of the same year. Due to the elections that year, the issue was politicized and swept under the rug. Everything was done to keep Kia from collapsing. Foreign investors noticed the deception, and as the government tried to hide this corpse, how many more surprises are waiting in the closet? Market confidence began to plummet. Coupled with the spreading currency crisis in Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia, the flight of capital from the market is beginning. The Korean bank is trying to support the won, but this will only lead to further panic.
At this point, the whole game begins. Korea, by virtue of joining the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and IMF (International Monteray Fund), had to agree to a heavy dose of financial liberalization. This resulted in unfavorable changes in labor laws, where chaebols were able to start mass layoffs.
Korean society led to Squid Game
But let’s return to Gi-hun, who was born in 1974. He started working at “Dragon Motors” around 1995. Before the crisis in Korea, there was an unwritten agreement. If one got a job at chaebol, was loyal and worked hard, it guaranteed employment for life. The financial crisis and the reforms imposed by the OECD and the IMF brought with them labor market flexibilization. It sounds innocent. But it’s just an elegant term for something brutal - massive and easy layoffs. Here we need to go much deeper than the mere statement of flexibilization. We will reach the very dark heart of neoliberal capitalism. Byung-Chul Han has given us the key to this kernel on a platter. With the reforms, the era of achievement society begins. In Korean society before the 1997 crisis, there was an external imperative in the form of the boss, the company, the system, the state. After the upheaval, neoliberal reform replaced this enemy with an internal voice that whispers you can do anything if you just try. In this way, everyone became an employer of themselves.
“People who fail in the neoliberal achievement-society see themselves as responsible for their lot and feel shame instead of questioning society or the system.”
— Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power [p. 6]
The pressure is internalized and Gi-hun becomes a loser in the system according to Han’s quote. Gi-hun appears as a person who failed or was not flexible in the context of the new Korean society. He doesn’t see the problem in the new pathology, he just blames himself for not being able to adjust to the newly imposed reality.
The people and unions responded to this affront with a strike and occupation of the factory. The series features a flashback to Gi-hun, whose PTSD haunts him to this day. In this flashback, a brutal pacification takes place. And here we must abandon simple accusations of treason. What happened was a textbook example of what David Harvey calls accumulation by dispossession. The government, acting as the executive committee of global capital, was not protecting the chaebols - it was actively expropriating its citizens of their rights, stability and future in order to transfer that wealth into the hands of the elite. The pacification of the strike was not a defense of order; it was an act of looting sanctioned by state violence. The death of Gi-hun’s colleague is not a metaphor - it is a transaction cost in the process of neoliberal transformation. It is the moment when the government and the chaebols betrayed the ordinary citizen for profit and exploitation. This event defines Gi-hun until the Game begins. He suffers from deep PTSD, the life he knew from his family home and then himself from his brief time working at “Dragon Motors” has been destroyed. His struggle and strike during the crisis were stifled, and the system, as part of maintaining the status quo, murdered his friend and destroyed his life. Gi-hun’s apathy and debts, are a direct result of this trauma and those events.
Out of the crisis was born a new reality - Hell Joseon, which is characterized by insecurity, the rat race, extreme individualism and a sick work ethos. Mark Fisher defined this as capitalist realism. It’s a paralyzing sense that there is no alternative. After the stifling rebellion, after the betrayal of the state, what is left for Gi-hun and millions like him? Apathy, debt and a quiet acceptance of the fact that the only reality is merciless competition. Hell Joseon is precisely the Korean name for capitalist realism. It’s a world where one doesn’t even dream of revolution, but only of winning the lottery or the casino. The game is an allegory of this cruel new reality. Everyone is theoretically equal during the game, just like in Korean capitalism. The players are people who have been thrown in the trash by the system. These are marginalized people with debts, traumas or criminal records. Their desperation to regain control of their lives again leads them through the hell Joseon, which means straight to the Squid Game.
Reform, betrayal and pacification and hell Joseon became the absolute foundation for the Game. A game that is a laboratory and a sample of the extreme version of neoliberalism that the state helped build. Squid Game is capitalist realism in the form of a carnival of death. The game is not an escape from reality; it is its most logical and terrifying consequence. As Han writes in Psychopolitics, the neoliberal regime no longer needs prison walls, because self-improvement and self-flagellation have become everyone’s project. Players enter the arena voluntarily because they have already been pre-programmed by the system to see life as a constant, individual competition. The game simply removes the thin layer of civilization’s varnish and shows the truth about the system: you are either a winner or a human waste. In view of this, are we really free if we play a game which rules have long been set by others - and we are just trying not to fall away?
Hell as a rule of the Game
Everyone is equal in the Game. Before the first game, players hear an announcement that emphasizes that everyone gets an equal chance to get out of debt. All they have to do is participate in the Game on an equal basis. Losing in the Game is like failing in Han’s achievement society. It is presented as a personal fault, not a direct consequence of the system. The Game places a premium on strength, cunning, sociopathy and a willingness to abandon humanity. This is neoliberalism in its purest form.
However, the players are not the only piece of this puzzle. VIPs are the ultimate symbol of global capital. For them, human lives don’t matter. What happens during the games is a form of exotic entertainment, which can additionally be bet on. Human tragedies have been turned into a financial instrument. Their boredom and inability to spend the capital accumulated over generations results in the seeking real experiences in the suffering and death of others. This is how low capital falls when there is nothing more to consume.
VIPs, specificly Oh Il-nam also created the Game as a thesis to confirm that humans are selfish beasts. Unfortunately, it is the Game system itself that is designed to bring out the worst possible human traits. This can lead to the mistaken satisfaction of acknowledging their own cynical thesis that this is the natural order of things. This is a classic argument of capitalist apologetics. However, in the context of the game, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that legitimizes the existence of such a system. In Europe during the Middle Ages, there was a similar thesis. It was the world order sanctified by the Christian God that caused the king to rule by divine appointment, and the peasant to work the land by the same divine right. After all, no one would dare to undermine the divine role. In the same way, after all, no one would question human nature, which is known to be evil and terrible.
Outro
In the end, Gi-hun wins the top prize in the Game. However, the money didn’t solve any of his problems, and he ultimately ends up with even more psychological destruction than he had after being pacified in Dragon Motors. Winning within the system does not provide liberation, but only devastates the individual. A devastated Gi-hun wanders around Seoul for a year. Only an encounter with Oh Il-nam awakened him from his paralysis. His physical metaphor is an allegory for the change in his mental nature. He stopped asking how to survive in the system, but how to destroy the system. It’s a path toward building something bigger and collective.
Squid Game is not a story about Korea per se. It is a mirror for each of us. The game, in a less violent but equally ruthless form, is going on all around us all the time. In corporations, in markets, on social media. Gi-hun eventually turned around and challenged the Game’s creators. And us? Will we continue to just play along, trying to survive until the next round?
Bibliography
These particular books affected the overall shape of the article
- Byung-Chul Han - Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
This book is the source of the direct quote and the core framework for understanding how neoliberalism shifts societal pressure inward. It explains how individuals like Gi-hun come to blame themselves for systemic failures, becoming “entrepreneurs of the self” in a game they are destined to lose. - Byung-Chul Han - The Burnout Society
A crucial companion to “Psychopolitics.” This work introduces the concept of the “achievement society” (Leistungsgesellschaft), which is fundamental to the essay’s analysis of post-crisis Korean society and the internalized pressure to succeed that fuels the desperation of the Squid Game contestants. - David Harvey - A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Harvey’s work provides the theoretical lens for the term “accumulation by dispossession.” This is essential for framing the pacification of the Dragon Motors strike not as a simple labor dispute, but as a deliberate, violent act of transferring wealth and rights from the working class to the capitalist elite. - Mark Fisher - Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
This book gives a name to the pervasive atmosphere of “Hell Joseon.” Fisher’s concept of “capitalist realism” perfectly describes the paralyzing apathy and the sense that “there is no alternative” which grips Gi-hun and others after their rebellion is crushed, making a death game seem like a viable escape.