Elections, Inc: Squid Game is Back with a Warning About Corporatocracy
Mild Squid Game spoilers ahead.
Anyone with a Netflix subscription has probably heard of the hit show Squid Game, a South Korean drama (or K-Drama) where people down on their luck are convinced to play demented versions of childhood games for a chance to win 45.6 billion won (roughly $33 million USD). Since its inception, the show depicts the extremes to which poverty will drive ordinary, everyday people, and critiques societies that turn people’s misfortune into entertainment. These themes are equally relevant to Americans, hence why the first season was wildly popular in the U.S. with millions tuning in.
Season 3 (which is really more of a “Part II” to Season 2 than a standalone season) came out last week, with an even darker tone than the first – and with themes and lessons that seemed as applicable to post-Trump Korean and American politics as they were to the show’s original themes of classism and entertainment.
If that last bit seems like a stretch, hear me out.
Squid Game Season 1 released in 2021. Just a couple of months later, Yoon Suk Yeol won the nomination of the People Power Party (PPP) as its presidential candidate. The PPP is a right-wing political party in South Korea that has been pushed even farther to the right in recent years, in response to the rise of a far-right movement in the country. Yoon himself ran on a platform that catered to men who felt the left had failed them by giving unearned opportunities to women in the workforce (despite the Korean pay gap being one of the worst in the world), and at one point stated that Chun Doo-hwan, an authoritarian president who massacred protesters in 1980, was “good at politics”. In an election where the top concerns were the economy, youth unemployment, and the fate of DEI programs, Yoon eked out a slim win in the election.
Sounds familiar, right?
Original Meme by Sen
When Yoon then failed to deliver on campaign promises, including stabilizing inflation, the more liberal Korean Democratic Party (DP) swept the PPP in the April 2024 midterm elections. For a moment, it seemed sanity was returning to Korean politics. But Yoon seemed to take personal offense at the idea of him entering a “lame duck” presidency.
Squid Game writer and director Hwang Dong Hyuk started filming Seasons 2 and 3 of the show in July 2023, and ended filming in June 2024–squarely during the first couple years of Yoon’s tenure. Season 2 was released in (and therefore completed well before) December 2024, the same month that Yoon, in an act of desperation, declared martial law in an attempted self-coup that he claimed was necessary due to rampant electoral fraud and North Korean Communist infiltration that had led to the midterm results. Yoon’s attempt to centralize control, thankfully, was stopped in its tracks: lower-ranking soldiers in the military declined to seize control of other government buildings, allowing legislators to get into the National Assembly building and unanimously annul his declaration with protestors outside calling for Yoon’s immediate impeachment. Yoon was even denounced by his own party.
Season 3 comes to us after the attempted coup, and after pro-Yoon rallies took to the streets to declare that it was time to “Stop the Steal” and save their president from what they called an “invalid impeachment” on charges of insurrection. It’s not a coincidence that Season 3 comes with a more exasperated, tragic, and at times nihilistic tone than Season 1, even if it was originally filmed well before martial law was declared.
Without getting into deep spoilers, Squid Game in general has excelled in depicting an environment where the players are all in dire need of money to improve their lives, and a small group of businessmen have successfully convinced the players that the only way to improve their lives is to fight each other (sometimes to the death) to get that money. Seasons 2 and 3 kick this up a notch. The latest seasons feature the protagonist Seong Gi-hun returning to the arena to try and end the games once and for all. In his mind, this should be simple–deep down everyone is a good person, and if they see that they are being exploited for the benefit of others and that people like them are dying, surely they’ll want to end the games too.
But a series of twists and turns – including a new game mechanic where everyone votes after a round to decide whether the games will continue – test Gi-hun’s faith in humanity, and whether everyone in the games actually deserves to be saved.. Gi-hun tries, at times in vain, to convince everyone that the real enemy are those who run the games, and not those who play the games. But for many, seeing the literal piggybank in the sky that fills as more and more people die manipulates them into killing as many of their fellow players as possible, even in games where their own personal survival, or even their ability to collect from the pot, doesn’t require them to do so. With a late Season 2 betrayal coming to full fruition in Season 3 and further grinding down Gi-hun’s resolve. It even seems nigh impossible to stop the games to those (such as Officer Hwang Jun-ho) attempting to do so from the outside.
Director Hwang has been clear that this exploitation isn’t only a problem that plagues the South Korean population. As early as Season 1, Hwang intentionally depicted the “VIPs” (the wealthy audience of the games who invest in the games for their own entertainment) as wealthy interlopers from America and Europe, making the argument that America’s 1% and global elite will entertain themselves with the suffering of the everyday citizens when they think they can get away with it. This lesson continues through Seasons 2 and 3, with Season 3 in particular coming with an even more explicit warning for Americans: stay vigilant, or it will only be a matter of time before the games come to a city near you.
The universe of Squid Game starkly mirrors the realities of politics in South Korea and in the U.S. over the past few years. Many voters, hurting from economic insecurity, leaned into the idea that financial success is a zero sum game where other everyday people had stolen from them what they deserved. Many voters were convinced in elections in both countries that turning on others who were also hurting was the best way to end their personal pain. In Korea, Yoon exploited men’s fears about their economic futures by turning them against women, convincing them that it was women who stood in the way of their economic prosperity. In America, Trump exploited American fears of economic insecurity by turning them against immigrants and DEI programs, convincing them that immigrants, women, and people of color were the root case of their economic woes and even fueling conspiracy theories that immigration policies and DEI programs were designed to literally replace them in modern society. In both countries, a majority (even if slim) was convinced that their best chance of survival was to vote for an environment that comes at grave risk to everyone, in the hopes that they’ll survive the upheaval long enough for the wealth of others to be collected in some figurative piggybank and redistributed back to them. In both countries, everyday people have been convinced to fight each other for a chance at wealth that the 1% would consider pocket change, instead of fighting the system that only allots them an artificially small piece of the pie in the first place. As with Squid Game, the darkest moments of Yoon’s and Trump’s respective presidencies have been when cynicism, nihilism, and greed win over kindness, human connection, and hope.
But on that last point: as bleak as Season 3 gets at times, there are still moments of brightness, where normal people put aside their differences to help each other and learn from each other. There are moments where people learn that they’re all not that different–and maybe pursuit of the dream, at the cost of building relationships with others–isn’t as straightforward as they thought. Even when the horrors of the game persist, so do the bonds people form as they all attempt to survive in a system that has been meticulously put together to prevent people from stopping it. Each of the bonds forged throughout the series drive us to the show’s ultimate conclusion.
Does Gi-hun’s faith in humanity win out and allow him to help bring an end to the games, or does his Season 3 nihilism win out in the end and allow the games to persist? You’ll have to watch the show to find out. But when you do, keep in mind the context in which the show was written. Squid Game comes to us at a time where South Korea teetered on the brink of a return to deadly authoritarianism, and survived. As we Americans face our own possible descent into authoritarianism, there’s a lot we can also learn from the real-life events that inspired Squid Game’s later seasons, and the lessons from Season 3 itself – both in the positive examples we can strive to emulate, and the negative examples that serve as warnings for who we could become. If we allow ourselves or others to be tricked into believing that injustices and violence against others will lead to our benefit, we as a society will perpetuate terrible things; when we look at those injustices with eyes wide open and help others see the same, we as a society can achieve great things.
Squid Game’s last episode leaves open the question of whether or not the games can find a home in the U.S. It’s up to us to answer that question.
****
If you’re interested in knowing how to do just that this year, please check out these articles about talking to friends, families, and strangers about what’s going on lately. Please also consider joining us on July 4th as we call on everyone to collectively do what they can (whether by joining local celebrations, or simply talking to friends, family, and coworkers) to guide people who still need help understanding how the Trump Administration’s actions so far, as well as its future plans, harm everyday Americans like them.
Enjoyed this article? Get updates on the movement, volunteer opportunities, and more by clicking below.