[Column] "Squid Game" shows we must fight together or die alone

The "Squid Game" that benefits only a select few will never stop until the victims share an alternative belief system that allows them to join together in solidarity

illustration by Kim Dae-jung

Pak Noja (Vladimir Tikhonov)

By Pak Noja (Vladimir Tikhonov), professor of Korean Studies at the University of Oslo

These days, there’s barely a single person in my circle who hasn’t seen “Squid Game.” I can recall few TV series — let alone South Korean ones — that have been met with this kind of global popularity.

The “survival game” genre tends to draw popular notice fairly easily, but even similar works like the 2000 Japanese film “Battle Royale” hadn’t enjoyed this kind of fame.

Certainly, factors like a popular genre, intricate plotting, and high-quality filmmaking have contributed to the success of “Squid Game” — but an even bigger factor than those is the film’s profound message. Here in Norway at least, that message has been the focus of much of the discussion about the show.

The blood-soaked horrors of “Squid Game” are, of course, a visualization of the win-or-lose race of neoliberalism and its principles of “dog eat dog” and “winner takes all.” The losers of society, those defeated in the “money wars,” volunteer for a murderous game with almost no chance of survival, grasping at straws in the hopes of somehow joining the ranks of the winners. Their gruesome deaths in turn serve as a source of sadistic entertainment to those with power.

There’s no question that the clique in the series, with its six “VIPs” entertaining themselves by watching the 456 contemporary gladiators meet their deaths, serves as a metaphor for an extreme form of neoliberal society run “by the one percent, for the one percent.” This symbolism comes across as quite accessible and natural to viewers around the world, acquainted as they are with critiques of neoliberalism in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008.

But there are other key messages that shouldn’t be overlooked — messages about the lack of unity among victims, and about the complex layered relationship between victimizing and being victimized.

The deeply indebted people who are pulled into this gladiatorial combat are unquestionably victims of a societal order dominated by wealthy people who take delight in their bloodshed. Yet these contestants also volunteer to chase victory in games where it is understood that their fellow players will die.

We see almost no attempts among them to band together against the death game’s organizers — only the rare instances where one of them sacrifices themselves for the sake of another player. Of the 450 odd characters killed in the death game, a large number had their fellow contestants’ blood already on their hands.

Unable to mount an organized, concerted resistance against the system operated by their tormentors, the victims are forced, in turn, to become killers themselves. That may be the key message that the series is sharing.

The main character in “Squid Game” is Seong Gi-hun, a man whose life was plunged into crisis when he lost his job in the wake of a strike at “Dragon Motors” — clearly modeled on the Ssangyong Motor strike of 2009. He lived through the murderous tactics used to suppress that strike, and it ended up being an indelibly traumatic experience for him.

The actual quashing of the Ssangyong Motor strike really was as brutal as a military operation, with the use of tasers, tear gas, and other tactics. The harshness of it remains seared in the memories of many people today.

But one other thing that I recall from the Ssangyong strike of 2009 was the isolation of the striking workers. A partial strike was staged by 150,000 members of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU), with which the Ssangyong union was affiliated. But that ended up amounting to little more than a pro forma display of solidarity.

There wasn’t any meaningful solidarity to speak of, as the key force behind that — the KWMU representatives from the Hyundai Motor chapter — voted down a proposal for a sympathy strike to express support for the Ssangyong workers.

The notoriously “business-friendly,” corruption-ridden Lee Myung-bak administration inflicted its own direct harm on the Ssangyong workers, but what role did their fellow industry workers play in the tragedy as another group of potential victims interested not in helping their colleagues, but only in their own well-being?

Perhaps the hundreds of latter-day gladiators in “Squid Game” — victims who allowed themselves to be pulled into their tormentors’ game and become tormentors to one another — are inspired by real-life situations like those.

Works like “Squid Game” are being made specifically in Korea, and situations like these have recently become typical of Korea. Even among fellow workers, we see no kind of solidarity when there is even the slightest difference in position or station.

I’ll look at the example of universities, with which I am quite closely acquainted.

There is a faculty union with around 600 members, representing only around one percent of the 66,000 or so full-time professors at four-year universities. Only a very small minority of professors are members of the union, but they can be seen as representing the most progressive members of their conservative community.

At the same universities, there is also an irregular professors’ union with roughly 1,700 members, including hourly lecturers and others in similar positions. Both unions have a membership made up of education workers whose duties include instruction and research; both are classified as “progressive” in terms of their political leanings.

But when I ask whether there have been cases where the regular and irregular faculty union members have united for any struggles, the answer I hear is “hardly ever.”

They’re all progressives. They’re all researchers affiliated with the same universities. Yet when there are differences in status at play, they simply do not join together in solidarity.

It’s not just universities either. “Squid Game” can be seen as a symbolic, extreme illustration of the world we live in — one where solidarity is out of the question.

In the nightmarish world of “Squid Game,” many of the participants tacitly share the same worldview as the competition’s organizers.

The organizers figure that since the participants are taking part “voluntarily,” it is perfectly acceptable for them to make money by putting them together in kill-or-be-killed games in a human racecourse. When previous competitors return to the game of their own accord, they seem to be accepting the reality of the dog-eat-dog logic behind it, where everyone else must die for a winner to claim the prize.

The problem is that there are far too many cases — not just in the show, but in the real-world Republic of Korea — where victims really do seem to accept their tormentors’ logic.

For instance, we may see an excellent illustration of a “ruled” group failing to resist their rulers’ ideology in the case of opposition to converting the Incheon International Airport Corporation’s irregular workers to regular status.

Ignoring the inherent unfairness of hiring irregular workers to perform permanent, ongoing duties — as well as the great injustice of discrimination against irregular workers in the first place — the opponents simply accepted their neoliberal rulers’ deceptive rhetoric about “procedural fairness,” with hundreds of thousands of members of the public going so far as to sign on to a Blue House petition.

The “Squid Game” that benefits only a select few will never stop until the victims start sharing an alternative belief system, one that enables them to join together on an equal footing to mount a collective resistance.

It’s a fact vividly illustrated by the history of the past two decades or so of South Korean neoliberalism that gives “Squid Game” its backdrop — and by the history of division and atomization among the victimized public.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]