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How the South Korean society (unfortunately) inspired Squid Game

How growing economic inequality inspired the season's hottest series.

Part 1. Vocabulary

fictional

/ ˈFikSH (ə) n (ə) l/ adj.

- formed or conceived by the imagination;

Squid game is a fictional South Korean Netflix series.

titular

/ ˈTiCHələr/ adj.

- denoting a person or thing from whom or which the name of an artistic work or similar is taken:

"… The titular hero of the play."

rat race

/ Rat ˌrās/ n. ”

- a way of life in which people are caught up in a fiercely competitive struggle for wealth or power:

A rat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. 

impetus

/ ˈImpədəs/ n.

- the force or energy with which a body moves:

The grant for building the opera house gave impetus to the city's cultural life.

wager

/ ˈWājər/ n.

an act of betting a sum of money on the outcome of an unpredictable event:

"… They have made a wager on who will win tonight."

 

Part 2. Comprehension Questions

What is the fictional Squid game about?

What are the games in the Squid game?

What is the rate race?

When was the initial conception of the show?

 

Part 3. Article Reading

By now, you may have already heard about the Netflix series Squid Game. This is a fictional South Korean Netflix series where it showed individuals competing in a series of lethal games for a chance to win $ 38 million. The games are fundamentally based on the six children's games (red light/green light, dalgona, tug-of-war, marbles collecting, steppingstones, and the titular squid game).

The games were included by the game master, as they were a key part of his boyhood. The games were innocently played in early childhood, but it bared how the rat race of “white-collar respectability” in South Korea started early.

The pressure to excel in elementary school to get into the top middle school, which then improves the chance of getting into one of the best high schools. Success in high school is one of the tickets to enter the three most prominent universities in South Korea:   Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. These universities (referred to as “SKY”) feed their graduates to top-tier organizations, leading to higher incomes and better marital prospects.

Squid Game was born out of a similar impetus. Hwang told  IndieWire that the initial conception of the show occurred during the 2008 financial crisis. He noted that the difference between the "winners" and "losers" in the decade that followed became more pronounced. With each passing year since the financial crisis, the premise of Hwang's show, in which desperate contestants wager their lives for a chance to dig themselves out of a financial rut while the ultrarich looks on with indifference, seems less and less ludicrous.

The show is so compelling because it presents the viewers with the victims of a society where the poor get poorer, and the wealthy get wealthier. And ultra-violent murder games aside, it shows us a world that seems too familiar for comfort, in Korea and elsewhere.

 

Source: an article by Yoo Jung Kim, MD, https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/apple-day/202110/how-south-korean-society-unfortunately-inspired-squid-game

 

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