North Korea: ‘Squid Game’ Proves ‘Corruption' Thrives in Capitalism

North Korean propaganda website Arirang Meari argued on Tuesday that South Korea’s TV show Squid Game, a surprise international hit for Netflix, proves that “corruption and immoral scoundrels are commonplace” in capitalist countries like South Korea. 

The fact that Squid Game is an over-the-top work of satirical fiction – which North Koreans are literally forbidden to watch under pain of imprisonment – appears to have escaped the North Korean polemicists.

“It is said that [Squid Game] makes people realize the sad reality of the beastly South Korean society in which human beings are driven into extreme competition and their humanity is being wiped out,” Arirang Meari pontificated.

The North Koreans said the show depicts an “unequal society where moneyless people are treated like chess pieces for the rich,” which is a fair enough description of the show’s premise, but also an accurate description of North Korea’s reality. 

The North Korean regime, like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the theocracy in Iran, thinks nothing of holding its own people hostage to squeeze concessions from the civilized world. At least the contestants in the fictional Squid Games have a fighting chance, which is more than can be said for the average North Korean peasant used as a pawn by the regime, or dissident who tries to change the rules of the game.

For the uninitiated, Squid Game is a dystopian horror story and social satire in the vein of The Hunger Games or especially Battle Royale, the controversial 2000 Japanese film that Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins swears she didn’t see before writing her popular young-adult books. 

Once again, people are made to participate in bizarre and deadly competitions, but in Squid Game the twist is the contestants are adults playing twisted versions of children’s’ games, like Red Light, Green Light and Tug of War. (The titular Squid Game is a somewhat antiquated contest of full-contact hopscotch played by South Korean children whose rules are explained early in the show.)

Losing one of these contests means instant death for the participants, whose numbers are whittled relentlessly down from about five hundred as the bloody games continue. For example, if you move a muscle during the “red light” phase of Red Light, Green Light, the game referees – who wear masks emblazoned with the symbols from a PlayStation controller – will instantly shoot you in the head. The show lavishes considerable attention on the crisp and efficient disposal of corpses and washing of blood from the floors.

The other sadistic twist in the Squid Game setup is that everyone is playing voluntarily. The contestants are people down on their luck who are approached by game agents with the promise of absurdly huge payoffs for winning at children’s games in a secret underground competition. After the delirious bloodbath of the first game, the survivors are given a chance to go home… but their attention is directed to the huge plastic bowl of money hanging over the arena, which fills with more wads of cash as each contestant is eliminated. The survivors could leave or call the police, but they all decide to keep playing.

One of the characters in Squid Game is a North Korean defector, which could be one reason the Communist tyranny jumped on the show so quickly, tickled at the chance to teach a “lesson” about how those who flee the socialist paradise created by the Kim dynasty are mercilessly abused by rapacious South Korean capitalism. 

Squid Game has been astoundingly successful for Netflix, an overnight sensation that could become the most-watched program ever broadcast by the streaming service. As of Monday, it was the most-watched Netflix show in 90 different international markets.

The show is so popular that a scandal broke out last week after viewers began calling a real phone number depicted on the business card of a Squid Game recruiter. The producers of the show inadvertently used the number of a South Korean dessert shop owner named Kim Gil-young, who found herself flooded with thousands of calls and text messages – many of them from people who actually wanted to play the game, so they regaled her with their tales of financial woe.

“This is not Squid Game. I sell handmade sugar-free sweet bean jellies,” Kim diplomatically replied to one aspiring contestant. Netflix said it would digitally alter the show to obscure her phone number.

No sooner had this snafu been dealt with than Squid Game fans noticed a bank account featured prominently in the last episode was real – so they started depositing money in it. The account was owned by one of the show’s producers, who has reportedly closed it.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter on Monday, Netflix Vice President for Asian Content Kim Min-young attributed the show’s popularity to its simple concept, superb production values, compelling characters, gripping “who will survive?” plotline, and social messaging.

“As a creative executive, I think the essence of the show is its commentary on social injustice – class divisions and financial inequality, or even gender-related issues. These social injustice issues aren’t only Korean – the whole world is struggling with them. These elements made the show resonate strongly outside of Korea as well,” Kim said.

One does not have to journey to Pyongyang to find commentators eager to cite the popularity of Squid Game as a scathing indictment of capitalism, although some fans of the show contend its themes are much deeper – the finale reveals who started the game and why, and it’s an explanation that could suit a Communist tyranny as easily as a capitalist oligarchy. 

In fact, authoritarian regimes that loudly despise capitalism have a history in the real world of harshly punishing athletes perceived as disappointing their rulers by losing their games. North Korea is one of those regimes.

Whatever the creators of Squid Game wanted to say about South Korea’s stratified social system in particular, or the people “left behind” by capitalism in general, the show offers an equally grotesque caricature of alternative social structures. 

For example, the Squid Game referees are fanatically devoted to the rule that everyone is “equal” inside the arena, and they punish perceived inequality with murder. The fact that the contestants are not equal – that women have a significant disadvantage against men in brute-force physical contests, for example – is callously ignored.

The entire competition amounts to people trapped inside a centrally planned zero-sum system fighting to control its resources. The later rounds of the game are designed to mercilessly eradicate the notion of voluntary cooperation to achieve mutually beneficial goals, which lies at the heart of capitalism. The overall story could be better understood as a cautionary tale about the danger of people lacking purpose, in a society that does not nourish or reward healthy ambitions, rather than a crude critique of capitalist greed.

As with the best over-the-top science fiction and fantasy tales that pretend to deliver cultural morality tales – think Fight Club or Paul Verhoeven’s film of Starship Troopers – Squid Game either deliberately or inadvertently satirizes both society and its critics, suggesting the cure for perceived social ills might be worse than the disease. 

Its creators were smart enough to make their polemical musings palatable to viewers by going absurdly over the top. If you want to turn a meditation on the medieval politics of the Wars of the Roses into a global phenomenon, just add some zombies and dragons. If you want people to watch your discourse on the desperation of those who feel cheated or abandoned by The System, bathe it in blood.

And of course, you’re best advised to make your absurdist critique of society while living under a capitalist system, because authoritarian regimes will ruin, imprison, or kill you for mocking them. Netflix quickly set up an online store to cash in on the show’s popularity by hawking Squid Game merchandise. You get 10 percent off your first order if you give them your email address. 

Capitalism remains the only system where you can get rich and famous by savagely criticizing it. Perhaps it says something good about capitalism that it’s necessary to spin crazy science-fiction yarns about deadly game shows to trash it. Meanwhile, in North Korea, the Hunger Games are held every day for real, and your whole family might end up in a concentration camp if you’re caught watching South Korean TV shows.