Squid Game: Debt, Inequality, and Concentration of Economic Power

Player 107, Kim Mi Ok, 540 million won in debt; Player 118, Oh Yeong-uk, 1.02 billion won in debt; Player 322, Jung Min-tae, 880 million won in debt; Player 119, No Sang-hun, 1.39 billion won in debt; Player 369, Park Ju-un, 900 million won in debt. It seems daunting, but these staggering numbers were used in the newly released Netflix Series, Squid Game, to depict the realities that the people of Korea experience. The Squid Game revolves around the debt situation that forces people to risk their lives by playing children’s games in a violent and bloody manner. We can find a retrenched gambler who wants to get custody rights over her daughter, a top-of-the-class business school graduate who siphoned money from his company due to losses in stocks and investments, a North-Korean defector who does crimes to support his younger brother and to get his mother across the border, a Pakistani illegal migrant worker who doesn’t get paid, a gangster who had debts in Philippine casinos, and more people who have one poignant similarity—they are living on the edge with debts they couldn’t pay. According to a recent survey (Inquirer 2020), a person who has 4.65 billion won (198 M pesos) in assets is considered wealthy by South Koreans. In the Squid Game, players are priced at 100 million won. At the end of the game, the winner will receive 45.6 billion won (1.9 B pesos), a massive amount of money that won’t only pay debts but also transform the winner’s life 180°.  

The Squid Game vividly illustrated how people resort to desperate measures and fall into unfortunate circumstances due to their debts. In Korea, suicide is one of the leading implications of debts, proving that shame and harassment by debt collectors leading to depression and tendencies to kill oneself really happen (Ng 2020). It also implies a relationship deterioration between family members, especially if the reason for debt is related to addiction such as gambling. Moreover, debt also implies personal bankruptcy, where the so-called “Informal bankruptcy” due to credit defaults was seen in Korea (Yoo 2007, 116). Social disorganization and inequality are also aspects of Korean society suggested by debts, specifically household ones (Jones and Urasawa 2014, 26). External debt or the debt owed from foreign lenders can indicate poverty and impede growth (Loko et al. 2003, 17). Crimes and deviant behavior risks increase due to debt situations (van Beek, de Vogel, van de Mheen 2020, 26). According to the Korea Economic Research Institute, by the time a newborn reaches High School, he or she will owe more than 100 M won if the Korean government debt continues its rapid increase (Song and White 2021). Debt impacts many in more ways than one.

In the subsequent sections, I will first present the reasons for debts focusing on Seong Gi-Hun, the main protagonist. These reasons, especially the "loss of jobs" will be analyzed by citing real scenarios and different economic events experienced by Korea. Furthermore, the backdrop of inequality in the series will be discussed, relating it to the concentration of economic power in “Chaebols.” In this paper, I hope to illustrate that many people identified with the series' protagonists since these characters mirrored their economic conditions. The allegory of the socio-economic landscape of today’s world will be shown to be true; however, I will also raise that it is a mixture of allegory and realistic fiction—such that elements in the story were formulated through the director’s real and personal experiences and that most of the depictions were explicit rather than having a hidden meaning. 

ON DEBTS 

According to the Corporate Finance Institute (n.d.), debt is “money borrowed by one party from another to serve a financial need that otherwise cannot be met outright.” The debtor can be a person, business, organization, or government (Irby 2021). Household debt is one of the major dilemmas in Korea’s debt situation. This type of debt involves “student loans, car loans, home mortgages, small business loans, and credit card debt” (Ng 2020).  South Korean households owe banks 1,805.9 trillion won due to mortgages, stocks, and living expenses (C. Kim and Roh 2021), which their Gross Domestic Product is approximately at par with this year. Credit card spending, 40% of the country’s GDP, is a significant factor of this soaring household debt. Moreover, Korea’s general government gross debt to gross domestic product is estimated to rise to 66.7% by 2026, according to the International Monetary Fund (Park, “GDP Growth,” 2021). This ratio indicates a country’s ability to pay its debts; the higher the percentage, the harder it is to repay debts. 

Seong Gi-hun

According to Professor Ha Joon-Kyung in Hanyang University Department of Economics (Tan 2021), “As Korea's social safety net is not strong enough yet, the unemployed cannot remain jobless for long. They must do whatever they can." This statement applies to Seong Gi-Hun who was retrenched from a company where he spent 16 years of his life. During that time, his daughter was about to be born, and he had a million things to pay. We can surmise that Gi-Hun tried to leverage himself by opening a chicken resto and snack bar with whatever little he had; however, these businesses failed, causing him to be slumped again. Debts piled up—fueled by his horse racing gambling addiction—which the small wage he’s now receiving from being a chauffeur could never pay. Gi-Hun owes 160 M won to loan sharks, and 255 M won to the bank. Gi-Hun’s character shows us that being jobless or earning relatively less can lead to debts (Furniss 2016; Step Change Debt Charity n.d.). Furthermore, in a study concerning several countries conducted by Hassan and Nassar (2015, 52), debt is positively correlated to unemployment—if debt increases, unemployment increases. This unemployment issue is prevalent in the youth demographic of Korea. In 2018, bankruptcy rates soared, only hitting the 20s age group who were unsuccessful in getting hired. Kim Sang-bong, Hansung University economics professor, said that these youth would continue to be indebted as they continue to spend money while looking for jobs for another year or so (Ng 2020); having no job leads to indebtedness.

Gambling is also a reason for debt (Swanton and Gainsbury 2020, 26). A The Korea Herald (2010a) article revealed the case of “Kim,” who had started gambling in 2000, which led to piled-up debts ten years after. To pay for these debts, he (like Gi-Hun) engaged in horse racing—in South Korea, horse racing is a legal form of gambling (Haps Korea 2019)—and online poker, approached workmates and relatives to borrow money, and mortgaged their apartment for a bank loan. When his debt reached 400 M won, he began thinking about suicide. Kim eventually killed his wife while they were quarreling, and then his son— thinking that no one would look after his 14-year old child if he would kill himself first. Kim was arrested during a visit to his father’s tomb. According to Cho Hyun-sub, Prevention Center for Gambling Addiction director that year, “Most of the gambling addicts are self-employed men in their 30s or 40s. With the economic slowdown ongoing, the trend is likely to deepen.” These jive with the age group and job status of our main character, Gi-hun, who deals with gambling to pay off debts to loan sharks, of which 400,000+ South Koreans were said to be using (Ng 2020). In recent years, however, gambling addiction has been prevalent in young South Koreans. Kwon Do Hyeon, in his 20s, started gambling when he was an undergraduate, from which he earned millions of won. The money eventually was spent, so he applied for a loan to sustain his gambling addiction. In just ten days, he lost 15 M won. Do-Hyeon paid his debts through his parents, who lent him roughly 25 M won; they kicked him out of the house after. The Korean Centre on Gambling Problems revealed that in 2015, only 168 teenagers were treated for gambling addiction, but it rose to 1,067 in 2018, with illegal websites as a platform for the majority (Ng 2020). In a BBC interview (2020), Josh (age 27) said that it would take him eight to ten years to pay off his debts due to gambling; Carl shared that, for the past five years since he started, he had lost around £60,000+ or 4 M pesos. About 23 million Americans are also in debt due to wagers used in gambling addiction (McManamon 2021). Gambling, indeed, is a strong reason why people are drowning in debts.

Another reason behind debts is divorce or failed marriage. Gi-Hun, before he entered the game, was already three years divorced. His daughter lives with his ex-wife, whom he tried to borrow money from for his mom’s medical bills—it is also important to point out that debts due to medical expenses usually happen, especially in marginalized sectors such as the poor (Crawford 2021). According to Simon Zhen (2021), an expert in consumer banking products, bank innovations, and financial technology, divorce is a top reason for debts—citing the costs to hire lawyers and the settlement money for the divorce. Furniss (2016) also pointed out the “regular payments” to one’s spouse and the “legal bills.” Debts can also be a reason for divorce (Church n.d.); divorce affects debts and vice versa.

The last reason is the failure of businesses and ventures. According to Jason Cope (2011), there is a financial cost, specifically a personal income loss or reduction and a long-time-to-pay personal debt, when a business venture fails (as cited in Lee 2017). Gi-hun, we remember, had opened a chicken resto and snack bar, both of which had failed. To sum up the causes, Seong Gi-hun’s 415 M won total debt accumulated due to loss of job, gambling addiction, divorce, and business failures.

ON INEQUALITY 

Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk revealed that the 2009 global economic crisis that hit Korea, which he experienced first-hand, inspired the series (Jeffries 2021). It was the “Great Recession” that happened from 2007 to 2009; the IMF described it as “a decline in real per-capita world gross domestic product” where many people lost their jobs, and advanced economies were devastated (History 2019; Reserve Bank of Australia n.d.). During this time, countries suffered from their deepest recessions since the “Great Depression” in 1930—an economic downturn that started in the United States then spread to a significant number of countries causing “drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation” (Pells and Romer, 2021). While Korea was experiencing this crisis, Hwang’s mother retired, and he failed to get his project financed so he couldn’t work; the tight financial situation forced him, his mother, and grandmother to get loans. Reading survival game comics to find relief, he thought of the idea of joining games like those to make money for his family (if those games exist). The issue of inequality, therefore, motivated the series—“We are fighting for our lives in very unequal circumstances,” as director Hwang said. 

Karl Marx forwarded the Theory of Conflict, which says that people are “in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources” (Hayes 2020). This theory tells us that the wealthy and powerful would do anything to sustain their status in society—mainly by suppressing the marginalized sectors. In an exclusive interview,  Director Hwang made us visualize this concept in the context of Korea in just a few sentences,  

Outwardly, Korean entertainment seems to be doing very well. Think of BTS, ‘Parasite,’ ‘Gangnam Style,’ or ‘Crash Landing on You.’ But South Korean society is also very competitive and stressful. We have 50 million people in a small place. And, cut off from the continent of Asia by North Korea, we have developed an island mentality. Some of that stress is carried over in the way that we are always preparing for the next crisis. In some ways, it is a motivator. It helps us ask what more should be done. But such competition also has side-effects. (Frater 2021)

This statement can stimulate discussions, especially among Hallyu fans around the globe. 

ON CHAEBOLS

A lot of this inequality and fierce competition is attributed to Chaebols' existence in Korea. "Chaebols" are large industrial conglomerates that account for “a highly concentrated private sector of economic power” (Suh 1998, 129). According to Seoul National University economics professor Sangin Park (2020, 2021), these "Chaebols" can be threats to democracy and market economy through “judiciary capture,” which happens when “judges resign and join the legal teams of ‘chaebol’ firms or law firms whose clients are ‘chaebol’ firms” if they don’t advance in their hierarchy.

There is a high probability that these career conscious judges form “distorted judicial decisions,” knowing that Chaebols control a large portion of the economic resources; these decisions might empower Chaebols more. These conglomerates were also a primary cause of the 1997 economic crisis in South Korea (S. Park 2021). The 1997 Asian economic crisis is coined as the “Asian Contagion” where a crash of stock markets and currencies occurred (International Banker 2021; Investopedia 2021). After the 1997 crisis, the Chaebol flourished more; even the International Monetary Fund was unable to succeed with their goal to reform these. Chungnam National University modern literature professor and drama critic Yun Suk-Jin said that “South Koreans used to have a collective community spirit.” However, the 1997 Asian Contagion diminished the economic rise after the Korean war in the 1950s, which then led to a situation that “made everyone fight for themselves” (Young 2021). 

Hyeng-Joon Park’s (2016, 25)  “Analysis of Capital as Power'' argued that the Chaebol families were the ones who greatly benefitted from the acceleration of neoliberal restructuring after the 1997 crisis that led to the “massive differential profits'' and “capitalization for dominant capital”; dominant capital, according to Bichler and Nitzan (2004, 256), is a collective term for “the largest power coalitions at the centre of the political economy.” These are the very consequences of power restructuring after the crisis (Park, Capital as Power, 2016, 25). Park furthered by stating that Korean society’s worsened inequality stems from the transnationalized Chaebols’ recovery of labor control through exploiting and exacerbating post-1997 heightened job insecurity. Clearly, the concentration of economic power and the economic disparities between the poor and the rich exist in this ever-changing socio-political world.

ON OTHER REAL EVENTS

Dragon Motors, the fictional company where Seong Gi-Hun worked, is actually a reference to Ssangyong (literally means ‘Double Dragon”) Motors, a real company—a part of the Ssangyong Chaebol—that suffered a liquidity crisis in April 2009 due to plummeting vehicle sales and the global economic crisis (The Korea Herald 2010b). Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., the parent of Ssangyong, filed a court receivership that would declare the abandonment of management rights over the automaker company, which was the fifth-largest at that time. SAIC, with the recommendation of Samjong KPMG, a leading accounting firm, laid off (worsened to retrenchment) a total of 2,646 workers “as part of its bankruptcy, legal receivership, and recovery process” (Park, Capitalist Unconscious, 2018, n.p.). It is therefore hardly surprising that numerous people, especially the dismissed Ssangyong workers, resonated with Gi-hun. Lee Chang-keun, one of the thousands who were laid-off, said that he remembered his fallen co-workers by watching the series. Lee, who was also the spokesperson of the automaker’s labor union, wrote an article published in Jacobin magazine where he vividly narrated what they went through. Korea University medical researchers reported in 2016 that suicide, severe health problems,  including those connected to PTSD or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, were the causes of at least 28 workers' or their relatives’ deaths (T. Kim 2021). Kim Jeong-wook, another dismissed Ssangyong worker who protested with Lee by perching up a chimney in 2009, said that he could not continue the series after episode one; “It was too traumatic for me,” he stated.

Emile Durkheim forwarded the concept of Anomie—a state of social disintegration and blurring of collective consciousness. Durkheim wrote a doctoral thesis in 1893 entitled De la division du travail social or "The Division of Labor in Society" where he described Anomie as an “abnormal form of the division of labor” such that the expected cooperation between different social functions is missing or deficient. This Anomie is experienced as social anxieties happen, including “economic crisis, the antagonism between capitalists and workers, and science’s loss of unity due to its increasing specialization” —examples that Durkheim cited in his thesis (Besnard 2015, 174). This Anomie was depicted in the series through the antagonism between the Ssangyong dismissed workers and their employers. 

In a CNN interview, Director Hwang revealed that Gi-Hun and Cho Sang-Woo, the bank employee in the series, were named after real people—his old friends whom he described as his “inner clones.” These characters represent a part of him. Hwang was also raised by a single mother in Ssangmundong— like Gi-hun—where inequality can be seen just by looking at the houses. Sang-Woo represents him because even though finishing a journalism degree in the best university in South Korea, Seoul National University, he also experienced financial troubles—opposed to people's high expectations (Sit and Kang 2021; AFP 2021). Hwang also revealed that he experienced racial discrimination when he went to the United Kingdom at age 24; he then based the character of Ali, the Pakistani migrant worker, on this experience. Hwang recalled it by saying: “I think I was someone like Ali back then."

ALLEGORY AND REALISTIC FICTION

Some elements of Realistic Fiction, including settings that could be or are real, events that could happen, and real issues dealt with by seemingly real people (Mcquade Library 2019), were evident in the series. Although the series is indeed an allegory of socio-economic inequality— such that the VIPs implied conspiratorial thinking over economic inequality (Casara, Suitner and Jetten 2021, 3), it also explicitly portrayed various scenarios and dialogues that are existing or really happening, such as the houses in Ssangmundong, the debt situation, the gambling addiction, divorce, and business failure. At some point, it seemed there was no “hidden story” anymore, especially when the ideas rise to the surface; these are served to be chewed immediately without relatively deep interpretation.

Korea was once known for the “Miracle of the Han River” or the rapid economic growth after the Korean War in the 1950s. But today, people are wailing about the “Hell Joseon,” a satirical sort of allusion to the 1932 to 1950 rule of this hierarchical kingdom in Korea. Indeed, today many are in economic turmoil or drowning in debts—a plausible reason for the massive viewership of the series; a Korean affirms the former but somehow challenges the latter by saying, “In any case, why would I want to watch a bunch of people with huge debts? I can just look in the mirror” (T. Kim 2021). Regardless, Squid Game will always be a reflection of today’s deep-rooted socioeconomic disparities.

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