{"id":817867,"date":"2025-01-07T09:12:57","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/07\/the-real-life-violence-that-inspired-south-koreas-squid-game\/"},"modified":"2025-01-07T09:12:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:12:57","slug":"the-real-life-violence-that-inspired-south-koreas-squid-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/07\/the-real-life-violence-that-inspired-south-koreas-squid-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The real-life violence that inspired South Korea\u2019s \u2018Squid Game\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Riot police march in front of the Ssangyong offices on August 6, 2009, after massive layoffs turned a car plant into a battlefield – Copyright AFP\/File Jung Yeon-je<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n

Claire LEE<\/em><\/p>\n

A factory turned into a battlefield, riot police armed with tasers and an activist who spent 100 days atop a chimney \u2014 the unrest that inspired Netflix\u2019s most successful show ever has all the hallmarks of a TV drama.<\/p>\n

This month sees the release of the second season of \u201cSquid Game\u201d, a dystopian vision of South Korea where desperate people compete in deadly versions of traditional children\u2019s games for a massive cash prize.<\/p>\n

But while the show itself is a work of fiction, Hwang Dong-hyuk, its director and writer, has said the experiences of the main character Gi-hun, a laid-off worker, were inspired by the violent Ssangyong strikes in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to show that any ordinary middle-class person in the world we live in today can fall to the bottom of the economic ladder overnight,\u201d he has said.<\/p>\n

In May 2009, Ssangyong, a struggling car giant taken over by a consortium of banks and private investors, announced it was laying off more than 2,600 people, or nearly 40 percent of its workforce.<\/p>\n

That was the beginning of an occupation of the factory and a 77-day strike that ended in clashes between strikers armed with slingshots and steel pipes and riot police wielding rubber bullets and tasers.<\/p>\n

Many union members were severely beaten and some were jailed.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2018Many lost their lives\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n

The conflict did not end there.<\/p>\n

Five years later, union leader Lee Chang-kun held a sit-in for 100 days on top of one of the factory\u2019s chimneys to protest a sentence in favour of Ssangyong against the strikers.<\/p>\n

He was supplied with food from a basket attached to a rope by supporters and endured hallucinations of a tent rope transformed into a writhing snake.<\/p>\n

Some who experienced the unrest struggled to discuss \u201cSquid Game\u201d because of the trauma they endured, Lee told AFP.<\/p>\n

The repercussions of the strike, compounded by protracted legal battles, caused significant financial and mental strain for workers and their families, resulting in around 30 deaths by suicide and stress-related issues, Lee said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany have lost their lives. People had to suffer for too long,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He vividly remembers the police helicopters circling overhead, creating intense winds that ripped away workers\u2019 raincoats.<\/p>\n

Lee said he felt he could not give up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were seen as incompetent breadwinners and outdated labour activists who had lost their minds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice kept beating us even after we fell unconscious \u2014 this happened at our workplace, and it was broadcast for so many to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee said he had been moved by scenes in the first season of \u201cSquid Game\u201d where Gi-hun struggles not to betray his fellow competitors.<\/p>\n

But he wished the show had spurred real-life change for workers in a country marked by economic inequality, tense industrial relations and deeply polarised politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite being widely discussed and consumed, it is disappointing that we have not channelled these conversations into more beneficial outcomes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2018Shadow of state violence\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n

The success of \u201cSquid Game\u201d in 2021 left him feeling \u201cempty and frustrated\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, it felt like the story of the Ssangyong workers had been reduced to a commodity in the series,\u201d Lee told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cSquid Game\u201d, the streaming platform\u2019s most-watched series of all time, is seen as embodying the country\u2019s rise to a global cultural powerhouse, part of the \u201cKorean wave\u201d alongside the Oscar-winning \u201cParasite\u201d and K-pop stars such as BTS.<\/p>\n

But its second season comes as the Asian democracy finds itself embroiled in some of its worst political turmoil in decades, triggered by conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol\u2019s failed bid to impose martial law this month.<\/p>\n

Yoon has since been impeached and suspended from duties pending a ruling by the Constitutional Court.<\/p>\n

That declaration of martial law risked sending the Korean wave \u201cinto the abyss\u201d, around 3,000 people in the film industry, including \u201cParasite\u201d director Bong Joon-ho, said in a letter following Yoon\u2019s shocking decision.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Tikhonov, a Korean studies professor at the University of Oslo, told AFP that some of South Korea\u2019s most successful cultural products highlight state and capitalist violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a noteworthy and interesting phenomenon \u2014 we still live in the shadow of state violence, and this state violence is a recurrent theme in highly successful cultural products.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

AFP
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Riot police march in front of the Ssangyong offices on August 6, 2009, after massive layoffs turned a car plant into a battlefield – Copyright AFP\/File Jung Yeon-je Claire LEE A factory turned into a battlefield, riot police armed with tasers and an activist who spent 100 days atop a chimney \u2014 the unrest that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":817868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1606,22639],"tags":[13706,7900],"class_list":{"0":"post-817867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-real-life","8":"category-violence","9":"tag-real-life","10":"tag-violence"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}