Lee Jung-jae says goodbye to Squid Game
As the hit Korean dystopian thriller returns for its final season, its star reflects on the role of a lifetime.
That’s time on Squid Game. The final season of the dystopian South Korean mega-hit lands next week, and its star, Lee Jung-jae, 52, isn’t quite ready to let go.
“I’ve never spent so many years inhabiting a single character like Gi-hun. So naturally, he holds a very special place in my heart,” he tells Review over Zoom. “I have fond memories of communicating with so many fans through his character, so it’s quite bittersweet.”
Few shows in recent memory have broken into the global imagination as intensely as Squid Game upon its 2021 premiere. It remains the most-watched show Netflix has ever plonked onto its servers (the first season racked up 265.2 million views and topped charts in 90 countries). Its green tracksuits, pink jumpsuits and white slip-on Vans (sales spiking 7800 per cent) all but swallowed Halloween. On Etsy you could buy unofficial Dalgona candy kits; on Amazon, Funko Pop figurines of the characters; and at McDonald’s you could scarf down a Squid Game-themed meal.
There were viral internet challenges. The excellent spin-off reality show Squid Game: The Challenge, with the biggest cash prize in television history ($7m). And a godless Amazon Prime knock-off from YouTuber MrBeast (Beast Games). It was impossible to escape.
At the 2022 Emmy Awards, Lee took home the top acting prize and became the first person from a foreign-language show to win best actor in a drama. And Hwang Dong-hyuk won the drama directing Emmy.
But why did the world fall so hard for it? For Lee, the answer is simple: “Hwang Dong-hyuk (creator, writer, director) understood the social climate not only in Korea but all societies of the world very well. I think that’s why it resonated with global audiences,” he says. “He did an amazing job of bringing to the screen these themes and issues that are so relatable in so many different parts of the world.”
Some chalked its success up to pandemic luck — a perfectly timed horror show for the hoi polloi, doomscrolling through lockdown while celebrities wailed “Imagine” from their marble bathtubs. But as Lee puts it: “I think it’s more accurate to say that director Hwang was very skilled at reading the times in a very acute manner.”
The first season of Squid Game was a glossy slaughterhouse parable for late capitalism: debt-strangled and desperate nobodies gunned down in playground games, gambling everything for the chance to survive. The final season digs deeper, into the psychology of tribalism. After each blood-slicked round, contestants get the chance to vote: split the winnings and walk away, or continue in winner-takes-all carnage. Naturally, no one quits. It’s bitterly ironic that Hwang was played by the very machine he set out to mock. According to leaked Netflix figures, the first season cost $32m to make — but generated an eye-watering $1.35bn in value for the platform. Hwang, who lost six teeth from stress during production, didn’t get a bonus.
Lee believes the show’s power runs deeper than its violent spectacle. “Squid Game is a series that asks the question, ‘how are you living your lives?’ ” he says. “It’s important for all of us to live our daily lives connecting to and communicating with people. I think Squid Game is a series that lets you think about those themes.”
Not that anyone was signing up for a Marxist primer. What kept people glued – and dressing up, and rewatching – was its design: the candy-coloured corridors, the giant piggy bank, the pigtailed murder-bot, the ghastly acting from the masked Western characters. “I think most people understand and believe what they see first,” Lee says.
Lee knows a thing or two about design. Born and raised in Seoul, he was scouted as a teen while working at a cafe in Gangnam – a break that launched him into modelling before he turned to acting.
He was an art student first, studying interior design, a passion he’s never dropped: today he runs a chain of upscale Italian restaurants, in Seoul, for which he designed the interiors. “I think the visual art is top-notch. It’s not too complicated, but very simple and symbolic, it’s easy for people from many different cultures to understand. And the fact that people of all ages, from very young to older enjoyed it so much I think is largely due to the design aspects,” he says.
The show, Lee says, also invited audiences to play along – not in ritual murder, mercifully, but in spin-off games.
“You can play the simple games that appeared in Squid Game with your family and friends at home.
“And among those games, you can also eat Dalgona (a melted sugar sweet seen in a challenge in the first season) together. So, because you can enjoy all five senses with us, I think there were even more secondary and tertiary pleasures after watching the TV show.”
Squid Game is no isolated success. It is part of the seemingly unstoppable hallyu – the Korean Wave. No longer does the West call the shots in pop culture as it did when mop-haired Brits stormed America during the British Invasion, or when Blur and Oasis slugged it out in Cool Britannia, or even when flannel-decked Seattle grunge kids moaned their way to the top of the charts.
Over the past decade South Korea, once a niche curiosity in the West, has elbowed its way to pop culture’s main stage. In music, the girl group Blackpink were the first K-pop act to headline Coachella (member Lisa also notched a role in the latest season of The White Lotus); BTS, the first K-pop group to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 100, were for two consecutive years (2021, 2022) the world’s top-selling act.
Four of 2023’s 10 best-selling artists hailed from South Korea, with groups such as Stray Kids and Seventeen outselling popular acts Drake and The Weeknd.
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was a groundbreaking Oscar triumph as the first non-English language film to win Best Picture. The K-beauty industry is estimated to be worth $US11.2bn ($17.2bn) this year, and food exports thrive – most grotesquely in mukbangs, where YouTubers gorge on monstrous meals for millions of viewers (and, in the case of American Bethany Gaskin, millions of dollars).
Streaming platforms such as Netflix blew the doors off what Korean television could be – and not just because they tore down geographical barriers. Before streamers, national broadcasters dominated South Korea’s television industry, bringing with them heavy censorship on content deemed violent or sexually explicit. But with global platforms, anything goes.
Asked how he feels to be a part of this cultural moment, Lee says: “I have come to realise more and more the importance and effectiveness of cultural exchange as a means to better understand one another, and as a means to bring people together, despite where they’re from.”
“I think it’s very important that a culture can be enjoyed and empathised with by the whole world. I hope that going forward, Korea can experience different content from other cultures as well, so that we can all learn from each other, better communicate, and grow to understand each other and bring more joy and live happier lives. I think that’s really the power of culture and storytelling.”
Idealistic? Maybe. But if you had just starred in the biggest television phenomenon on Earth, you would be feeling hopeful too.
Squid Game season 3 is released on Netflix on June 27.
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