Ten years of rejections
The South Korean writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk first wrote Squid Game around 2008 and 2009, when he was short of money himself. For about ten years, studios turned it down as too strange and too violent. Then Netflix bought it, and when it was released in September 2021 it became the most-watched series in the streaming service's history within a month, seen in almost every country in the world, even though most viewers watched it with subtitles or dubbing. It is a violent drama made for adults, so this grid, which holds only names and game words, is for grown-up fans.
The story follows GIHUN, a man deep in DEBT, and hundreds of other desperate people who agree to play a series of children's games for a huge PRIZE, only to discover that losing is deadly. Every PLAYER wears a green TRACKSUIT, and the GUARDS wear pink suits and MASKS marked with a circle, a triangle or a square, three shapes that fans noticed are also on a games console controller, though Hwang has said they come from the letters of the Korean alphabet that begin the words squid game.
Real playground games
The games in the show are real children's games from South Korea, many of which Hwang played growing up in Seoul in the 1970s and 1980s. The first, known in English as red light, green light, is called in Korean the rose of Sharon has bloomed, after the country's national flower; a child faces away and chants the words, and everyone freezes when they turn round. In the show it is run by a giant DOLL.
The squid game itself was a rough playground game played on a court drawn in the dirt in the shape of a SQUID, and Hwang remembered it as the most physical game of his childhood. Others include MARBLES, TUG OF WAR and a test of cutting a shape out of a DALGONA, a thin HONEYCOMB toffee made from sugar and baking soda. After the series came out, street sellers in Seoul who made dalgona were suddenly overwhelmed with orders. Our candy page covers how sugar sweets like it are made.
Awards and a reality show
In 2022 Squid Game became the first series not in English to win major Emmy awards. Lee Jung-jae, who played Gihun, became the first Asian actor to win the Emmy for best actor in a drama, and Hwang the first Asian director to win for directing a drama. The actor O Yeong-su, who played the elderly player ILNAM, won a Golden Globe.
In 2023 a reality competition based on the show was made, with 456 real contestants playing safe versions of the games, including a GLASS BRIDGE, for a real prize of 4.56 million dollars; nobody was hurt, and losers were simply splattered with ink. The drama returned for a second series in December 2024 and ended with a third in 2025. SANGWOO, SAEBYEOK, ALI, JUNHO and the mysterious FRONT MAN are among the characters, and SURVIVE is what every player is trying to do.