We don’t need to exaggerate when we talk about the popularity of Netflix’s South Korean original series Squid Game, the situation is already clear. It has watched more than 1.6 billion hours on its way to becoming the most popular Netflix series of all time, and has single-handedly changed the way Netflix measures the success of its content.
A spokesperson for the North Korean government recently viewed Squid Game as proof that capitalism does not work. Naturally, Squid Game cannot be watched legally in North Korea. But this seems to have failed to prevent North Korean citizens from watching the series.
According to an unnamed North Korean citizen, Squid Game “managed to enter the country with memory storage devices such as USB flash drives and SD cards, which were smuggled into the ship and made its way inland.”
Speaking to the US-backed radio service Radio Free Asia, the citizen said that North Koreans were secretly watching the Squid Game “under their blankets at night on portable media players” to avoid detection by a government that tightly monitors entertainment content.
A spokesperson for the North Korean state said that Squid Game showed “the process of hundreds of people struggling with unbearable debts, forced to live a life like hell, in a brutal game where they kill each other just to get the prize money that goes to one winner”. In other words, Squid Game allegedly revealed the “sad reality of monstrous South Korean society.”
Frankly, we can say that the first part of this assessment is extremely accurate. Squid Game can be interpreted as a deliberate critique of the capitalism system. But it’s hard not to see the irony in North Korea’s accusation of South Korea as an oppressive nation.
Within the borders of North Korea, aggressive media censorship, permanent travel restrictions and poor living conditions (60% of the population reportedly living in poverty) make the reality of life for its citizens more like the twisted world of Squid Game than anywhere else.
Still, it can be clearly seen that even those living in countries that ban the broadcast of Squid Game are eager to watch it. In the latest data released as part of Netflix’s revised viewership metrics, the broadcaster claims that viewers spent a total of more than 182,000 years watching Hwang Dong-hyuk’s drama in the first four weeks of its release alone.
For comparison, Bridgerton, Netflix’s second most popular production, was able to reach less than half of this total.
So it seems almost certain that Squid Game will return for future seasons. Series creator Hwang nearly confirmed that fact in recent interviews, telling The Associated Press in November that the show will “really have a second season.”
So, although Netflix hasn’t made any official confirmation yet, we can be sure that Squid Game season 2 is on the way. . .
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