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"Squid Game" Season 2? Maybe Not

Seong Ki-hoon (Lee Jung-jae), who is in debt, does not have a certain income, so he wants to make a lot of money through horse racing. Ki-hoon, who is beaten up by a private moneylender one day, loses all the hard-won money at the racetrack. (*There is a spoiler in this article.)

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A man in a suit (Gong Yoo), tempts him into a game of slap-match by saying "Will you play a game with me? I'll give you 100,000 won for each win". After hearing the news that his only daughter is leaving for the U.S. with his ex-wife (Kang Mal-geum) and stepfather, he eventually decides to play a survival game worth 45.6 billion won.

Meanwhile, Jo Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo), a graduate of a prestigious university, is a man who fails to invest in stock derivatives by stealing customer deposits without permission. Standing on the edge of his life with a big debt that he cannot afford, he, like Ki-hoon, receives an irresistible offer from the operator of the Squid Game.

For different reasons, people participate in the Squid Games with childhood memories and fight for victory by surviving while the other dies. The sequentially played games are played in the form of a battle royale in which several players play at the same time until the last one remains.

"Squid Game" is a Netflix series that tells the story of people who participate in survival, which has 45.6 billion won in prize money, risking their lives to become the last winner. It was released on Netflix on the 17th of this month and is meeting viewers around the world.

Looking at the pathetic struggle of those who risked their lives to win tens of billions of won, it feels like a 'realistic report' of an infinite competitive society.

The "Squid Game" catches the eye from the start with its colorful and fairytale colors as if watching a movie directed by Wes Anderson. All visual elements in "Squid Game" stand out, such as the colorful game room that looks like a fairy tale for adults and the group uniforms.

In terms of the level of violence and murder description alone, the horrors of the "Squid Game" are not extreme. In the first episode, a relatively stimulating visual effect was applied to catch the attention of viewers, but there are traces of efforts to distance direct descriptions.

The scariest part is that the people who play the game are blinded by 45.6 billion won and want even one more person to disappear. Until only one person survives, it creates a living hell in which only one can survive only when the participants who laughed and cried together disappear. The way they trample on others to live brings out the heavy bondage of life.

The shadow cast on the murder scene, with heads flying, bullets stuck in the body and blood spewing like fountains, is compassion for those forced to fight the survival war.

Those who obey the rules of the game 'survive or die' struggle tirelessly to win the prize money. Ki-hoon participates in the Squid Game to save his mother and pay off his debts, but suddenly shows regret. This can be seen as revealing the ambivalence of a human being with a sense of conscience, warmth and an unfulfilled desire, but the indecision of the character halves the fun of the drama.

Feeling the pain of reality, he returns to the game room and endures as long as possible, and the sudden onset of humanity even before the championship makes him feel tired. The message that the "Squid Game" wants to say goes back and forth without principles. Ki-hoon's choice drawn in the ending is only read as a paving stone for season 2.

It stimulates curiosity in the brutal history of borrowing games from childhood and removing people one by one in an interesting way, but not charming enough for one to want to watch until the end.

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