The Inspiration Behind the Squid Games

Kaitlyn Wilburn, Writer

Squid Games is a Netflix Original series that is relatively new to the streaming site. The show is about these people in South Korea, all of whom are in debt, and they choose to partake in a series of playground games to win a large sum of money. There is a twist to the playground games, though. Instead of just sitting on the sidelines watching the rest of the game, you are eliminated-killed off from the show. The writer, Hwang Dong-hyuk, was inspired to write this show loosely based on the debt crisis in 2009 in South Korea. Squid Games also draws on the writer’s personal experiences during that crisis. His respective financial troubles arose because the show he was writing didn’t take off, so he lost a lot of income from that. Hwang read tons of survival game comics and stories and said he related to them. Often he wondered if he would ever participate in one to get out of financial debt. That is when he realized he was a writer and made a show about it, but with a twist of his own.

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