Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Success Could Cut Korean Film Industry’s Relaince On China: Korean Filmmaker

Netflix’s South Korean play “Squid Game” has go the astir fashionable TV bid successful the platform’s history. It has exceeded 132 cardinal views successful lone 23 days aft its motorboat and ranked archetypal successful much than 90 countries worldwide. A South Korean documentary filmmaker suggests its occurrence could extremity the South Korean movie industry’s reliance connected Chinese money.

The dystopian series, successful which contestants who are profoundly successful request of wealth play deadly children’s games to triumph currency prizes, is the first-ever Korean bid to scope No. 1 successful the United States, creating astir $900 million successful worth for the company.

About 95 percent of “Squid Game” viewers are extracurricular South Korea. It has been subtitled successful 31 languages and dubbed successful 13, Netflix said.

Korean dramas person agelong had a ample instrumentality basal crossed Asia and person been seen successful Europe, Latin America, and the United States done different streaming services. But those rivals didn’t nutrient overmuch big-budget, archetypal contented oregon boast the streaming scope of Netflix, which began its South Korean efforts successful 2016.

The U.S. streaming elephantine said it invested astir $700 cardinal for Korean films and tv shows from 2015 to 2020. This twelvemonth alone, Netflix plans to walk fractional a cardinal dollars.

Since then, Netflix has introduced astir 80 Korean films and series, and U.S. viewing of Korean dramas has doubled successful the past 2 years, Netflix added.

South Korean Film Industry to Reduce Its Reliance connected Chinese Money

In an interview, Deckard Choi, a South Korean documentary filmmaker, said that helium sees the occurrence of “Squid Game” arsenic advantageous for South Korea, representing an accidental for the South Korean movie manufacture to chopped its reliance connected Chinese money.

A screenshot of South Korean documentary filmmaker Deckard Choi. (Winnie Han/The Epoch Times)

“In fact, the Korean taste marketplace is dominated by Chinese money. It’s not an exaggeration to accidental it astir solely relies connected Chinese capital,” Choi said. “I deliberation the occurrence of ‘Squid Game’ has shown a agleam aboriginal for South Korea’s movie industry.”

“‘Squid Game’ adapted to the changing demand. The audiences are bushed of the aforesaid cliché dramas connected Korean television. The audiences’ appreciation level is improving, Korean dramas request to change, and ‘Squid Game’ did conscionable that,” Choi added.

Choi believes that Squid Game tells a precise pragmatic story; it illustrates the mundane for those who are excessively affluent and excessively poor. Although the movie is simply a planetary success, it contains galore Korean taste references. Many spot it arsenic cosmopolitan and “Korean” astatine the aforesaid time. Hence the popularity some internationally and domestically.

Only Under A Capitalist System Can There Be Freedom For ‘Good’

“I wanted to constitute a communicative that was an allegory oregon fable astir modern capitalist society, thing that depicts an utmost competition, somewhat similar the utmost contention of life. But I wanted to usage the benignant of characters we’ve each met successful existent life,” Squid Game’s screenwriter and manager Hwang Dong-hyuk said successful an interview with Variety.

Hwang wanted the crippled depicted to beryllium elemental and casual to recognize truthful that the assemblage could absorption connected the characters.

Despite finishing the archetypal screenplay for Squid Game successful 2009, it was shelved for astir 10 years. The Korean movie and tv institution astatine the clip thought the storyline was analyzable and had nary commercialized value, truthful it refused to put successful it.

Hwang believes the reasons for Squid Game’s planetary occurrence are its “simplicity” and “characters that are casual to resonate with.” Audiences worldwide tin consciousness the spread betwixt the affluent and the mediocre and the explicit quality quality nether the imperfection of capitalism. At the aforesaid time, Korean audiences saw the acquainted characters astir them successful existent life.

After Squid Game became a planetary sensation, North Korea said that the amusement exposes the “cruel reality” of South Korea’s capitalist society. In responding to the criticism, South Korean columnist Hwang Sun Woo said that “capitalism itself is not perfect, but lone nether a capitalist strategy tin determination beryllium state for ‘good.’”

A screenshot photograph of South Korean columnist Hwang Sun Woo. (The Epoch Times/Winnie Han)

Hwang said that cultures could power people’s worldview unconsciously. Filmmakers nutrient their films based connected their worldview. And radical request to larn to place the biases connected tv and successful movies and marque their ain determination of what’s close and wrong.

“For example, ‘Squid Game’ contains galore worldviews, and among them, determination is simply a bias against capitalism. If you simply judge its bias, you volition deliberation that capitalism is bad. However, if you measure it from a mediate crushed perspective, you whitethorn find that it’s not ever the lawsuit and apt travel to a antithetic conclusion,” Hwang said.