The Squid Game has become the best premiere in the history of Netflix. A series that beyond its plot, portrays a common situation in South Korea like the one that It happened to Lee Chang-Keum, a Korean who found it very difficult to follow the series because of the difficult memories that came to mind, as he told the Associated Press.
Lee sees a reflection of himself in the film's protagonist, Seong Gi-hun, a laid-off worker who deals with a broken family and constantly struggles with debt and gambling. Seong is threatened and beaten by gangsters into giving up his organs as collateral. Until he receives a mysterious offer to enter a series of games and win a succulent prize.
"Some scenes were very difficult for me to watch," confessed Lee, who had his job at Ssangyong Motors in South Korea until he was fired along with 2,600 colleagues, which led to serious financial problems and depression. . After years of protests, court battles and government intervention, Lee and hundreds of other Ssangyong workers were reinstated. But many of them did not have that option. Among the dismissed began a series of suicides, as well as some relatives, when they found themselves plunged into misery.
Suicides Due to Layoffs
A 2016 report by medical researchers at Korea University said at least 28 laid-off Ssangyong workers or relatives died by suicide or by Serious health problems, including those related to post-traumatic stress disorder.
After the Korean War that ended in 1953, the country had a spectacular resurgence based on the global powerhouse of Samsung and also grounded in the film industry or more recently K-pop. However, there is another side. Lee recounts how after the layoffs in 2009 they occupied the Ssangyong plant for weeks in which they suffered great repression from the authorities. This is reminiscent of a flashback of the fictional protagonist in which one of his colleagues was murdered in the factory.
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Undignified working conditions for immigrants
The series reflects other realities such as that of the character Ali Abdul, an undocumented factory worker from Pakistan with amputated fingers and a boss who refuses to pay him, personifying how the country exploits some of the poorest people in Asia while ignoring dangerous wage and working conditions. Or that of Kang Sae-byeok, a pickpocketing North Korean refugee who has known nothing but a harsh life on the streets and is desperate for money to rescue her brother from an orphanage and get his family out. North Korean mother.
Household debt exceeds South Korea's annual GDP
Many South Koreans are desperate to get ahead in a society where good jobs are increasingly scarce and home prices have skyrocketed , which attracts many to ask for large loans to bet on risky financial investments or cryptocurrencies. Household debt, of more than 1,800 trillion (1.3 trillion euros), now exceeds the annual economic production of the country. Hard times have led to a huge drop in the birth rate.
The hard data on suicides in South Korea
An average of 14,000 South Koreans commit suicide each year, which is equivalent to an average of 40 suicides per day. The rate of South Korea's suicide rates were the highest among OECD nations between 2003 and 2013. The latest statistics show that an overwhelming majority of those who decided to end their lives did so because of financial hardship, particularly debt.
The nation's household debt has risen at the fastest rate in eight years. It is almost 1.6 times the gross annual disposable income of the country. The per capita debt amounts to 20 million won, a staggeringly high figure.
The suicide rate among Koreans between the ages of 30 and 50 has been on the rise since 2011, which is a matter of "serious concern." Added to this problem is the low awareness of the government. The Ministry of Health reserved only 0.26 percent of the National Health Promotion Fund for suicide prevention programs.
It is striking that the average number of credit cards per Korean inhabitant is four. Last year, the value of credit card spending in South Korea totaled 806.19 trillion won ($693 billion). Credit card use accounted for 71.7 percent of total private spending last year. Including debit cards, the use of non-cash electronic payment methods accounted for 90 percent of total private spending.
