South Korean films and series have recently experienced a veritable international boom. This is probably also due to the fact that Netflix has been investing a lot of money in the country for several years and has a feel for the issues of the time.
The script for Squid Game was written by the author ten years ago, but it is more relevant than ever. Not least because of the pandemic, private debt in South Korea has risen sharply, says economist Ain Jin Goel from Sangju University. One reason for this is that politicians have not managed to get the overheated real estate market under control. “People thought: We also want to benefit from the boom, so we invested and took out very large loans.”
This is how the term “invest your debt” came about, especially among young Koreans, but many can no longer service their loans. Every Korean is on average 30,000 euros in debt, according to the economist.
Very competitive society
In addition, life is becoming more and more expensive, especially in a city like Seoul, and rents have skyrocketed. And: “A lot of money also goes into education. Korean parents want to get their children to university at any cost,” says Ain Jin Goel. “And most educational institutions charge fees. So there’s a lot going on and the mountain of debt is growing.”
South Korea is a very competitive society. After the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, the country experienced incredible economic growth. Everyone wants to share in this success, but the gap between rich and poor has recently increased. A recent global inequality ranking showed that the top 10 percent earn, on average, 14 times more than the bottom 50 percent of the population.
Brutal and yet funny
A fact that was already addressed in the film Parasite, which won several Oscars in 2020. The film is a bitter and brutal parody of the aloof world of the rich. In the film, a poor family sneaks into a wealthy household. In between, the film, which by the way means something like parasitic worms in Korean, degenerates into a splatter comedy.
Things get really brutal in “Hellbound”, a mystery series from Netflix about a radical church group that calls all supposed sinners to account. A theme that also crops up marginally in the Squid Game series.
The series shows what the Korean churches stand for, says Choi Joo Kwang. “Many churches need people because they ensure their existence, regardless of whether they are believers or not. And there are certainly a lot of people who appear to be very believers on the outside, but behave very differently behind closed doors. Like this one Person in Squid Game. The man prays because he fears for his life, but if he weren’t in need I’m sure he would behave very differently.”
Within Asia, heartbreak is booming
Choi Joo Kwang should know, because he is a pastor himself and has long preached in one of the largest Christian churches in Seoul. But then he left, bitterly disappointed, and now runs a café. He is now a pastor without a church and only preaches online on Sundays because of the pandemic. “Unlike many other churches, where the pastor stands in front and says his mass, our focus is on exchange,” he says. “Each member reads a passage from the Bible and tells how they understand that passage. And that’s where the differences become apparent, because we are all different people.”
South Korea has recently attracted international attention with films and series that were always mercilessly brutal and yet funny and biting in their own way. Within Asia, however, real heartbreak series have been popular for some time. In 2019, for example, “Crash landing on you” was a huge success in Japan. A wealthy entrepreneur crashes a paraglider in the DMZ and falls in love with a North Korean soldier.
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