Like any good allegorical story, every character in Squid Game is supposed to represent the different kinds of people in the world. It’s for this reason that we, the audience, is able to relate to the characters, feel sympathy and empathy for them, and be able to weigh on their choices as well as reflect how we would react if we were in their shoes.
Let’s talk about the different characters and who they represent.
Gi Hun
Arguably the protagonist of the show and the character the writers intended us to cheer for the most, Gi Hun is the kind of person we all like to be when faced with adversity. Time and time again, we see Gi Hun would sacrifice himself for the good of others.
We first catch a glimpse of this in when Gi Hun pays a visit to his ex-wife in Episode 2 in order to borrow some money for his mother’s diabetic foot treatment. His ex-wife laments how Gi Hun missed the birth of even his own daughter for his co-worker. Gi Hun, in frustration, angrily reminds his wife that the reason he couldn’t be there was because he had to save a dying co-worker. We later learn that he and his co-workers had set up a strike protest to save their jobs, and his co-worker had gotten hurt and died in the process.
Indeed, Gi Hun would choose to join a lost cause if the cause is just and is morally right — even if it means he’ll be the one to pay the ultimate price.
If you haven’t read our in-depth analysis on why Gi-Hun abandoned visiting his daughter at the end, check out In Squid Game, why did Gi Hun not board the plane?
Several times during the games, Gi Hun would act again in this way. For example, he repeatedly picks the old man to be part of his team, realizing that nobody else would help Oh Il-Nam if he didn’t step up to the job. He first offers to extend protection to the old man before the night time brawl breaks out in Episode 4, Stick to the Team. We see this again in the episode where players were instructed to pick 10 team members to participate in tug-of-war. When the old man urinates on himself due to Alzheimer’s Disease, Gi Hun offers his jacket to the old man so can retain some level of dignity.
Time and time again, Gi Hun acts in a way that is both righteous and difficult. It’s easy for anyone to believe that they would act similarly, but the circumstances of the games would — I’d argue — weaken most people’s resolve.
Cho Sang-woo
As Gi Hun’s “successful” childhood friend, Cho Sang-woo represents that overachiever many of us have in our lives who we’ve known since childhood. He’s incredibly smart, to the point where everyone around him cannot help themselves but incessantly shower him with praise. The only problem is, however, is that people like Cho Sang-woo are still human beings with all the flaws humans have.
As the story progresses, we see that Cho Sang-woo is, in reality, a failure. In fact, he has failed so badly that he owes 600 million won through lost bets in the stock and options market. For the first while, only Cho Sang-woo knows how badly he has screwed up. He puts up with Gi Hun’s continued praise even though he knows, deep inside, that he does not live up to the reputation everybody else has built up for him.
This reality, however, is not lost on Cho Sang-woo. For example, Sang-woo tells Ali repeatedly to not call him “sir”. Sang-woo is visibly uncomfortable, because he knows he isn’t better than anyone else. Sure, he’s academically smarter. But in the end, he has ended up in the exact same place as those who did not attend university or had a prestigious job like he did.
In the real world, there are a lot of Sang-woo’s. Successful men and women who have fallen from grace. They aren’t bad people. And on a good day, we see that Sang-woo would even help his fellow human being without expectation that the favour would be reciprocated. When Ali and Sang-woo briefly exited the games and were at outside the convenience store in Episode 2, Sang-woo gave Ali some money so that Ali didn’t have to walk home.
Unfortunately, Sang-woo’s moral compass is much more flexible, depending on circumstances. The writers are clearly trying to comment on how successful people have reached their levels of success in no small part to their ability to recognize and play the system better than those less intelligent than they are. We see, as the games progress, that Sang-woo would begin to deviate toward killing his fellow players with the justification that they would have died anyway.
The first instance of this was in Episode 7, VIPs, when he pushed the glass maker in front of him when he realized there’s a possibility that time would run out before the glass maker could decide which glass to walk on. Sang-woo, explaining himself to Gi Hun, argues that they would have all died if he didn’t do what he did. Indeed, this parallels how intelligent people in the real world justify their morally questionable actions: with logic.
Deep inside, Sang-woo does not want to be a bad person. He wants to do good, but if the situation arises where it’s him or someone else who wins, he will choose himself.
Kang Sae Byeok
As the female North Korean defector, she represents the foreign non-foreigner. Yes, externally she looks the same as everybody else, but her roots and circumstances make her incredibly different. She represents the politically repressed and the asylum seeker. Not as relatable as other characters, at first her character development seems to almost fit a cliche one might typically see in storylines like these.
However, her core character extends far beyond her circumstances. Indeed, her background is less relevant than who she has become. She is the the person who’s been hurt, betrayed, and have been abused by society at large. She has been taken advantage of by the system, and has resorted to crime in order to survive. It’s not something she wants to do, but she chooses to do it because the alternative is not acceptable.
And yet, regardless of her struggles, she has survived. She has not let her environment break or destroy her. In many ways, we the audience respect her but certainly would not want to be her.
At her core, she too has a strong moral compass. A code, if you will. She chooses non-violence if she could, but oftentimes she cannot because her survival depends on it. She chooses, instead, to not develop any human connections because it makes surviving easier when you don’t know the people you could potentially be hurting.
As an audience who are comfortably enjoying our Netflix subscriptions and are far away from the dangers of day-to-day survival, we really can’t relate to her struggles. We know of it, though, from reading about stories like hers in the news. And it is through these indirect experiences we relate with her and those like her.
Masked Red Suited Workers
Let’s talk about the masked workers — the ones wearing the red suits. There’s a theory floating around that if a candidate chose to play the colour red during the pre-selection process, they were offered the position of being a worker. That is, the workers themselves were just like the indebted players but given a different opportunity path. That is a pretty valid theory, I think, but without further information it would be difficult to confirm.
What I do know is that the workers operate fairly homogeneously and without conscience. In each interaction, we see that they operate in a pure bureaucratic manner. There is no room for second changes or leniency. They kill without showing any remorse or mercy, and follow the orders and instructions from supervisors without question.
Certainly, I don’t think they are well off. Working at the Squid Game, it seems, is due in large part to their life circumstances — whatever that may be. However, these self selected individuals are absolutely different than our players. In fact, these individuals are worse in almost every way.
They represent the cogs in the bureaucratic system that controls and toys with our players. They are the necessary evil the upper class leverage and use to control the masses. In this case, it is guns. In the real world, these masked workers may work at a bank or at a government institution where they themselves wield enormous power on a day-to-day basis, while simultaneously being powerless.
Imagine yourself needing a bank loan only to be rejected due to not qualifying under a specific rule which, if someone had taken a closer look, does not apply in your specific situation. Or perhaps there were extenuating circumstances — a mistake perhaps — affecting a government application. And because of this, you are denied a certain grant or permit. Worst, in some of these instances, you are punished without any consideration.
These kinds of outcomes happen every single day in our real world. And the red, masked workers represent the people who executes (both figuratively and literally) the orders from above. They themselves fear being left out of the system and having to be a player (and subjected to the harsh outcomes that come with it), but will gladly harm their fellow man or woman to keep their position.
In some cases, we see the masked workers as being corrupt themselves, selling body parts. The writers of Squid Game clearly want to highlight the same kinds of corruption that occur in our institutions. Indeed, even our deaths, they seek to take advantage of the situation to line their own pockets. There is no line they won’t cross, and so these types of folks are easily one of the most dangerous kinds of people out there.
The VIPs
The VIPs (Very Important Persons) clearly represent the upper echelons of society. The rich, the wealthy, and the powerful. In Squid Game, the rules do not apply. They are also so out-of-touch with the realities that the players face as they bet on the games’ outcomes with what one would presume to be pocket change for them (eg. A million dollars).
It is clear that we aren’t meant to sympathize or empathize with them. In fact, we, the audience, were meant to recognize how different we are compared to them. We are so different, in fact, that we might as well be different species. And indeed, the Front Man admits that betting on human beings, for the VIPs, is like Gi Hun betting on horses.
The dialogue between the VIPs themselves is also quite comically laughable. I find it hard to believe that the show runners would write such dialogue unless, of course, it was meant to highlight the preposterousness of the way the rich and powerful talk. And that, I believe, is the point the writers are trying to make. The upper class are indeed so ridiculously unaware (and uncaring) of the entire situation that their dialogue reflects this.
We get a glimpse from Oh Il-nam of the reasons that the rich and powerful created Squid Game and gamble on the games. They, he reasons, are bored. In being so rich that they could buy anything they want, there exists nothing they want except to see… their fellow human beings grovel for money with losers being killed simply for losing?
I do wonder, while watching the final episodes, if Cho Sang-woo, Gi Hun’s childhood friend, might have turned into a VIP himself had he won the Squid Game. I find it hard to believe that these VIPs were born evil. But indeed, they have evolved so far beyond the common person they have forgotten what it was like to be human and to endure the struggles if one weren’t lucky in life.
Credits: Images are from Squid Game (Youngkyu Park / Netflix) 2021
