ROME. It has become a planetary phenomenon. Squid Game is the Netflix series based on a game involving people who accept a strange invitation to a competition made of games for children like “1,2,3 star”, but where the loser dies. What begins as a game turns into an exasperated challenge and, according to experts, “through an emulative process forcefully propagated by the network, isolated cases end up amplifying, even causing family drama and tragedy”.
Mix the pegs
Released on Thursday 9 December “Enter the squid game”, the volume to know all the secrets of “Squid Game”, the 100% unofficial instruction manual to discover all the secrets, background and curiosities of the most successful event series of the last times, and venture into the K-world, the fantastic Korean cultural universe. 456 players with a debt to be paid, engage in various games for children which however involve (deadly) pawns. It cannot be abandoned, whoever loses his life. A disturbing mix of games for children, blood, struggle for survival and system criticism that has its origins in Battle Royale and in the manga universe. A success that in a very short time has extended far beyond the television series itself, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. The author is Park Minjoon, South Korean screenwriter and television critic, born in Ssangmun-dong, the working-class district of the capital, studied film at the National University of Seoul. As a child, his favorite games were marbles, tug-of-war and squid game. This was his last book before mysteriously disappearing after receiving a strange offer on the subway.
North Korea
Death sentences, life sentences and harsh prison for students, a future in coal mines for their professors: North Korea mercilessly crushes not an anti-regime revolt but the trafficking of the “infamous” Squid Game series, which not only she is foreign but “even” South Korean. It all begins when a student gets hold of a USB stick that contains the series, which has broken all the records – and shows it to a classmate. , with some students willing to pay for the videos. But in North Korea nothing goes unnoticed, someone spies and it arrives on the table of Unit 109, a much feared office that opposes the spread of illegal videos. In Hamgyong province the uproar breaks out: the young man who allegedly brought the key back from China – where the Squid game is not visible, but where many pirated copies run – is sentenced to death, his partner to life imprisonment. Six other students “caught” av see the Netflix series at 5 years in hard prison.
In the mine
And not only that: professors and school administrators who have been fired will now be thrown to work in coal mines or in remote rural regions. Now there is a manhunt in the region, all accomplices are being sought and the population is worried. In December last year, the regime approved the “Law for the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture” which prohibits the entry and disclosure in the country of foreign cultural material such as films, music and books. prevent the dissemination of content produced by South Korea and the United States. In the following weeks, Pyongyang issued an “invitation” for citizens to have an even more active role in reporting “illegal behavior” to the authorities, including a list of 20 ” priority offenses, including the dissemination of foreign material, both digital and paper and in any other form.
Delation
The first to pay the price, last April, was a certain “Lee” accused of smuggling CDs that contained South Korean films, moreover pirated: after a spy he was arrested and in less than 40 days brought before a platoon of execution in a square in Wonsan, with the entire family forced to attend the shooting. It happens in North Korea, while an American Youtuber stages a “Real Life Squid Game”, 456 real life players who “play killing themselves” as in the series. Immediately viral video, costing a month of work and financed with three and a half million dollars by Brawl Stars, owner of the smartphone game. Here with Squid Game you only die by pretending, not like in Pyongyang