It is rapidly invading home televisions from South Korea to the rest of the world, after taking first place in the ranking of the most viewed TV series these days on Netflix. “Squid game” is the title of the moment, the one that everyone is talking about and that everyone is watching. Too many, perhaps. Because the hundreds of thousands of new fans are overloading the network data traffic so much that they have prompted South Korean SK Broadband to sue the streaming platform.
The new TV phenomenon is a nine-part dystopian horror-drama, written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, which is the most viewed non-English language program on Netflix and has all the numbers to become the most watched one ever. surpassing the current Bridgerton primacy. The story sees a group of 456 people, a symbol of South Korea’s most marginalized communities, competing for a prize pool of approximately $ 38 million, engaging in deadly childhood games designed for the enjoyment of a few wealthy spectators. The popularity of the series has spread in a very short time from the creator country, where it sounds more clearly like the denunciation of a growing and structured social inequality, to the rest of the world, which had already enjoyed the South Korean apocalyptic drama “Sweet Home” launched on the platform. last year.
But since September 17, the release day of the new series, the already massive use of data for streaming by Netflix users has peaked, generating an unsustainable cost for the Seoul-based telecommunications company. The problem would be the maintenance of the technical infrastructures necessary for the transmission of high-speed internet data, which the Korean provider believes should also be supported in part by the multinational. SK Broadband’s intention to sue the platform is only the culmination of a debate that has been going on for some time in the country, on whether or not to oblige content providers to pay fees for the use of local Internet services. Some, such as Apple, Amazon or Facebook, already do so, contributing with concrete investments in the technical advancement of the infrastructures they use. The data traffic from Netflix is then continuously increasing over the years: SK Broadband says that in the last three years it has recorded an increase of 1,150 Gigabytes per second. The costs for the management of the services are consequently considerable and in South Korea they reached 22 million euros in 2020 alone.
Curiosities about the series
The product is enjoying so much success that it has expanded, as expected, to all social platforms. Some of the tests faced by the protagonists in the series are replicated by thousands of users on Tiktok, without, of course, that they run any risk. One involves cooking Dalgona, a simple Korean cookie with a removable central decoration.
i win it squid game pic.twitter.com/QcUSlxjpOf
— Jongho’s bea + JONGHO MONTH! ????☀️ (@8t33zlovinghour) October 2, 2021
However, some elements of the series also have implications in real life. A number that appeared in the first episode, the one to call to participate in the deadly game, belongs to a man from Gyenoggi, a province of South Korea. The 40-year-old has thus started receiving thousands of calls a day, from adults and children from all over. the world. Now Netflix, together with the production company Siren Pictures, is considering how to compensate the man.