North Korea Is (Unsurprisingly) Not Down With 'Squid Game'

By some miraculous feat, it seems that somehow, more people than everyone and their mother is absolutely obsessed with the newly-minted official TV series of peer-pressure, Squid Game. Just hours after Netflix dubbed the show its ‘biggest ever series at launch,' it seems the company – and, well, the entire internet as a whole -- still evidently managed to underestimate the show's reach, with Kim Jong Un's propagandists taking time from their busy schedule of flexing the DPRK leader's impressive weight loss and their weapons to sound off on the show, per the Wall Street Journal. 

Earlier this week, North Korean state-run website Arirang Meari published an article claiming the show, which centers around several debtors – including a defector from North Korea –  competing in various challenges for a billion-dollar prize with the hang-up that they die of they lose, is more than a work of fiction, highlighting the “sad reality of a beastly South Korean society." 

“‘Squid Game’ gained popularity because it exposes the reality of South Korean capitalist culture,” reads the article, per the WSJ's translation, the piece noting that the show exemplifies “a world where only money matters—a hell-like horror.”

And it seems the DPRK's scathing review may not be too far off from the show's intentions, at least according to a recent interview with the show's director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, who cited growing global wealth disparities as a common theme in the show. “The rich are becoming richer, while the poor become poorer,” he said, noting that “it’s a story anyone could relate to.”

However Squid Game is not the first time North Korea has had hot takes on their southerly neighbor's pop culture, the Washington Post noted. Earlier this summer, Kim Jong Un dubbed South Korean culture – K-pop, the one thing seemingly everyone can agree upon, included -- “a vicious cancer," stating that its catchy influence is a bad influence on the “attire, hairstyles, speeches, behaviors" of young people, per the New York Times. 

So, folks, here's to everyone who hasn't seen Squid Game yet – peer pressure doesn't have s--t on you. 

Top Image: Netflix

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