“We bet on humans; you’re our horses”: the second phase of neo-poverty in South Korea as portrayed in Squid Game

Abstract

This essay highlights the portrayals of three “new underdogs” in the hit television show, Squid Game: Sang-woo, Gi-hun, and the Front Man. We argue that these characters personify a new type of underdog, one that has internalized the ideologies inherent in neoliberal capitalism in Korea. The “winner takes all” system accelerated the polarization of wealth and inequality, which is in part the result of what scholars called “neo-poverty,” or the collapse of the middle class caused by the 1997 financial crisis. Neoliberalism was adopted to address neo-poverty, but rather than cure the crisis, it has ushered in a second phase of neo-poverty that is manifest in the underdogs’ narratives in Squid Game.