Fans have been gripped by the second season of Squid Game, which sees previous winner Seong Gi-hun – Player 456 – (Lee Jung-jae) return to the secretive contest – this time under no illusion about just how brutal things would get.
And those tuning in have spotted disturbing parallels with an all-too-real horror story. The South Korean series, created for Netflix by screenwriter and director Hwang Dong-hyuk, centres around a savage competition in which down-on-their-luck contestants battle it out throughout a series of deceptively innocent-looking children’s games for a shot at winning a life-changing sum of money.
Those who slip up are gunned down without mercy by masked guards while a group of wealthy men known as the ‘VIPs’ watch on, placing sick bets on the players as though they were watching a horse race. The blood-soaked show is meant to illustrate the stark differences between rich and poor, taken to dystopian extremes.
However, a number of fans have noted stark similarities between Squid Game and a truly harrowing series of events that unfolded in South Korea in the ’70s and ’80s.
From 1976 to 1987, the sinister ‘Brothers’ Home’ operated in Busan, South Korea – and the deceptively welcoming name still strikes fear into the hearts of those who managed to survive. The diabolical facility was the largest and most notorious of 36 detention facilities set up to “cleanse” South Korea’s streets of “symbols of the poverty and disorder of cities”, with then-President Chun Doo-Hwan ordering a tougher approach to begging.
The military dictator, who seized power after the ruthless 1979 assassination of President Park Chung Hee, wrote a letter to then-Prime Minister Nam Duck-woo, demanding they take “protective measures against vagrants”. It was at this point in President Doo-Hwan’s tyrannical regime that adults and children alike were snatched off the streets and taken to so-called ‘welfare centres’, where they were forced into slave labour at construction sites, factories, and farms. In reality, these sites were more akin to concentration camps, and many were kept prisoner for years on end without any hope of escape.
A 1987 report later found that just 10 per cent of detainees were actually homeless. The vast majority had just been swept up in the depraved “purification project”, orchestrated as part of a nationwide rebranding initiative ahead of the 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Olympics Games in Seoul. This included Han Jong-sun, who was just eight years old when he was snatched away from his family.
During a trip to the city in 1984, Han’s father had left him and his sister with an officer at a police substation for a few minutes while he ran an errand, thinking he would be safe. Instead, the terrified children were forced inside a bus which stopped outside the station and beaten when they cried. They were then taken to the Brothers’ Home – a place that would one day be referred to as the ‘Auschwitz of South Korea’.
In May 2020, Han opened up to BBC News about his harrowing ordeal, sharing: “We had no idea where we were taken to. ‘Daddy told us to wait here! Daddy is coming!’ We cried and bawled. They started beating us, saying that we were too loud.”
The youngest person in his ‘platoon’, Han still remembers being covered in lice at the “hell” facility, where inmates were malnourished and rapes were a nightly occurrence. Those who dared attempt to escape over the 7m (23ft)fence would be beaten to death.
Busan-based prosecutors later found that inmates, who were given identification numbers and matching dark blue tracksuits, were regularly forced to hold positions for long time periods or play torture games, according to Pedestrian TV. Then there’s the death toll. Reports state that a total of 513 Brothers’ Home inmates died between 1975 and 1986. However, it’s believed the real figure is much higher.
Tragically, Han and his sister were far from the only children to be locked away in the Brothers’ Home. Choi Seung-woo was just 13 when a police officer stopped him on the way home from school and tortured him into making a false confession. He remembered: “A police officer asked me to stop and started searching my bag. There was half a loaf of bread, a leftover of my lunch which was given from school.
“He asked where I stole the bread from. He tortured me, burning my genitals with a lighter. He kept beating me, saying he wasn’t going to let me go unless I confessed to the ‘crime’. Just wanting to go home, I lied. ‘I stole it, I stole it. Please let me go…'”
Just 10 minutes after he made his false confession, Choi was forced into the back of a freezer dump truck and taken to the Brothers’ Home, where he was kept incarcerated for the next five years of his life. During his imprisonment, Choi suffered horrific sexual and physical violence, which he also witnessed being inflicted on those with whom he shared the grim, army-style dormitories.
Three weeks after his arrival, Choi realised that inmates were being killed. He said: “I saw a guy wearing a white robe dragging an inmate across the floor. He seemed dead. He was bleeding all over his body. His eyes were rolling back. The white robe guy didn’t care at all and just kept dragging the man to somewhere.
“A few days later, a guy showed some sort of resistance by asking the platoon leader some forbidden questions like ‘Why are we trapped in here? Why should we be beaten?’
“Four people came and rolled him in a blanket. They kicked him all over his body until he fainted, foaming at the mouth. People took him out wrapped. He never returned to the centre. I knew that he died.”
The Brothers’ Home was finally closed at the end of the ’80s after a local prosecutor, who carried out an investigation into the facility, ordered a raid, which ultimately led to the 1987 arrest of Brothers’ Home director, Park In-keun. In-keun only served a brief prison term for embezzlement and minor charges, and was acquitted for charges related to illegal confinement.
Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has never cited the Brothers’ Home as inspiration for his most famous work, but this hasn’t stopped fans speculating. Further fuel was added to the fire after AI-generated images showing dilapidated pink and green stairwells purported to show the ‘real’ Squid Game facility, abandoned to time. However, this has since been debunked and does not show the interior of the Brothers’ Home.
Speaking with Variety prior to the release of season one, filmmaker Hwang explained that he’d been inspired by Japanese comics and animations focused on survival games, with his own financial struggles grounding the plot in reality. Hwang revealed: “When I started, I was in financial straits myself and spent much time in cafes reading comics including ‘Battle Royale’ and ‘Liar Game.’ I came to wonder how I’d feel if I took part in the games myself. But I found the games too complex, and for my own work focused instead on using kids’ games.
“I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life.”
In another interview with France 24, Hwang has also spoke of finding inspiration in the Ssangyong motor strikes of 2009. After banks and private investors took over the car manufacturing firm, it was announced that more than 40 per cent of its employees would be let go – leading to a 77-day strike. The government responded with force, resulting in many of the workers sustaining injuries.
Hwang reflected: “I wanted to show that any ordinary middle-class person in the world we live in today can fall to the bottom of the economic ladder overnight.”
You can stream both seasons of Squid Game on Netflix now.
If you’ve been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via www.rapecrisis.org.uk or calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999.
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