 Welcome everyone, welcome to Looking to the East. I'm your host, Steve Zercher. I'm a professor of management and dean at Kansai Gaida University. This show, we take a look at various topics, issues, trends in Asia, and discuss them over the course of half an hour or so. Today, I've picked a popular media topic, a phenomenon that's going on worldwide, that probably most of you who are listening to this or viewing this know about. It's a Korean Netflix drama called The Squid Game. And we're going to explore what this is, and why it's become so popular, and what the ramifications of it are. And we have a very special guest and expert in this area, Dr. Ingyu Oh, Professor Oh, who also works at Kansai Gaida University. He's a professor of popular culture, teaches classes in that area, and also in the business area, has his PhD from the University of Oregon, his master's degree from Oregon State, and his undergraduate degree from Roosevelt University. So I've worked with Professor Oh, or I'll just call you Ingyu like we do normally, on hosting various popular media conferences and seminars in Korea. And we had some plans also in Japan. So he's an acknowledged expert in this area. So Ingyu, thank you so much for participating in the show today. I look forward to this discussion. Well, thanks for inviting me today, Steve, and it was really great to have a chance to talk about this movie or rather drama. And I will explain everything I know today probably. Okay. All right. So for our viewers, we talked before the show started about how much to address the actual content. Because on the one hand, we don't want to do spoilers, but on the other hand, this drama has been so incredibly popular that the basic plot and video clips and so forth are all over the internet. So we're going to talk about the program in some detail just as a warning for those of you that have not seen it. Maybe you don't want to watch the rest of the show, but for the rest of you, if you have, please stay tuned. So why don't we start there, Ingyu? Why don't you tell us what is this program? What's going, what's it about? Well, this is a what we call K-drama or Korean drama, which has been a boom all over the world since the early 2000s. And this Korean drama is a new boom these days because of what we know or what we now call the Netflix system or over the top system of content distribution worldwide using, you know, fast internet. So the drama is a nine episode series and it is basically about two things. One is money and the other one is violence. And people. Ingyu, that sounds like an American drama. Exactly. It's a universal theme, money and violence. But like its previous big sensation from Korea. It's about 10, 15 years ago, there was a movie called Old Boy from Korea that had this exactly similar concept that is money, women and violence and particularly a lot of violence and a lot of black themes, you know. But again, the blood scene is very different from American Hollywood blood scenes because they don't use guns, but they use knives and other types of feasts and, you know, strangling and other kinds of stuff. So violence is very violent. What the movies are about and but again, it's very popular and attractive because it's about money and it's about how poor people can become rich people overnight. So it's a, you know, pretty much universal thing. Wow. So it includes a rags to Richard riches element as well. That was based on a very successful manga and anime in the 1990s and 2000s in Japan, and it was developed into a movie as well and the topic is the same thing. There are a bunch of poor people applying for this jackpot money if they succeed and survive throughout the, you know, trails and games they have to play. And in doing so, they either are violence is they have to kill each other in the competition to get the money. So the theme is there and it was originally in the Japanese mass media and in the film industry, it was a very worldwide popular theme, what would you call death game topic or death game theme. And so young people and you know, even these age people love this but they've been playing games for many, many decades throughout their life. Oh, I see. So this is pretty much about games. So I'm talking about violent games. So the Japanese movie was very successful and Japanese manga was even more successful. So the Koreans decide to, you know, make it much, you know, more fancier, more trendy to be more global in the sense that what in the sense that Netflix likes it because more global is not Japanese but more global, not Korean either. So it's a sort of globalized Asian drama content about games, violence, and life comments, so-called direct to which type of, you know, reverse male Cinderella type of story. A couple of things that I picked up as I was researching this is the impact this drama is having worldwide. In the drama, the poor people who are competing at the risk of death for riches all wear this white shoe and it's a particular brand. And that brand's sales of shoes in America and worldwide has gone up by 1000%. Maybe I would imagine the Squid Game costumes are going to be the most popular costume for upcoming Halloween in Japan where it's celebrated. And of course, America, it's just huge Halloween for adults. Now, when I was a kid, it was focused on children. Now Halloween is all about adults. And the other thing too, I read that Korean studies, an interest in studying Korean has jumped by 80% as well in the last few months because of this drama. So my son, as you know, has been studying Korean for about six months or so, but I'm glad he's lined up as teacher because I'm sure Korean teachers are very, very popular. Just a couple examples of the commercial success of this. Now, I know you've watched it. You watched all nine episodes. Did you do that in one sitting? Did you binge watch it? Or did you watch it over time? How would you recommend that our viewers actually look at this? Well, it's very viral. It's very attractive and it's very addictive. So you cannot stop in the middle. So binge watching is the common trend because they stop in the middle of major prices of climax, which continues every episode. So every episode is like one climax in there. So you don't want to stop it in the middle expecting to have another climax next. So did you watch all nine episodes in a row? Tonight. Tonight? But I'm sure there are many people who have just watched it all in one sitting. Are each episodes an hour long? Yeah, about nine hours. We just got a question coming in through the chat here. I don't know if you can see it or not, so I'm going to go ahead and if you would allow me, I'm going to read it. It's from P. Gregory Frey. So he's already watched all episodes of the Netflix show Squid Game. I wonder as I compared it to many fairly similar types of themes. Now, these are Western themes in view. The Running Man, Gladiator, Spartacus, any show which suggests that the unhappy masses need to be calmed and the way to do it is to bring them together to watch others compete and suffer as a result. Yeah, so Spartacus comes to mind. Gladiator comes to mind. Why anyone would have volunteered when given the three symbols business card? I guess that's part of the Squid Game. Is this a cultural reaction or attraction in Korea or in Asia which makes the ask realistic and likely of success? This kind of addresses what I was thinking about is the income inequality that's highlighted through the Squid Game. Thank you. What do you think? Is that a theme that you think resonates across the world because of genie coefficient differences in income inequality? The original movie, original manga has the same inequality problem as the motivation of the whole story. So it motivates people to participate, especially in poor people have really no hope. They try everything to get out of this game, but they have to return. The point is you have to return to the game because you're given a chance to escape in the beginning, but then you have to return. That's the secret part of this whole attraction. When people watch, it doesn't matter whether you're Korean, Japanese, Chinese or American or French, as well as you watch that can fairly easily understand the logic about why they have to come back to the game. Despite the freedom they experienced after the first release from the sort of concentration camp type of island. But the reason is very simple because you ran out of every option of your life. So you got two choices basically, go back to the game or commit suicide. So it's all human universal feeling. You don't want to kill yourself. You want to at least try one last time. So that one last time is going back to the game spot. So the people who are watching this in the United States 50% of the population is living paycheck to paycheck. And the poverty rates in Japan are having going up before COVID, but have been accelerated through the last couple of years in COVID. I think that's true as you mentioned worldwide, all the countries. So many people who are viewing this are in the situation of the poor people in the drama that are competing for the money. I find it interesting that half the population base or half the people who are watching the squid game could be in it, potentially. Well, I want to make a distinction here between absolute poverty and relative poverty. The poverty, the Japanese manga and the Korean drama, the squid game are depicting. It's not about absolute poverty you find in Africa or some other, you know, underdeveloped developing countries. It is a wealthy country where people are relatively well to do, but they have a dream which they cannot capture without a lot of money. So as long as in that sense you are relatively poor. I want to go to America, but I don't have money for that. So they'll find poor. So I want to play that game. So game stuff is like a preview game. That's a lot, you know, play the lot, play my luck, you know, try my luck at least. So you don't have to really do that. But as long as you're in the game, which I think is a, which resonates with the whole social, you know, social structure rich countries, you don't have to really work hard. You can survive. You're not going to be really absolutely before you're going to, you're not going to stop today. But we are trying to survive. We are working hard. We compete with each other in our normal social setting, even if we are relatively well to do because we think we want to be more like a millionaire. We want to be more like, you know, the famous rich and famous of our society. So that is the underlying theme. So if I, if anybody sees this movie from like a really poor country like 80, they will not understand the whole structure. Why do they have to do that? Right. Because we Haitians don't have anything to eat. Right. We have to really understand this, that this is about relative poverty and people are not starving to death, but they have a huge dream that needs a lot of financing to do. That's, that's very insightful in you. I can see that. So it's, it's relative poverty. And the program reinforces the theme of upward social mobility, even though the facts are that upward social mobility is limited in Korea and limited in Japan and limited in France and limited in the United States. All the data shows that. But people still dream about that. And I guess this drama is showing that, well, it's a fiction, but people would risk their lives in order to move up to the higher level within their developed economy, whether it's Korea or Japan or China or France or Germany or Brazil or wherever. So that I think that's a very important insight and would explain why the show is so popular in the developed world. It resonates with the people in the developed world. Developed world. Developed world. Not in the really starting poor, you know, countries. Yeah, I agree. I've been to Africa and the poverty level there is, is beyond anything that you can really imagine as coming from America or Korea. And they would, they would not relate to this at all. I agree with you because it would, it would just be pure fiction, pure fantasy, not something that you, you would think is maybe possible. All right, so another thing we wanted to talk about is, is what this will lead to? You know, when Sai came out with his Ganyam style and there were three billion downloads, all of a sudden people were exposed to Korean music that the song was in Korean. The squid game is in Korean. That doesn't seem to have prevented this program from being wildly popular internationally. What do you think the knock-on effects would be of the worldwide success of this drama? I mean, as you pointed out, Korean dramas have had international success before, but there has been nothing like this. This is Netflix's most popular show ever. It's number one. Right, but if you remember Parasite two years ago, which won four Academy Awards, right? It's a four. That's a sensational record for Korean movie industry or movie history in general. So, so Koreans are doing really well these days in terms of public culture, films, dramas and pop music, K-pop music. So it has already established a worldwide basis of fandom, which has more than 100 million followers. I mean, routine, constant followers. They are really prosumers, not just consumers. So these prosumers are forming a sort of new cultural forces. Like, you know, we all remember the 1960s is a hippie movement as a cultural icon of American pop culture. You know, just, you know, these people, great rock singers and hard rock rockers singing together. That you have a resurrection of that nowadays in terms of how you send them or Korean popular culture send them all over the world. We have 100 million followers. So you simply adding to these fundamental power bases of pop culture and more and more people will join, particularly among men. Because before this parasite and the squid game boom, most how you send women. My data shows about 90% or more or pretty much women. But now it's because of the impact of parasite and squid game. I think the male participation in this rock called highly movement will increase substantially. So my bet is there will be about 20 or 30% male fandom in the highly movement in addition to the, you know, 100 million followers or less. Yeah, that reminds me also of BTS, which is now the number one musical band in the world. So that's a huge breakthrough there. I would imagine most of the fans there are female as opposed to the squid game or more are male. So Korea has the number one musical band in the world. That's unimaginable in some respects. I didn't think that that would ever happen, but it has. And now it has the number one Netflix program ever as well. So it's remarkable. So maybe we can talk a little bit for those of our viewers who don't understand the Hallyu movement and how has Korea built up to this great success that they're experiencing right now with the squid game. And BTS and parasite, it's phenomenal. I would say one big success factor for the Korean cultural boom was what we call post-colonial conviviality project, which the Japanese government invested a lot of money in or tried to promote as a gesture, friendly gesture between two countries, Korea and Japan. That started in the early 2000s. If you remember 2002 World Cup soccer games between Korea and Japan. Oh, yeah, that was fantastic. Yeah, there was the beginning year of what we call this friendly conviviality program between the two countries. So the first Hallyu big success happened in Japan. If you remember the Winter Sonata syndrome or you know... I was in Japan when that was occurring. It was incredible. Exactly. So if you remember that there was the beginning and that was what we call conviviality program. So Korea, Japan, we become friends again culturally, although we can compete with each other economically or politically. So that program has succeeded a lot. I mean, if you remember Korea, Japan, political history and economic history, it's all animosity competition. It's still hatred everywhere. But in cultural aspect, cultural front, everybody's hunky there. Koreans and Japanese, they love each other. They dance each other. They sing together. They produce movies and music programs together. Nijuu, for example, is a Korea-Japan combination of going to K-pop go-band. So in the cultural front, there's a huge success between Korea-Japan in terms of conviviality. And that conviviality in Japan, if the queen, the group queen became popular globally because they were first popular in Japan. Same thing as Chip Trick. Nobody heard about Chip Trick in the United States before they become so powerful in Japan. So Japan is a power base in terms of popular culture. So if Japanese love, the world may love. There's huge chance that the world market will accept any icons and idols from the Japanese market. So they first went to Japan and was big success for the last 20 years. Still number one biggest market for Korean pop culture is Japanese market. So based on the Japan success now, gradually moving into other parts of the world. And the United States the last destination because the United States has Hollywood, the United States has huge pop culture, pop music bases. So for Koreans it was unimaginable to compete with America. But somehow several young people, the first big success was size Gangnam Style, if you remember that. Oh, of course. Yes. So he was the first Korean man who hit Billboard number two at that time. So gradually more and more young people going to the States and now they are kind of thriving into the America. The biggest, largest and most fearsome, you know, most competitive pop market in the world. So I think it will continue for a while. I remember reading about ABBA back in the 1970s when when they were just hugely successful. That they were the number one export for the entire country of Sweden. They actually generated more revenue for the country than Saab did or other Japanese or other Swedish manufacturers. Is that happening now in Korea's BTS and Squid Game and the revenue that's being generated? Is this the most important export? Is it bigger than Hongdae and Samsung and all of those other manufacturers? Not exactly because unlike the Swedish music industry, the Korean K-pop music industry is in a very weak position because they have no right to sell their music globally because mostly, you know, BTS is owned by Sony music. Sony has a lot of cash, you know, they rake in a lot of cash because of BTS sales, album sales. Koreans produce mainly, they cannot distribute. So same thing with Netflix. You know, Koreans don't have drama distribution systems, so they produce drama for certain fees. But Netflix, you know, they take the largest profit out of this. For example, Netflix invested about $250 million, but they are now raking in more than $10 billion. So the huge difference between what Koreans earn and what the Americans earn or what the Japanese earn in music. So the industry will be small, okay? But because Samsung is so huge, Hyundai is so huge, Korean industry, normal industry is so huge. So this is only a small fraction of Korean economy. But nonetheless, this is a very welcoming situation. Yeah, you may be right. I think you're right about the revenue contribution. It may be small because the middleman, the producers, this has been true in the record industry for as long as I remember. And the artists get ripped off. The people who make the money are the Atlantic Records and Apollodore and all of those people. But in terms of the influence, I would imagine probably more young people know about BTS than they know about Samsung. Right, so in terms of cultural influence, it's big. They are now using BTS to promote their product. Oh, they are, okay. What's surprising is that Hyundai Motor has never sold any coin in Japan, but because of BTS nowadays, Hyundai is coming back to Japan. They sell their cars for the first time in Korean history to sell at least one car in Japan. Wow, so they're using BTS as an entry now. And I'm sure many Japanese people would love to buy a car that's been endorsed by BTS. My students in my class, not just Asians, but Europeans and Americans as well, they love BTS. Thank you. We're running out of time. We just have one minute left. Is there anything that you'd like to wrap up with before we close the show? Well, this has been a great opportunity to express some of my thoughts about this. But there are so many misunderstandings about Korean pop culture, so we need to study more. Please turn into all the professionals, what they have to say about this Korean, instead of surfing around the internet and getting all the wrong rumors about Korean pop culture. I'll have you back on the show again so we can correct the wrong impressions. This has been very interesting. Thank you all for tuning in to Looking to the East. The show will be on in a couple of weeks or so. We'll address another issue having to do with Japan or more broadly Asia. Those of you that are interested in supporting ThinkTech or this show in particular, please consider making a contribution to the nonprofit organization ThinkTech Hawaii. Thank you so much. This was so interesting and thank you for the viewers for tuning in.