Debt Isn't Worth Dying Over: A Squid Game Season 2 Review
It’s mid-February so we should be well beyond spoiler alerts, warnings, or cautions. The second season of Squid Game was released on December 26th and if you are anything like me, you stayed up until midnight to watch it and were disappointed to find out it was released at midnight Pacific Standard Time and not Eastern Standard Time. The next day came with more fireworks than Christmas though as my family and I watched Seong Gi-hun try to get back into the game with the hope to put an end to it once and for all.
While we all love a great hero story, especially one with guns, car chases, and knockout gas, we cannot let that distract us from the strong themes of the bondage of debt and poverty in our beloved Netflix series. Debt so bad that you would allow someone else to slap you in the middle of a train station. Poverty so bad that it would make you choose the uncertainty of a lottery ticket over the certainty of a piece of bread when you are starving. A mix of debt and poverty so bad that you would continue to risk your life playing a series of games to become rich where failure means your execution and you only have a 1/456 (0.22%) to win. Doesn’t this seem crazy, or is it just me?
After some research, I found that many South Koreans live in debt and the average household debt last year was 91.28 million South Korean won or $63,390. But don’t get too haughty now Americans. According to Experian, the average household debt for U.S. households was $104,215 in 2023. I’m so sure it hasn’t decreased, I would be willing to run across a field of snipers while playing red light, green light as a bet on it. Therefore, no matter the country, debt, and poverty are lurking and waiting to strike after you jump off a carousel in an attempt to open a safety door only to find that it’s locked. Debt and poverty are the meanest of sisters, but they have an absolutely evil baby sister named Desperation. Desperation has no hope, no sense of endurance, and no aptitude for patience. She wants what she wants right now by any means necessary and will do anything it takes to get it no matter if it’s unethical, immoral, or even illegal.
Who wants to live in a community with desperation? Not me and honestly not you either. So how did we get here? An even better question is what is the solution? The more excellent way is to get off of the hamster wheel. The more excellent way is to create a budget and stick to it. The more excellent way is to develop a debt management plan and work with creditors until they are paid. Getting into more debt is never the answer and neither is playing relay games for your life. Once we are out of the debt cycle, let’s be like Seong Gi-hun and work to get others out as well by financially educating them on the danger.