Warning, spoilers ahead.
The Netflix Korean drama, Squid Game, has taken the world by storm for its commentary on social classes and the corruption of money. There is no doubt that it can be enjoyed by people from all cultures and backgrounds, regardless of if they understand Korean or not, but how does learning Korean and understanding Korean change the experience of watching Squid Game?
1. What does the name Sae-byeok mean?
Kang Sae-byeok and her brother, Kang Cheol were both told that they had beautiful names at least once in the series, but unless you know Korean, you wouldn’t know why as it’s never explained. Sae-byeok means dawn, a beautiful name indeed. Kang Cheol means steel, which is a very cool name as Sang-woo’s mother told him in the final episode.
2. Showing respect in Korean
Ali Abdul, the Pakistani immigrant, speaks in the highest formality level to the elders in the show, and a formal level when speaking to everyone else. This shows that he is very polite and has respect for others even if he does not know them well. On the other hand, Sae-byeok speaks in banmal, the lowest formality level, in all of her interactions with other people. It shows how little she cares about what others think of her.
3. Knowing the games ahead of time
It’s not possible to separate a language from its underlying culture, so if you understand Korean and thus Korean culture, you would have been able to pick up on hints that otherwise may not have been obvious. In episode 2, it was easy to guess that they would be playing 뽑기[ppob-gi], a game played by trying to remove shapes from dalgona candy, as soon as it was revealed that sugar was involved, but especially so when the shapes were shown, as many of these shapes are classic mold shapes for the game.
Another episode is titled ‘Gganbu’, a word that was used for allies in the games 딱지[ttakji] and 구슬 치기[guseul chigi] by older generations when they were children. 딱지[ttakji] is the game played by Gi-hun in the first episode using folded paper squares, so it was easy to guess that they wouldn’t be playing that game yet again, but rather 구슬 치기[guseul chigi] or marbles in that episode.
It is beneficial to learn Korean so when you watch your favorite Korean Dramas on Netflix, you can pick out fun details like these!
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