On TikTok, videos viewed millions of times show footage of what is believed to have been the location that inspired the popular Korean series The Squid Game. Children were allegedly tortured there in the 1980s. Does this place exist? We take stock.
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While the second season of Squid Game was released from Netflix on December 26, videos are circulating where we can see images of a place very similar to that of the series, but dilapidated. The color of the walls is dull, the paint is torn off and the abandoned rooms are dirty and dilapidated.
The video claims that the father of the director of the series would have participated in these bloody games and that he would have provided him with photos before dying.
In another post, a content creator posits that “The Squid Game is based on a real event that occurred in 1986. It took place in a bunker in a remote location in South Korea, where people were held hostage and had to play several games to survive. The host with inhuman ideas was never found.”
However, as real as they may appear, several clues suggest that these images are generated by artificial intelligence.
How to recognize an AI-generated image?
By zooming in on some images, you can notice some errors: the lines of some tiles fade into the stairs, the angle of some steps is irregular and the lines of some objects are too smooth (they almost blend into the decor, like in a painting).
Photo montage Léa Martin
Such details may be clues that an image is generated by artificial intelligence
Next, the “Is It AI?” 81% believe that the images presented in TikTok videos are the result of artificial intelligence.
24 hours is not the only one to have had the famous viral images analyzed.
Screenshot of on-site analysis Is It AI?
But what really happened in the 80s in Korea?
In the comments, Internet users indicate that the creator of the series Squid GameHwang Dong-hyuk, would have been inspired by “Brothers’ Home”, a dark part of the history of South Korea.
In the 1980s, after the Korean War, the country was in the midst of an economic boom.
“The entire country was in turmoil in the run-up to the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and the government began to spur efforts to rebrand the nation,” it reads. read in the BBC about this.
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At the time, a ruling general ordered the streets cleared of beggars and vagrants. The authorities were ordered to take them to “social assistance centers”.
“Homeless people, disabled people, orphaned children and even ordinary citizens who did not present their identity papers when requested were allegedly taken to these centers as part of ‘social purification projects,’” writes journalist Bugyeong Jung.
In these centers, prisoners suffered numerous physical, psychological and sexual violence. Hundreds of people are believed to have died there.
What really inspired Squid Game
However, it was not this macabre story that inspired Hwang Dong-hyuk.
AFP
In one with theAgence France-Pressethe director and screenwriter said that the experiences of the main character, laid-off worker Gi-hun, were inspired by the violent Ssangyong strikes in 2009.
“I wanted to show that in the world we live in today, any member of the middle class can fall to the bottom of the economic ladder overnight,” he explained.
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After the dismissal of 2,600 workers by the automobile giant Ssangyong, strikes turned into riots. After the conflict, workers reportedly committed suicide due to the trauma of the violence.
Squid Gamelike many recent South Korean works, is intended to be a critique of the capitalist system and class inequalities in the country.
