In season 2 of Squid Game on Netflix, some stories turned out to be more upsetting than others, creating excitement among fans. And one of them could even be inspired by a true story…
Squid Game is finally back on our screens after three waits between season 1 and season 2. Netflix unveiled seven new episodes on December 26. And suffice to say that subscribers flocked to it since the series did not give up its place as number 1 in the top! And this, despite fans’ reservations about the rather abrupt end of the final episode and questions surrounding the mysterious post-credits scene. But certain intrigues still touched the hearts of the general public, like this death in the finale, or the story of Hyun-ju, the first transgender character in the series!
Squid Game : a plot that excites but a casting that causes debate in season 2 of the Netflix series
In episode 3 of season 2 of Squid Gamewe can discover the new players and some have become all the rage. If fans were immediately jubilant at the eccentricity of Thanos (whose actor shares a personal connection with his character), they were also overwhelmed by Hyun-ju. A transgender woman, she is discriminated against at the start of the game and is not accepted by all of the other players. We subsequently discover that she is a former soldier who was dismissed from the army following her coming out, transidentity still being very poorly accepted in Korean society. Benevolent and a true rock for her allies, the fans have become attached to her. And if the creator of the series Hwang Dong-hyeok explained that he created his character to once again highlight a marginalized minority, he also had to justify having chosen Park Sung-hoon, a cisgender actor, to play this role .
Squid Game : Hyun-ju’s story could well be taken from a true story!
If the creator of the series had already admitted to having been inspired by his own financial difficulties to imagine the series, it could well be that he drew on reality again for season 2. In a program on Canadian radio CBC , Michelle Cho, professor at the University of Toronto, explained that Hyun-ju’s journey had strong similarities to that of a real-life transgender South Korean soldier. In real life, Byun Hee-soo joined the South Korean army in 2017 as a man. In 2019, she began her gender transition through surgeries performed in Thailand. Following this operation, she was dismissed from the South Korean army, despite her wish to remain there. A highly publicized case which took an even more tragic turn in 2021 when the body of the young woman was found inert in her Seoul apartment where she allegedly committed suicide. If Hyun-ju is not an exact copy of Byun Hee-soo’s story, it’s a safe bet that the courage of this passionate soldier influenced the writing of Hwang Dong-hyeok.
