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North Korea: teenagers ‘executed for watching Squid Game’ as regime wages war on K-Drama and K-Pop
(www.amnesty.org.uk)
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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The Irony is that squid game can absolutely be used by propaganda to show how bad the south is. Just do some edit to present-it as a documentary rather than a fiction.
Yeah, it was very clearly a critique of capitalism.
It's a critique of class differences, which is not limited to capitalism. North Korea is not a country I would call capitalistic, yet there are extreme class differences. Maybe that's why they don't want their people to watch Squid Game. This type of critique is also not limited to Squid Game, it can be seen in a lot of K-Dramas and korean films, Squid Game just shows it in a more brutal way.
Sure sure, but they chose to focus on monetary wealth, property, and debt as the primary reason all of them are in the game, and their struggle to run around and make something for themselves being the entertainment for the ones above them.
Obviously, all the fake socialisms in the world are worse, and the show even touches on that when the woman talks about her village in North Korea dying of disease, getting burned alive, and her parents being shot while fleeing. But the show is still a critique of capitalism.
A common joke is that a North Korean squid games would have people fighting to earn food instead of money.
If you like Squid Game, I recommend the 8 Show. There's no killing in it but it shows how fucked up things can get without killings. And it has social commentary about class differences
Any criticism of power structures in general is a threat to dictators.
@yucandu @world Which is why Trump isn’t attending the Superbowl
But it's not as if Squid Game is about the government oppressing people, it's about a gang of criminals exerting power over people they kidnapped........oh