"Squid Game" creator Hwang Dong-hyuk on the "darker" Season 2

"Squid Game" fans know that trumpet wakeup call means someone is going to die. Not our hero, Gi-hun, but one or more of the players hoping to win a fortune competing in childish, but lethal, games. It's at once a thriller and a critique of inequality and greed.

Season 1 was an international blockbuster. With 330 million views, it's Netflix's most-watched series of all time. It won Emmys for its lead actor, Lee Jung-jae, and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. Both made history as the first Asian winners in their categories.

We first spoke with Hwang in Korea just as he was about to start a global promotional tour for Season 2.

"So, you are kind of in a sweet spot now?" I asked.

"I don't know what you mean by 'sweet spot,'" Hwang replied.

"Just that things are going your way?"

"But it's not easy. Nothing's easy," he said. "People keep saying to me, 'You are the happiest person in Korea.' But in my mind, I am not that happy. I'm struggling every day and night."

That's thanks to a brutal workload: Hwang directed and wrote every episode. Sworn to secrecy, "Sunday Morning" was invited to a soundstage outside Seoul where much of Season 2 was shot.

Hwang was at the top of his game, but it wasn't always that way. He was only five when his father died. After that, he says, his family was trapped in poverty. As a struggling filmmaker, and in debt, Hwang said he sought escape in comic books. "I read a lot in the survival game genre and gambling genre," he said. "And that led me to think, what if I were to combine childhood games with people putting their lives at stake for a huge cash prize? And that was really how the idea was conceived."

And a blockbuster was born.

In the show, contestants driven by desperation risk everything for money, exploited by a sinister game master, the powerful Front Man.

Asked if "Squid Game" represents how he sees capitalists and capitalism in general - a group of desperate people manipulated by a cruel and wealthy elite - Hwang replied, "I think fundamentally what continues to drive this system is human selfishness and greed. These days I'm becoming more pessimistic about human nature. I almost think that, for homo sapiens, it's greed that allows them to create a society that they feel most comfortable in."

Many of the characters in Season 2 are new (Hwang having killed off so many of them in Season 1), but the guards are back, and so is Gi-hun, now on a doomed mission to stop the game.

To watch a trailer for "Squid Game: Season 2" click on the video player below:

Hwang said that "Squid Game" Seasons 2 and 3 "will show people the bottom of this world, the bottom of the human being."

So, it gets even darker? "Yeah, it's getting darker, episode by episode," Hwang said.

The show is so popular that recently 50,000 people applied for a chance to take part in a real-life (but non-deadly) Squid Game in Paris. The prize: an early look at the new season.

Hwang is amazed, especially by his show's wild success in the U.S., where audiences have not traditionally gone for a subtitled TV series: "I was always hoping to make something very popular in the States, so I was surprised," he said. "At the same time there was, like, in my dream come true. But that level of success [was] just beyond my expectations."

Ironically, this creator of a dystopian parable about desperation and poverty now finds himself a wealthy man – one of the great winners of capitalism. Has that changed him? "Not much," he said. "Made my life better, for sure, because I don't have to worry about [making] money anymore. But since then, I don't think I was changed a lot by more success or more money, because it's just a number. It doesn't have any meaning to me at all."

What does have meaning is his work. But the success and the pressure of "Squid Game" have taken a toll: "It's more than, like, five years I've been just working on this one project, day and night. I'm so exhausted. I'm so sick of, you know?" he laughed. "I need a break, I need a break."

A break from non-stop work … and from his deep dive into the dark depths of human nature.

So, what makes Hwang Dong-hyuk laugh? "My friends! I love talking to my friends and having a beer."

      
For more info:

• Season 2 of "Squid Game" debuts on Netflix December 26

     
Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Editor: Joseph Frandino. 

     
See also: