The following article contains spoilers for Squid Game Season 2, which was released as part of the 2024 TV premiere schedule. If you’re not caught up on all seven episodes, be sure to watch them with a netflix subscription.
If you’ve been looking Squid Game In season 2, you saw Player 120, also known as Cho Hyun-ju. She is a transgender player in games trying to earn money for her sex change operation and is becoming a fan-favorite character for many reasons. While not a prominent part of the main story, Hyun-ju’s journey is truly notable, and the show’s director revealed to CinemaBlend why the creative team included her in this new season.
One of the best shows to binge on Netflix, Squid Game It follows many different characters with varied story arcs. However, Player 120’s journey was different from any other character that has been a part of this series so far. Speaking at our journalist roundtable and asked about her inclusion, director Hwang Dong-hyuk explained that one of the main reasons he decided to feature Hyun-ju was to raise awareness about transgender people in South Korea. As Dong-hyuk noted, those who identify as such are not widely accepted in the country:
I saw the people who come to join Squid Sport games as people who are generally marginalized or underserved from society, and not just financially speaking, but most people would belong to marginalized groups. In the first season, the representative character was Ali, who was a foreigner working in Korea, which is one of the most representative minority groups in Korea. And so currently, unfortunately, in Korean society, the gender minority is a group that is not as widely accepted within society. So I wanted to create a character that represented that, and that’s why I created Hyun-ju’s character as a male-to-female transgender woman.
The director opined that things have “better” for these marginalized people in South Korea. However, he also mentioned that there is still a long way to go. In that sense, Dong-hyuk hopes that the story of Player 120 can have a positive impact on society:
Compared to before, it has improved, but still in Korea, when you are a gender minority, it is unfortunately still not as accepted and you are still considered very outside the norm. And so by creating a character very much like Hyun-ju, and through his choices, his actions, and the way he behaves in the game, I hope that can raise awareness about these issues that we face today.
If you’ve been looking squid game, You probably know that at the end of Season 2, the games are barely halfway done. Hyun-ju is also still very much alive after running to try to collect magazines for weapons in the revolt when one of his allies chickened out. But his fate, like that of many others, remains up in the air ahead of season 3, which will close the show.
But Hyun-ju has made waves online, as many people on social media platforms love the character and have praised Park Sung-hoon’s performance. The director almost did not return for the second season but, when he did, he made a bold declaration that Squid Game The second season could be better than the first and I often wondered how. I have to say that I enjoyed the new episodes and the Participant 120 story represents a great way the writers have upped the stakes.
Considering the political climate in South Korea, it was a risky decision to include Hyun-ju in the show. However, considering the love the character has received so far, I’d say it’s all paying off.
