What do a wealthy Seoul family, a struggling household, and a deadly children's game have in common?
At first, the answer might seem to be nothing. Yet Parasite and Squid Game became international successes partly because their Korean settings contained problems that audiences everywhere could recognize.
1. The Power of Local Identity
Bong Joon-ho's Parasite made history at the 2020 Academy Awards when it won Best Picture, becoming the first non-English-language film to receive the award.
The film's story is deeply Korean in its setting, architecture, language, and social details. But its central question is much broader: what happens when people live in completely different economic worlds while occupying the same city?
2. Universal Anxieties & Extreme Premises
Squid Game approached a similar anxiety through a much more extreme premise. Contestants desperate for money compete in children's games, knowing that failure has deadly consequences.
The story is fictional and exaggerated, but the pressure behind it is familiar: debt, economic insecurity, cutthroat competition, and the feeling that there may be too few opportunities for too many people.
That helps explain why international viewers connected with it. Netflix reported that Squid Game became its most popular series, with more than 1.65 billion hours viewed during its first 28 days.
Cultural Reference: Exploring the social impact and messages behind the global success of Squid Game.
Final Thought
The important point is that these works did not become global by removing their Korean identity. They did almost the opposite.
They used Korean neighborhoods, social customs, language, humor, architecture, and everyday details to tell stories about problems that exist far beyond Korea.
This may be one of the defining strengths of Korean popular culture: local stories can become global when they are specific enough to feel real and universal enough to feel familiar.
