Hwang Dong-hyuk the Creator and Director of ‘Squid Game’

Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote and directed Netflix’s No. 1 most-watched show across the world, Squid Game. To get to where he is today he had to go through many obstacles.

Dong-hyuk endured many financial struggles in the process of getting this series started. He wrote the show in 2009 and was rejected by many studios for years and years. In this process he went into debt, much like the characters in the show, and he had to sell his $657 laptop to help with his financial struggles.

Dong-hyuk stated, “I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life. As a survival game, it is entertainment and human drama. The games portrayed are extremely simple and easy to understand. That allows viewers to focus on the characters, rather than being distracted by trying to interpret the rules” (Maina Chen).

Squid Game was denied for years because it was said to be too complex and not commercial. This was hard for Dong-hyuk because he was putting a lot of money into technologies and cast members to make the series work. Dong-hyuk contemplated giving up on the series for years. However, he did not let these opinions stop him and he continued to find a way to get investments to continue his making of the series.

Hwang Dong-hyuk, not letting the opinions of people stop him, made his series the No. 1 most-watched show on Netflix and is on track to becoming the best-performing series ever streaming