A major revelation is being made regarding Netflix’s most popular drama series “Squid Game” — that its script is inspired by a true story from the past.
Squid Game is a Korean drama series released on Netflix. In it, 456 people are invited to participate in a mysterious game where they get a chance to win a large cash prize by playing traditional children’s games, but on the other hand, those who lose face dire consequences.
In Squid Game, participants have to play six different children’s games, including “Red Light, Green Light,” “Dalgona (Honeycomb) Challenge,” “Marbles,” and the “Glass Bridge Game.” In each game, the losers are killed, and the last remaining player wins a prize of 45.6 billion won (Korean currency).
This series has gained worldwide popularity, and its themes, characters, and story have been widely discussed on social media. According to a report, some social media videos — especially on TikTok — have recently claimed that Squid Game is actually based on a true incident that occurred in 1986.
These videos claim that in a “no man’s land” (an area that doesn’t belong to any country), some people were forcibly kept in an underground bunker and were made to play deadly games in order to survive.
But the truth is that there is no clear and strong evidence that anything like this actually happened in 1986 on which Squid Game could have been based. The “no man’s land” may be referring to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, but no such incident is recorded to have occurred there.
Some images shown in those TikTok videos are real, but they do not prove that Squid Game is based on a true story. In fact, those images are from a place in Korea known as “Brothers Home.”
Brothers Home: A Terrifying Truth
In the 1980s, the Korean government launched a crackdown against beggars and homeless people in order to portray a better image of the country before the Asian Games and Seoul Olympics. To achieve this, the then-president ordered the prime minister to forcibly remove “vagrant” people from the streets.
As part of this, “welfare centers” were established where people were actually forcibly detained. Thousands were captured and kept in these centers, where they were tortured, sexually abused, and many were killed.
The more prisoners there were in these centers, the more money was received from the government. Therefore, police also captured children, laborers, and even people without ID cards and put them in these centers.
Among these centers, “Brothers Home” was the most notorious, where detainees were starved, beaten, and subjected to various forms of torture.
Some reports also state that prisoners were forced into hard labor and alleged “games,” which is why some people connect the story of Squid Game to this real-life incident.
